Southern Europe as a region sharing common features emerged as a concept in the thinking of American and British policymakers during the 1970s. The collapse of authoritarian regimes in Portugal and Greece and the end of the dictatorship in Spain, taking place almost simultaneously in the mid-1970s, were the political facts underlying this assumption. It was not however only a problem of transition from authoritarianism to democracy that shaped events. The rise of the Communist Party of Italy and the prospect of communist participation in a NATO member-state's parliamentary government posed questions of viability of democracy within the Cold War context. Seen from this angle the main southern European dilemma was the relation of authoritarianism and democracy with Cold War imperatives that shaped international relations from the immediate post-war era to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Till the 1970s these countries were treated ad hoc and separately by Western policymakers. Greece had entered the post-war period seen in its Near East and Balkan context. Portugal was perceived as an integral part of the Atlantic area, seen by naval powers as an important staging post to Europe while Spain, although isolated as a result of domestic political developments, belonged to the western European geographical and historical setup. Italy was perceived as belonging to a Mediterranean context, a crucial circle in the chain connecting the western and the eastern Mediterranean ends, and simultaneously to a western European one.

The four southern European countries had an extensive agricultural sector. Their rate of industrialization lagged behind western Europe's although Italy, and to a lesser degree Spain, had, from 1880 to 1910, formed a significant industrial sector. Their political institutions were fragile, tarnished from political polarization and instability in the transition to mass politics in the 1910s and 1920s. In the case of Greece, Portugal and Spain, monarchies were not particularly stable during the nineteenth century. Their common feature was the Crown's varying ability to manipulate the electoral procedure and parliaments through the distribution of spoils in the context of a patronage system. This system tended to ensure political control in the periphery through the intermediation of local bosses. In Italy the political system of the constitutional monarchy had worked rather smoothly after the unification of the country in 1861. ‘Transformismo’, the ability of the monarchy and its various partners to produce pliable majorities in parliament, would be tested in the early twentieth century. The army was a factor occasionally intervening in politics. It served often as the catalyst for the gradual opening of the political system to rising middle-class groups but increasingly during the twentieth century was mainly a conservative force apprehensive of the destabilizing influence of militant labour and Socialism.

Southern Europe Entering the Era of Mass Politics

World War I strained every country in distinct ways but in general it was a test for its institutions and its ability to integrate various social forces and interests.

The Transition

The State Department assessed the new government positively stressing the point that although its members were critical of Washington's failure to disassociate from the Greek military regime they were still pro-Western and remained supporters of Greece's participation to NATO.

Kissinger did not share his department's optimism. The regime change in Greece meant that Karamanlis, however conservative himself, had to govern democratically. That was equal, according to Kissinger's thinking, to the ‘unleashing’ of leftist forces. His apocalyptic description probably reflected his estimate of the Portuguese precedent in April 1974. The problem from Kissinger's perspective was that the littoral northern Mediterranean was in flux. It was not a matter of choice between military and civilian rule. His interpretation of events concerned the adverse effects of political change on the Atlantic alliance and the security relationships Washington had built up since the 1940s. He was not sure of the outcome of the political process initiated in Greece. If a right-of-centre government emerged it would be fine. A left-of-centre one would vindicate his gloomy view that the US was not capable to influence events. His main preoccupation was that the army was spent as a political force. The military had transferred power to a civilian government because it had failed and would not be in a position to influence events before the lapse of some time.

Impossibility of Consensus

In autumn 1966 the State Department analysts reviewed Greek political situation and discerned three disturbing trends: factionalism, polarization and authoritarianism. The government of the defectors had lasted longer than it was expected. Fear of a Papandreou victory had prolonged conservative support for the Stefanopoulos cabinet. The central political issue was the timing of the election. The leader of the conservative National Radical Union (ERE) sought to go to the polls in the spring of 1967 at the latest in the belief that conservative leaning CU voters would desert Papandreou due to his radical stance. Conservative hardliners however, closely aligned to the Crown, were opposing Kanellopoulos's tactics and favoured the latest possible conduct of elections, in the hope that the self-exiled Karamanlis would be persuaded to re-enter Greek politics and replace Kanellopoulos as the leader of the conservatives. The CU for its part asked for immediate elections arguing that this would arrest polarization and the erosion of legitimacy of the Greek political system. The moderates of the party hoped as well that an early election would prevent Andreas Papandreou from consolidating his pre-eminence in the party. In this context the communist-led EDA was trying to pursue its platform for a popular front. Andreas Papandreou neither had supported nor denounced the front while his father precluded cooperation with the left.

Mapping the Landscape at the End of the Dictatorship in Spain

Franco's advanced age and ferment had led observers to the conclusion that the dictatorship would not outlive his own physical demise whenever that occurred. In December 1974 the British ambassador in Spain described the regime as dead. Franco was still able to arrest the process of disintegration but only temporarily. Still, the hardliners could make life difficult for the reformers. The danger lay in a possible dragging of the transition. A long process would fuel polarization. Ambassador Wiggin discerned nevertheless two positive factors for an orderly transition to democracy: there was a vast middle class having a lot to lose by a lurch to the left while the army had not undergone the harsh reality of a defeat in a colonial war. The ambassador guessed therefore that the bulk of the military supported a moderate political reform contrary to the Portuguese revolutionary experience.

In early May 1975 the British and the Americans agreed in Washington that they should jointly examine the prospects for Spain as Franco's rule seemed to come to an end. The British were prepared to expand their contacts with the opposition at a party level while they were not ready to do so with the military which they thought improbable to follow the Portuguese path.

Kissinger's Strategy of Denial

Kissinger had been preoccupied by Italy since the early 1970s. In November 1970 he would warn Nixon that an electoral victory of the left in Chile would serve as a precedent in other parts of the world, notably Italy. Applying the domino theory he was apprehensive that this trend if spread unchecked would eventually alter the world balance of power.

Kissinger's priority in autumn 1975 was the ‘revitalization’ of Christian Democracy. In early November he delivered a message to this effect to Andreotti, Minister of Finance of the Moro government, and reiterated his position testifying in the House International Affairs Committee: the Christian Democrats should enlist the services of younger and more energetic leaders so that they secured support among the electorate and present themselves as credible allies for the small democratic parties. A new coalition would thus block the entry of Communists to the Italian government, an eventuality gravely encountered by the US Secretary of State as it would destabilize NATO's southern flank.

The emergence of the Eurocommunist current, the claims of Italian, Spanish and French Communists that they were independent from Moscow and accepted in principle political pluralism and alteration in government in the event a communist party was outvoted from office presented puzzling dilemmas for Western policymakers. In an informal meeting of NATO's ‘big four’ Foreign Ministers in December 1975, Callaghan wondered on the expediency of pressing the Italian Communists to declare their independence. He found disadvantages in this course.

To the 1976 election

Reservation to criticize publicly the Italian Communists was discernible in the attitude of Washington's three main allies, Germany, France and Britain. On 7, 8 and 12 April the US ambassador in Rome met with his French, German and British counterparts. All of them assured Volpe that their governments shared American concerns and that they were opposed to PCI's entry to government. They were not inclined however to express their concerns publicly. Moreover, although they thought that the key to improve the electoral prospects from the Western point of view was the revitalization of Christian Democracy, they were not very optimistic on this. There were also particular points raised by the allied ambassadors that were of interest. The French ambassador praised the sophistication of the PCI leadership and did not believe that the Communists, once in government, would withdraw Italy from NATO, not even its military wing, as the French had done. The German ambassador justified Bonn's guarded public utterances reminding of the surviving memory of World War II in Italy. He thought nevertheless that the Chancellor's statement in the Bundestag against the desirability of cooperation with PCI was useful in countering Brandt's support for a dialogue between Socialists and Communists. He had not had high regard for PCI's pool of human potential and thought that once the party was in government it would confront problems in recruiting people competent for public service.

Cold War, Détente and Conservative Rule

In the immediate post-civil-war period in Greece, the Americans tended to support a centrist coalition led by a slightly centre-left republican party under General Nikolaos Plastiras. The emphasis of US policy shifted onto reconstruction with swift allocation of remaining Marshall plan resources which were to be available till 1952. Decrease in defence expenditure was imperative in this context while leniency measures towards the communist left advocated by Plastiras were not badly received by Washington.

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 altered American perceptions fundamentally. Plastiras's leniency measures were now seen disapprovingly for security was an overriding consideration. The Americans would eventually support Field-Marshal Alexandros Papagos. Although a royalist he was independent from the royal court and incredibly prestigious as the victorious commander in chief of the civil war. Papagos commanded the loyalty of the armed forces and in particular of the Sacred Bond of Greek Officers (IDEA) group. Formed in 1944–5, anti-communist and qualified supporter of the monarchy, IDEA concentrated the backbone of middle-grade officers and it was a well-disciplined force beyond the conventional military chain of command. The Americans did not disapprove of IDEA at any rate.

The elections of November 1952 signified the long domination of the conservatives. The monarchy had opposed Papagos but it succumbed to the US wish and the opinion of a sizeable part of the army.

The Army Intervenes

The Portuguese dictatorship's demise was to a great extent the consequence of the colonial wars waged in the 1960s and the 1970s. The Johnson administration neither was able to disassociate itself from Portugal's colonial policies nor had attempted to do so as the Kennedy administration had done. The liberation movements relied on Cuban aid and Moscow's interest in the area of the crumbling Portuguese colonial empire. The colonial wars in Africa would thus also acquire a strong Cold War dimension which, in concurrence with other developments, would test détente between the superpowers. From the Soviet viewpoint, détente would be not incompatible with extending the socialist camp's sphere of influence to the Third World.

Portugal's economic situation was dire in the early months of 1974. The wars had depleted the country's public finances, and the oil crisis of 1973 led to worsening conditions for an already poor labour force. Signs of social unrest were evident well before the Revolution of the Carnations and fuelled to a great extent the social upheaval that followed it. Antonio Spinola, a respected general who served in Guinea-Bissau, had come to the conclusion that the continuation of the war was meaningless. He hoped that the former colonies, once afforded the right to choose, would opt for the retaining of a bond with the metropolis. His views were publicized by a book of his which made a considerable impression.

The relationship between Cold War requirements as set by the US and democracy was often perceived as an adversarial one. Policies formulated by the Johnson and the Nixon administrations, tolerant as they frequently were of authoritarian regimes, would be evaluated negatively as signifying a contradiction between the alliance with the US and the domestic political dynamics in southern Europe or, as a matter of fact, elsewhere.

Three phases are discernible in the evolution of US policy on this field. Under the Kennedy administration the concept of containment was enriched by a reformist dimension, quite distinct from its military aspects, favouring the alignment with centre-left or non-conservative forces contrary to the US policy established since the 1950s. The Kennedy administration's policy pursued the centre-left formula in Italy, tolerated the liberal experiment in Greece and attempted to recalibrate Portugal's colonial policy which was perceived as anachronistic and harmful to the image of the Western world as an adherent to liberty and progress. It was an attempt to enhance legitimacy through the alignment of the US with emerging social and political forces, an effort to respond positively to changes emanating from social transformation.

The Johnson administration's perspective was altered. The effects of social and political change were frequently thought harmful to US security interests.

Elections and the Socialists

The election for the constituent assembly of 25 April 1975 was crucial in the sense that it exposed a gap between the organizational capabilities and the influence exercised by the Portuguese Communists in government, the trade unions and the mass media and their actual electoral appeal. The Communist Party had indeed increased its membership from 3,000 at the moment of Revolution of the Carnations in April 1974 to 30,000 in October 1974. It would culminate to 100,000 in May 1975, right after the election. This growth was however the result of a newfound freedom to act in the country while its mass appeal was not analogous for the party struggled to cope with labour demands which went much further than its taste, instincts and doctrine permitted. The Communist electoral setback (12.5 per cent of ballots cast) was the consequence of the convergence of two traditions, the one conservative, built on the fifty years of anti-communist orientation of the dictatorship, and the other liberal, which sought to preserve the newly acquired liberties from a lurch to the left. The beneficiaries were the Socialists (37.3 per cent of the vote) and the Popular Democrats (26.3). Not only in the north of the country which was a bastion of conservative tradition did the Communists fare badly.

The Centre-Left as the Only Alternative to Authoritarianism

During the 1950s the Americans continued to support mainly the Christian Democrats (DC) in Italy. After the ascent to the White House of General Dwight Eisenhower and the Republicans in 1953 they attempted to shift Christian Democracy's policies rightward. It has been pointed out however that the Eisenhower administration's policy was the logical conclusion of a reappraisal of American policy already undertaken by the Truman administration in its last phase after the outbreak of the Korean war. Sources of American displeasure, exemplified by the strong-arm tactics of ambassador Claire Booth Luce, were what was perceived as the countenance of communist activism, especially in the labour field, the state interventionist policy and a general disquiet over the inability of Italian industry to generate employment and development so that a social situation not conducive to the expansion of communist influence emerged. Simultaneously, US policy did not favour a Christian Democratic–Socialist coalition to be forged on the grounds that the Socialists, bound by neutralism, were no more than the fellow-travellers of the Communists. To the contrary, the Americans favoured an opening of the Christian Democracy to conservative elements that were thought credible from an anti-communist world view.

Nevertheless, the Americans were not very successful in influencing Italian politics to the direction favoured by ambassador Luce and the State Department.