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The coming of Communists to power in Western Europe would have serious consequences for the Atlantic Alliance. If they do not force their countries to quit NATO, the Communists would probably fashion a foreign policy that favored the Soviet Union and undermined the alliance. To be sure, Western Europe's Communists are no longer under the Kremlin's thumb as they were in Stalin's days, but even Italy's Berlinguer, one of the West's most independent Communists, has repeatedly emphasized his party's historical "unbreakable ties of solidarity with Soviet Russia." Thus there is at least some danger that a Communist Cabinet member, for example, might take orders from Moscow and deliver up NATO secrets. A more likely prospect is that the presence of Communist party members in a NATO government would result in their country being kicked out of the alliance. There is no guarantee, moreover, that a Western Communist party currently independent of Moscow will always remain so. A change in leadership could push that party—and the country it ruled—into the Soviet orbit.
If Communist ministers did not take direct orders from Moscow or deliberately try to undermine NATO, they nonetheless would probably be unsympathetic to the alliance and would try to slash defense budgets even in the face of mounting threats of a Soviet buildup. In the long run, this could affect the East-West military balance upon which coexistence rests. The disparity of military might between the democracies and the East bloc might then lead to the "Finlandization" of Western Europe, producing a kind of neutrality that would be responsive to pressure from Moscow. In addition, the gains of Communism within the ever shrinking community of democratic nations would represent an ideological setback for the West.
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A weakened NATO and a less credible American defense commitment to the alliance might prompt Bonn to reassess its security needs. One possible result: a more heavily rearmed West Germany, perhaps even with a nuclear deterrent. This would unsettle all of Germany's neighbors and might re-create the tensions that twice in this century sparked a general war. Short of this "worst case" scenario, the strategic balance still would probably shift decisively toward Moscow, since the Soviets could start drawing —undoubtedly, at favorable terms —on Western Europe's advanced technology and industry.
A strong case can be made that there are unacceptable risks to the West in allowing the Communists to come to power. But what, if anything, can be done about it? Washington has been pursuing a kind of quarantine policy, to deny the Communists any claim to legitimacy; American diplomats in Europe maintain only minimal contact with local Communist politicians. Current U.S. policy seems to be that the most hard-lining ruling Communist parties represent the least threat to the strategic balance. At a closed-door meeting in London last December, a top Kissinger aide told European-based U.S. ambassadors that "overzealous" attempts to woo the East bloc countries away from Moscow might be counterproductive. The reason: pluralistic ferment there, like the 1968 Alexander Dubcek experiment in Czechoslovakia, could lend respectability to Communists in the West.
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