Abstract
Italy was the first country in which the United States tested its ‘political warfare’, the integrated application of overt and covert strategies to stabilise internal politics. This article illustrates that while America’s most intrusive and aggressive methods against Communist power in Italy often backfired, its diplomatic use of Italy’s interplay of domestic politics and foreign policies was relatively successful. It was an indirect method that hinged on America’s flexibility towards the moderate centre-left forces. American counterintuitive toleration and sometimes encouragement of mild political and cultural dissent in Italy helped refute and isolate the determined opposition of the strong Italian Communist Party.
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Notes
Thompson to Sec. State, 26 July 1951, 765.001, Record Group [RG] 59, National Archives, College Park, MD [hereafter NA].
On origins of ‘Gladio’ see esp. Leopoldo Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti, e l’apertura a sinistra. Importanza e limiti delia presenza americana in Italia (Bari: Laterza, 1999), 100–103
Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (London: Routledge, 2005); cf. NSC 6014, 19 January 1961, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Papers [ASP], Subject Files: Italy, box WH 12, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston, MA [hereafter JFKL]. On deals in the 1970s see esp. Ackley to State Dept, 18 February 1970, POL 12-IT 1970–73, b.2393, RG59, NA.
Cf. Umberto Gentiloni Silveri, ‘Gli anni settanta nel giudizio degli Stati Uniti: Un ponte verso l’ignoto’, in L’Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni ‘70, ed. Agostino Giovagnoli and Silvio Pons (Rome: Istituto Enciclopedia Italiana, 2001), 89–122.
On ‘Political’ and ‘Psychological Warfare’ methods in the early Cold War see esp. Kaeten Mistry, The United States, Italy and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare 1945–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Mario Del Pero ‘The United States and Psychological Warfare in Italy, 1948–1955’, The Journal of American History, March 2001
Alessandro Brogi, ‘Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce and the Evolution of Psychological Warfare in Italy’, Cold War History 12, no. 2 (May 2012); and Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti.
Moshe Gat, Britain and Italy, 1943–1949: The Decline of British Influence (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 1999)
and Ennio Di Nolfo, “Italia e Stati Uniti: un’alleanza diseguale”, Storia dette relazioni internazionali, 1990/1.
PSB, ‘Notes on a Grand Strategy for Psychological Operations’, 1 October 1951, Staff Material and Office Files [SMOF], PSB, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO [hereafter HSTL].
Memo ‘French and Italian Elections’, 6 July 1951, SMOF, PSB, b.11, HSTL.
On those tactics, see esp. the records contained in SMOF, PSB, HSTL.
Andrea Guiso, La colomba e la spada. ‘Lotta per la pace’ e antiamericanismo nella politica del Partito comunista italiano (1949–1954) (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2006)
see also, for more details, Alessandro Brogi, Confronting America: The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 122–156.
Qtd. Richard Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and the Cold War Secret Intelligence (New York: Overlook Press, 2001), 343. See also Progress Report on various Psychological Operation in France and Italy, by Operations Coordinating Board [OCB], 23 February 1954, White House Office [WHO], NSC Staff, Operations Coordinating Board Central Files, b.82, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KS [hereafter DDEL]; on beginning of funding of peace organizations in Italy: Memo Conv. Clare B. Luce with E. Sogno, 1 April 1954, 765.001, RG59, NA.
I analysed these developments especially in Alessandro Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem: The United States and the Cold War Choices in France and Italy, 1944–1958 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), chaps. 3–4.
On Italy’s contribution to the ‘relaunching’ of European integration see esp. Antonio Varsori, La Cenerentola d’Europa? L’Italia e l’integrazione europea dal 1947 a oggi (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2010), 119–158
and Paolo Acanfora, Miti e ideologia nella politica estera della DC: Nazione, Europa e Comunità atlantica (1943–1954) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013), 77–114 and 197–239.
Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006).
Qtd. Luce to Henry Luce, 31 October 1954, Clare B. Luce Papers [CBLP], b.X22, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D.C. [hereafter LC]; On DCs resistance against U.S. Pressures see also the following works by Mario Del Pero: L’alleato scomodo. Gli USA e la DC negli anni del centrismo (1948–1955) (Rome: Carocci, 2001); ‘Containing containment: rethinking Italy’s experience during the Cold War’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8 (Fall 2003); and American Pressures and Their Containment in Italy During the Ambassadorship of Clare Boothe Luce, 1953-1956’, Diplomatic History 28, no. 3 (June 2004).
Vera Capperucci, ‘Le correnti delia Democrazia Cristiana di fronte all’America. Tra differenziazione culturale e integrazione politica, 1944–1954’, in Lantiamericanismo in Italia e in Europe nel secondo dopoguerra, ed. Piero Craveri and Gaetano Quagliarello (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2004)
and Paolo Pombeni, Le ‘Cronache Sociali’ di Dossetti, 1947–1951: Geografia di un movimento di opinione (Florence: Vallecchi, 1976), esp. 46, 165, and chap. 4.
See esp. Henry J. Tasca (Rome) to State Dept, 3 September 1954, Foreign Relations of the United States, U.S. State Department, Washington D.C., various dates [hereafter FRUS], 1952–54, VI: 1699–1700; Bruna Bagnato, Prove di Ostpolitik. Politica ed economia nella strategia italiana verso l’Unione Sovietica, 1958–1963 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2003); Brogi, Question of Self-Esteem, 191-210
and Federico Romero, ‘La scelta atlantica e Americana’, in Nazione, interdipendenza, integrazione. Le relazioni internazionali dell’Italia (1917–1989), ed. Federico Romero and Antonio Varsori (Rome: Carocci, 2005), vol. 1.
Qtd. in Maria Rosaria Grieco, ‘Politica estera italiana e mondo cattolico: la parabola del neo-atlantismo negli anni ‘50’, in L’Italia e la NATO. Una politica estera nette maglie dell’alleanza, ed. Salvatore Minolfi (Naples: CUEN, 1993), 85, 89.
I provide more detailed analyses of these developments in Alessandro Brogi, L’Italia e l’egemonia americana nel Mediterraneo (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1996)
Alessandro Brogi, ‘“Ike” and Italy: The Eisenhower Administration and Italy’s “Neo-Atlanticist” Agenda’, The Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 3 (Summer 2002)
and Alessandro Brogi, ‘Competing Missions: France, Italy, and the Rise of American Hegemony in the Mediterranean’, Diplomatic History 30, no. 4 (September 2006).
On first Italian emphasis on this correlation see Simone Selva, National Integration and Domestic Economic Growth: The United States and Italy in the Western Bloc Rearmament Programs 1945–1955 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012).
Quaroni to Martino, 6 April 1956; see also Vittorio Zoppi (London) to Martino, 30 October 1956, both in Direzione Generale Affari Politici [DGAP], b.1062 and 1093, respectively, Archivio storico del Ministero degli affari esteri italiano [hereafter ASMAE]; Manlio Brosio (Washington) to Martino, 9 September 1956, DGAP, b.1093, ASMAE; Quaroni to Ministero Affari Esteri [MAE], 2 October 1956, DGAP, b.1062; Quaroni to Martino, 3 December 1956, and Brosio to Martino, 11 December 1956, DGAP, b.1093, ASMAE.
Qtd. Dulles to Eisenhower, 5 May 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, IV:75; Dulles to Embassy in Rome, November 22, 1957, FRUS, 1955–57, XIL661–2; Memo C. B. Elbrick (WEA) to Dulles, 29 October 1957, 611.41, RG 59, NA; and Alessandro Brogi, ‘Fanfani e l’unilateralismo americano nel Mediterraneo’, in Fanfani e la politica estera italiana, ed. Agostino Giovagnoli and Luciano Tosi (Venice: Marsilio, 2010).
J. W Jones to Under Sec. of State, 29 August 1957 (enclosed Progress Report on 5411/2, section ‘Mattei’s Threat’), Records of State Dept. participation in OCB and NSC, b.21, NA. On Gronchi cf. esp. Memo OCB, 3 May 1955, OCB files, b.111, DDEL; Egidio Ortona, Anni d’ America, Vol. 2. La diplomazia, 1953–1961 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986), 128–9. On Mattei, see, most recently, Ilaria Tremolada, ‘Mattei, Fanfani, l’ENI e le relazioni internazionali dell’Italia’, in Giovagnoli and Tosi, Fanfani.
Luce to C.D. Jackson, 29 September 1954, Jackson Papers, b.70, folder ‘Luce’, DDEL; Luce to J.F Dulles, 24 August 1954, and Mtg. Luce-Segni (prime minister), 24 August 1956, both in 765.00, RG59, NA. Cf. Pietro Nenni, Gli anni del centro-sinistra. Diari 1957–1966 (Milan: Sugarco, 1982), 288–9, 302.
Mtg. Luce-Segni (prime minister), 24 August 1956, 765.00, RG59, NA.
Qtd. John Jernegan (Rome) to J.F. Dulles, 11 September 1957, 665.80; qtd. Earl Sohm (Rome) to State Dept., 27 August 1958, 765.13, RG59, NA; Mtg. Eisenhower-Dulles, 5 February 1957, Declassified Documents Reference System, 1989, doc. 3426; A. Dulles in 381st NSC Mtg., 2 October 1958, AW, NSC, b.10, DDEL.
Letter n. 31/548 Adolfo Alessandrini (Secretary General of MAE) to Brosio, 11 June 1958, and tel. 8813 Brosio to Alessandrini (qtd.), 17 June 1958, DGAP I (1947–1960), b.8, ASMAE.
Mtg. Fanfani-Dulles, and others, and Mtg. Fanfani-Eisenhower, 29–30 July 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, VII:466–73; On Dulles see esp. the Italian version of Mtg. Fanfani-Dulles, 30 July 1958, Serie I, Sotteserie IV, Sotto-Sottoserie 2 [hereafter in sequence numbers only], b. 9, Fondo Fanfani [FF] Archivio Storico Senato della Repubblica, Rome, Italy [hereafter ASSR]; cf. Mtg. Torbert-Fanfani, 3 October 1958, 765.13, RG59, NA; on IRBM see Lauris Norstad Papers, b.89, DDEL; cf. Brogi, L’Italia e l’egemonia, 295–339; Evelina Martelli, L’altro atlantismo. Fanfani e la politica estera italiana, 1958–1963 (Milan: Guerini, 2008), 53–56
and Fabio Grassi Orsini, ‘La “svolta diplomatica” del secondo governo Fanfani’, in Atlantismo ed europeismo, ed. Piero Craveri and Gaetano Quagliarello (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2003).
Tel. 1633 David Zellerbach to J.F. Dulles, 23 November 1958, and tel. 2306 Zellerach to J.F. Dulles, 13 January 1959, 765.00, RG 59, NA.
Dulles in 394th NSC Mtg., 22 lanuary 1959, AW, NSC Series, DDEL.
On CCF and its effects in Italy see esp. Eugenio Capozzi, ‘L’opposizione all’antiamericanismo: Il Congress for Cultural Freedom e l’associazione italiana per la libertà e la cultura’, in Craveri and Quagliarello, L’anti-americanismo in Italia; Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Postwar American Hegemony (New York: Routledge, 2002); and Brogi, Confronting America, 180–196.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 184; Scott-Smith, Politics of Apolitical Culture, 41–44
and Alan Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 267–71.
Intellectual defections from the PCI, from 1956, were caused not only by the Soviet repression of the Hungarian movement, but also by the growing appeal of the intellectual debate among liberal intellectuals in the United States. America’s new social sciences also had a draw on Europe’s academics: see for ex. the debates within the PCI’s Cultural Committee: Italo Calvino and Gianfranco Corsini in Meeting of Cultural Committee, 13–24 luly 1956, Archivio Storico del Partito Comunista Italiano, Istituto Gramsci, Rome, Italy [hereafter APCI]; see also response by Mario Alicata in Mtg. Cultural Committee, 15–16 November 1956, APCI.
Simona Tobia, Advertising America: The United States Information Service in Italy (1945–1956) (Milan: LED, 2008), 223–68.
Progress Report by Lloyd A. Free (director USIS Italy) to State Dept, 24 February 1953, 511.65, RG59, NA; Letter Luce to I. F Dulles, 15 lune 1956, IFD, Correspondence-Memoranda Series, Strictly Confidential, b.2, DDEL; cf Tobia, Advertising America, 268–80.
Qtd. Interview Reinhardt with J. O’Connor, November 1966, Oral History Reinhardt, 10, JFKL.
Memo Reinhardt forwarded to Bundy, 18 May 1962, NSC Files, Italy, b.120, JFKL.
Memo Conv. Ambassador Harriman–President Gronchi, 11 March 1961, NSC Files, Italy, b.120, JFKL; Leopoldo Nuti, La sfida nucleare. La politica estera italiana e le armi atomiche, 1945–1991 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007)
and Philip Nash, The Other Missiles of October (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 45–53, 68–73.
See John Jernegan to John Wesley Jones, 26 lune 1956, 765.00, RG59, NA, also in Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti, 62–67; cf. Mtg. George Lister-Riccardo Lombardi (PSI), 3 February 1958, 765.00, RG59, NA; see also Umberto Gentiloni Silveri, L’Italia e la nuova frontiera: Stati Uniti e centrosinistra, 1958–1965 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998)
and Alessandro Brogi, ‘The AFL and CIO Between “Crusade” and Pluralism in Italy, 1944–1963’, in American Labor’s Global Ambassadors: The International History of the AFL-CIO during the Cold War, ed. Robert Anthony Waters, Jr., and Geert van Goethem (London: Palgrave, 2013).
Leopoldo Nuti, ‘The United States and the Opening to the Left, 1953–1963’, Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 45
see also Ilaria Favetto, ‘la nascita del centro-sinistra e la Gran Bretagna. Partito socialista, laburisti, Foreign Office’, Italia Contemporanea n. 202 (March 1996).
Memo by C. D. Jackson, 7 August 1962 Overseas Report, Confidential, forwarded to JFK by John D., JFK Papers, Office Files, b.119a, JFKL; Schlesinger to Bernabei, 8 November 1962, Arthur Schlesinger Papers, Subject File 1961–1964, b.23, JFKL.
Memo Schlesinger to Bundy, 19 October 1962, NSC, Italy, b.120, JFKL; Mtg. Harriman-Fanfani, 11 March 1961, NSC Files, Italy, b.20, JFKL; William R. Tyler to Charles Bohlen (Paris), 11 lune 1963, POL12-FR, RG59, NA.
Memo Conversation Fanfani, Rusk, Antonio Segni (foreign minister), 12 December, 1961, FF, II, IV, 3, b.14, folder 21, ASSR.
‘Policy Recommendations’ drafted as part of Desp. 899 of 11 April 1961 in DDRS 1978 281B; cf. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ‘The Kennedy Administration and the Center-Left’, in Italian Socialism Between Politics and History, ed. Spencer M. Di Scala (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).
On these points see esp. Nuti, ‘Opening to the Left, 1953-1963’, 47–48; and Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
See esp. Thomas A. Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 26–33
and Randall B. Woods, LBJ Architect of American Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), 701–05.
William N. Fraleigh (Counselor Embassy Rome) to State Dept., 30 June 1968, and Letter Fraleigh to Givan Walker (Officer in Charge of Italian Affairs), 10 March 1965, FRUS 1964–68, XII, docs. 101 and 107; Fraleigh to Givan Walker 8 April 1965 Gen. Recs. BEA, Country Director, Italy 1943–1968, Lot 68 D 436, RG59, NA; and Memo Special Assistant (Valenti) to President Johnson, FRUS 1964–1968, XII, doc. 109; Report Longo in Mtg. Direzione, 30 March 1965, VD, mf. 029, APCI.
Tel. 4590 Meloy to Harriman, March 4, 1968 (with note by Walt W Rostow for Johnson, qtd.), National Security Files, Country Files [NSF, CF], Vietnam, b.139, folder ‘Killy’, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, TX [hereafter LBJL].
This is not the place to examine these negotiations in detail, but see esp. docs, in ASSR, FF, 1, II, IV, 4, b.37, folders 16, 31, and 33, and b. 38, folders3 and 4; State Dept. to Embassy in Rome, 27 February 1968, FRUS, 1964–1968, VI, doc. 87; Memorandum from Bundy to Rusk, 12 February 1968, and attached translated note from Ortona to Rusk, 7 February, 1968, RG59, Pol 27–14 Viet/Killy, NA; Bernard J. Firestone, ‘Failed Mediation: U Thant, the Johnson Administration, and the Vietnam War’, Diplomatic History 37, no. 5 (November 2013)
James Hershberg, Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); Angela Villani, ‘Fanfani, l’Onu e la politica italiana di distensione internazionale’, in Giovagnoli and Tosi, Fanfani. And on the controversy caused by Fanfani and La Pira with the pro-American Ambassador Giorgio Fenoaltea in Washington, see esp. Tel. 1349 Fenoaltea to MAE, 19 December 1965, in Archivio Aldo Moro [AAM], b.82, folder 232, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy [hereafter ACS].
Meeting Fanfani-Rusk, 22 December 1965, FRUS, 1964–68, XII, doc. 121.
Memo Conv. Fanfani-Rusk et als., 24 February 1968, FF, 1, II, IV, b.38, folder 4, ASSR.
Guthrie (Rome) to State Dept., 22 November 1965; Bundy to Johnson, 28 November 1965 (qtd.), FRUS 1964–1968, XII, docs.119, 120.
Enzo Roggi, ‘1966: Berlinguer mi affidò la custodia del carteggio segreto tra il Pci, Paolo VI e Ho Chi Min sull’attacco Usa al Vietnam,’ http://www.Pontediferro.org, 8 May 2010; Reinhardt to State Dept., 9 April 1965, FRUS 1964–68, XII, doc.108; Memo Conversation Governor Harriman, Frazier Draper (Italian Affairs) — Giacomo Brodolini (Vice Secretary Italian Socialist Party), 17 August 1966, POL 12-IT, RG59, NA.
Amendola in Mtg. Direzione 6 September 1967 (see also comments by Longo on DC and Middle East in idem), VD, mf. 019, APCI; Luca Riccardi, Il ‘problema Israele.’ Diplomazia italiana e PCI di fronte allo Stato ebraico (1948–1973) (Milan: Guerini, 2006), chap. 6.
Qtd. Memo Fraleigh to State Dept. ‘The 11th Congress of the PCI’, 4 March 1966; qtd. Reinhardt to State Dept., 20 May 1965, POL 12-IT, RG59, NA.
Memo Thomas L. Hughes (Intelligence and Research) to Sec. State, ‘Italy — Communist “Kindness” Embarrasses Government’, 8 May 1969; Memo Gammon to Ambassador, ‘Your Meeting with Nenni — China’, 8 May 1969, POL 12-IT, RG59, NA; Tel. A-1439 Melloy to State, 26 May 1966, NSF, CF, b.198, LBJL; Memo De Luca to Rostow ‘Communist Strategy Toward Roman Catholicism’, 26 May 1966, NSF, Name Files, b.2, LBJL.
Memo Bundy to Johnson, 4 August 1965, and Memo for the Record by INR ‘Italy — Covert Action Program for FY-1968’, FRUS, 1964-68, vol. XII, docs. 116, 133.
Valenti to Johnson, 16 April 1965, cit.; and Memo Conversation Fanfani-Johnson, 24 May 1965, NSF, Country Files, Italy, b. 197, vol. IV, LBJL.
John A. Bovey, Jr. (Counselor Emb. Paris) to State Dept., 30 April 1965, POL 12-FR, RG59, NA; Memo De Luca to Rostow, August 1965 (no date), ‘Summary of meetings with Giorgio Amendola of the PCI on July 21 and August 12, 1965’, NSF, Name Files, b.2, LBJL.
Shriver to State Dept., 29 July 1969, POL 12-FR, RG59, NA; Tel. 8205 Emb. Rome to Assistant Sec. State Hartman, 25 June 1975, National Security Adviser files [hereafter NSA], Country Files, Italy, b. 8, Gerald Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, MI [hereafter GFL]; Memo Conv. Ford-Volpe, 6 November 1975, NSA, Memo Convs., b. 16, GFL.
Qtd. Ackley to State Dept. 18 February 1969, POL 12-IT, RG59, NA. Cf. Alexander Höbel, ‘Il PCI di Longo e il ‘68 studentesco’, Studi storici 45, no. 2 (April 2004).
Berlinguer and Gian Carlo Pajetta in Mtgs. Direzione 12 September and 9 October 1973, VD, mf 041, APCI
Agostino Novella, ‘Il Cile, la DC, e noi’, Rinascita, 20 September 1973
and cf. Antonio Rubbi, Il mondo di Berlinguer (Rome: Roberto Napoleone, 1994), 53–57.
On these developments see esp. Silvio Pons, Berlinguer e la fine del comunismo (Turin: Einaudi, 2006), 52–60
cf. Fiamma Lussana, ‘Il Confronto con le socialdemocrazie e la ricerca di un nuovo socialismo nell’ultimo Berlinguer’, Studi Storici 45, no. 2 (April 2004)
Mauro Maggiorani and P. Ferrari, eds., L’Europa da Togliatti a Berlinguer, 1945–1984 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), 161–83
Michele Di Donato, I comunisti italiani e la sinistra europea. Il PCI e I rapporti con le socialdemocrazie (1964–1984) (Rome: Carocci, 2015).
The most significant archival record is Berlinguer in Mtg. Direzione 5 December 1974, VD, mf 073, APCI; cf. also Francesco Barbagallo, Enrico Berlinguer (Rome: Carocci, 2006), 217.
Antonio Tatò, ed., Comunisti e mondo cattolico oggi (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1977); and Pons, Berlinguer, 43–44.
Memo Conv. Ford, Kissinger, Moro, Rumor, 1 August 1975, NSA, Memos Conv, b. 13, GFL.
On this see esp. arguments by Arturo Colombi in Mtgs. Direzione 12 September and 9 October 1973, VD, mf 041, APCI; cf. Agostino Giovagnoli, Il Caso Moro: Una tragedia repubblicana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), 9–13. Kissinger qtd. in Memo Conv. Kissinger-Ford, 25 September 1975, NSA, Memos Conv., GFL.
See esp. Irwin Wall, ‘L’amministrazione Carter e l’eurocomunismo’, Ricerche di storiapolitica IX, no. 2 (August 2006)
Irwin Wall, ‘Les Etats-Unis et l’Eurocommunisme’, Relations Internationales 119 (Fall 2004)
and Olav Njølstad, ‘The Carter Administration and Italy: Keeping the Communists Out of Power Without Interfering’, Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 3 (Summer 2002).
That is how Berlinguer’s closest advisor, Sergio Segre, defined the whole approach to Europe’s social democrats: in Pons, Berlinguer, 55.
In November 1974 former CIA Director John McCone acknowledged with President Gerald Ford that the Agency’s image had been tarnished in Europe even more than at home, thus lowering the leverage and the morale of its officials abroad: Memo Conv. McCone, Scowcroft, Ford, 11 November 1974, NSA Papers, Memos Conv., b.7, GFL.
Memo Scrowcroft to Ford on ‘CIA Interim Assessment of Italian Elections’, no date June 1976, NSA, Presidential Country Files for Europe and Canada, Italy, b.8, GFL.
Tel. 8205 Emb. Rome to Assistant Sec. State Hartman, cit.; Memo by George H.W Bush ‘The Electoral Outlook in Italy’, 19 May 1976, NSA, Country Files, Italy, b.8, GFL; Memo Conv. Ford, Volpe, 6 November 1975, cit.
For a good concise account on the evolution of Italy’s Mediterranean policies through 2010 see Massimo De Leonardis, ‘Italy’s Atlanticism between Foreign and Internal Politics’, UNISCI (Research Unit on International Security and Cooperation) Discussion Paper n. 25, January 2011, accessed online on 15 November 2014.
On Italy’s increasingly cautious pro-Arabism see esp. Tel. 266 Vinci (New York) to Moro, 15 March 1970, b.150; Tel. 520 Plaja (Cairo) to Moro, 25 June 1970, b.150; Tel. 2068/C, Moro to various Embassies, 25 May 1972, b.154; Tel. 1834 Ortona to MAE, 18 October 1973, b.160, all in AAM, ACS; cf. Massimiliano Cricco, ‘La politica estera italiana in Medio Oriente: dal fallimento della missione Jarring alia conclusione dello Yom Kippur (1972–1973)’, in Romero and Varsori, Nazione, interdipendenza, vol. 2.
Memo Conv. Nixon-Fanfani, 7 July 1970, NP, NSC Files, Country Files-Europe, b.695, NA; Memo Conv. Ford-Kissinger, 25 September 1974, cit. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1979), 101–02.
Memo Kissinger to Ford, 27 September 1975, NSA, Country Files-France, b.3, GFL; Conv. Kissinger, Schmidt, Genscher 27 July 1975, NSA, and Moro and Giscard in Fourth Session Rambouillet Summit, 17 November 1975, Memos Conv., b. 13 and b. 16, GFL; Memo Conv. Ford, Kissinger, Rumor, Moro, 1 August 1975, NSA, Memos Conv, b. 13, GFL. On how Italian diplomats had prepared the ground for Italy’s participation see esp. Note by Egidio Ortona (Washington) to Moro, 10 September 1974, AAM, b.160, ACS.
See Duccio Basosi and Giovanni Bernardini, ‘The Puerto Rico Summit and the End of Eurocommunism’, and Fiorella Favino, ‘Washington’s Economic Diplomacy and the Reconstruction of U.S. Leadership’, in The Crisis of Détente in Europe: From Helsinki to Gorbachev, 1975–1985, ed. Leopoldo Nuti (London: Taylor and Francis, 2008).
Conv. Ford, Kissinger, Scowcroft, 6 September 1974, NSA, Memos Conv, b.5; Conv. Ford, Kissinger, Schmidt, 6 December 1974, Idem, b.7; Conv. Ford-Kissinger, 18 January 1975, Idem, b.8; Conv. Ford, Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Scowcroft, 24 May 1975, Idem, b.ll; Conv. Kissinger, Schmidt, Genscher, 27 July 1975, Idem, b. 13, all in GFL.
Schmidt in Memo Conv. Kissinger, Schmidt, Genscher, 27 July 1975, cit.
Basosi and Bernardini, ‘Puerto Rico Summit’, 262: Memo Conv. Ford, Kissinger, et als., 18 May 1976, DDRS.
Brzezinski to Carter, 26 February 1977, Weekly Report #2, NSA, Brzezinski Material, Subject File, Weekly Reports [WR], b.41; Brzezinski to Carter, ‘Western Europe: An Overview’, 23 July 1977, Idem, James E. Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA [hereafter JCL].
Njølstad, ‘Carter Administration.’
Giorgio Napolitano, ‘Il PCI spiegato agli americani’, Rinascita, May 1978; On Carrillo see Berlinguer in Mtg. Direzione, 11 November 1977, VD, mf. 309, APCI; Wall, ‘Les États-Unis’, 371–3; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (New York: Ferrar Straus Geroux 1983), 311–3; and Brogi, Confronting America, 339–42.
Leo J. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and Italian Tricolor (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990), 197–205; Cf. Memo Conv. Roberto Gaja (Italian Ambassador)-Brzezinski, 31 March 1977, NSA, Brzezinski Material, Subject File, b.33, JCL; on Vance cf. George Urban to Brzezinski, 19 March 1977, White House Central File, Subj. File, Countries, CO-37, JCL; Njølstad, ‘Carter Administration’, 81.
On Soviet anti-Eurocommunist activities see also Christopher Andrew (with Vasili Mitrokhin), The Sword and the Shield: Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 294–301.
Qtd. Gardner in Hunter to Brzezinski, 5 July 1977; qtd. Richard Gardner, Mission Italy: On the Front Lines of the Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 84.
Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 312; John E. Reinhardt (Director of International Communication Agency, Washington D.C.) to Brzezinski, 10 May 1978, NSA, Brzezinski Material, Country File, b.39, JCL.
Magri qtd. in Memo Pierre Hassner to Brzezinski, ‘For Ever Creeping?’, 23 February 1977, WHCF, Subj. File, CO-37; Brzezinski to Carter, ‘Visit of Italian Prime Minister Andreotti’, 23 July 1977, NSA, Brzezinski Material, VIP Visit File, b.7, JCL.
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Alessandro Brogi is a professor of History of U.S. Foreign Relations at the University of Arkansas. He also held positions at Yale, Johns Hopkins-Bologna Center, and the Nobel Peace Institute in Oslo, Norway. His principal area of research is U.S. strategic and cultural relations with Western Europe during the Cold War, and his main works draw comparative analyses of France and Italy. His latest book, titled Confronting America: The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy (University of North Carolina Press, 2011 - Smith Award, Southern Historical Association) examines left-wing anti-Americanism in France and Italy during the Cold War, and U.S. reactions and strategies to stop the advance of communism in both countries. He has also published several articles in journals including Diplomatic History, Cold War History, and the Journal of Cold War Studies. Brogi is currently working on an interpretive work on U.S.-Italian relations during the entire span of the Cold War.
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Brogi, A. Taming dissent: the United States and the Italian centre-left, 1948–1978. J Transatl Stud 14, 213–236 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2016.1200297
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2016.1200297