The Carter administration and the "communist question" in Italy. The political development and action, 1976-1978

Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States in November 1976. A few months earlier, the Italian elections marked an extraordinary result for the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and some of its members obtained institutional roles. During the electoral campaign, members of Carter's entourage released declarations that seemed to prelude to abandoning the anti-communist veto posed by previous governments. For a year after the inauguration, the US administration maintained an ambiguous position. Nonetheless, on 12 January 1978, the United States reiterated its opposition to any forms of participation of communists in the Italian government. Drawing on a varied set of sources and analysing the role of non-state actors, including think tanks and university centres, this article examines the debate on the Italian "communist question" within the Carter administration and among its advisers. Such discussion will be placed within a wider debate that crossed America's liberal culture.

Disciplining the Hegemon

This chapter argues that in order to protect its export model from the dangers of imported inflation, Germany strove to commit the US to monetary and fiscal rigor. To this end, German officials blocked the attempts of the Carter administration to organize a global Keynesian expansion, and scaled back their foreign exchange interventions in support of a weakening dollar. Both actions helped push the US into the Volcker Shock, which deflated the world economy and launched the attack on organized labor. The chapter concludes that the neoliberal experiment in the US, paralleled and reinforced by similar attempts in the UK, was late and lucky. Rather than the outcome of a decade-long domestic shift—seamless and sealed off from the world outside the Anglo-American heartland—the neoliberal counter-revolution was driven in part by the external pressures imposed by Germany, and subsequently sustained by a bout of Japanese investment.

The Golden Years of Human Rights?

This concluding chapter explains that for Movement advocates, the human rights vision of the 1970s was intimately connected with a reckoning with the U.S. failures of Vietnam, Cold War national security strategy, and, of course, Chile. The Movement and the Carter administration shared a vision of human rights as a way to improve not only the world but also the U.S. government and its policies. This is not to say the Movement's views were universally shared, or that human rights faded away after the 1970s. Rather, human rights continued to serve as an instrument of its time, a powerful idea and language, flexible and indelible. The Carter administration's human rights policy was far from perfect or consistent. It was, however, a uniquely self-reflective policy that restrained U.S. intervention and addressed abuses taking place in areas where the United States was most directly complicit in empowering violators.

Support of the Afghan Resistance Movement by the Administration of US President J. Carter (1978–1980)

The aim of the article is to investigate, on the basis of American sources, the forms and means of support provided by the United States of America (both unilateral and mediated by the Allies) to the Afghan Resistance Movement in 1978–1980, as well as the factors that influenced the nature of that support. At the core of the research methodology is the method of a content analysis of historical sources, problem-chronological, typological and comparative methods. Main results and conclusions. The US support for the Afghan opposition from 1978 to 1980 in the USSR was exaggerated and became only an excuse used to justify the Soviet intervention in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. From April 1978 to December 1979, Carter Administration limited itself to an information campaign and to providing non-military assistance to the Afghan insurgents. This support included medicines, food rations, communications equipment, etc. It was not until the early 1980s that the United States developed the Hidden Action Program with a budget of $ 30 million which provided the Mujahideen with Soviet-made small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China and Egypt had been involved in the implementation of the Program. However, the volume of military assistance as well as the quality of the weapons could not significantly increase the Mujahideen’s combat capability. The military and technical superiority of the Soviet and Afghan troops remained significant. The US politicians, analysts as well as the Mujahideen field commanders noted insufficiency and lack and effectiveness of the US aid. However, the Carter Administration had managed to forge contacts with the Afghan opposition, to form a coalition of states around the Hidden Action Program, to develop and test ways to acquire weapons and their delivery routes to Pakistan and beyond to Afghanistan. This experience would later be taken into account and used by the R. Reagan Administration. In addition, the US support had a positive effect on the moral and psychological state of the Afghan insurgents. Practical significance. The main conclusions and factual material can be used to study the Afghan crisis as part of the Cold War. Originality. The US policy regarding the Afghan Resistance Movement is examined against the backdrop of deteriorating Soviet-American relations in connection with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Scientific novelty. The ways and forms of the US support for the Afghan Resistance Movement at the initial stage of the Afghan crisis are specified for the first time. Type of article: descriptive.