Screw you

Letters

Vol. 15 No. 17 · 9 September 1993

From Nicola Cufaro Petroni

Edward Luttwak’s article (LRB, 19 August) about Italy’s ancien régime contains some dangerously misleading statements. I find quite surprising the way he minimises the impact of American support for precisely those political forces which degenerated during the corruption of the Eighties. Just as the USSR financed the Italian Communists (PCI) well beyond the ’68 break, so the USA supported the Mafia-connected Christian Democrats (DC) politically and financially even after the Red Danger was past. This support was given, it’s worth noting, against a PCI that had captured 30 per cent of the democratic vote, not against some small putchist faction. It is true that the PCI participated to some extent in the lottizzazione, or sharing-out of government posts and benefits among the ruling political parties. But how is it possible seriously to suggest that the PCI contributed to the catastrophic (and criminal) administration of this country when it was never accepted into the government? Opposition parties have responsibilities too; but are these comparable to the responsibilities of the ruling parties? The fact is that (contrary to what Professor Luttwak suggests), even if some Communist bureaucrats are today charged with bribery, the number of Christian Democrats and Socialists indicted is overwhelmingly superior. To put it bluntly: today’s criminals are yesterday’s friends of the Americans, not the friends of the Communists, nor the Communists themselves.

However, since the USA’s old protégé in Italy, the DC, is today undergoing meltdown, the influential Professor Luttwak is searching for a new political force to propose to the American establishment. What better, then, than to disavow old friends and support the separatist and racist-oriented Northern League, in order to ensure that Italy will become a normal, decentralised, modem country? How is it possible not to see that this is the same kind of irresponsible game as that played two years ago by some Western governments with respect to the former Yugoslav Federation, which is today of course a model of a decentralised country? Or is the milder (so far) fate of Czechoslovakia or the USSR considered suitable for Italy, and useful for the USA or for someone else?

Nicola Cufaro Petroni
University of Bari

Vol. 15 No. 18 · 23 September 1993

From James Jonas

Edward Luttwak’s informed account of the corruption in Italy’s partyocracy would read better if it were not so determinedly illuminated with 20-20 hindsight (LRB, 19 August). The levels of corruption in Italian political life have been a source of cynical discussion amongst Italian intellectuals for decades now. Even now Luttwak’s analysis has two diminishing features, one minor, one major. The minor problem is his determination to be so even-handed in his dismissal of the partyocracy that he has to go beyond his evidence – witness his unnecessary cheapening of the PCI’s post-1945 role in combating poverty, and his dismissal of claims of US ‘bacteriological warfare’ in Korea as mere Moscow propaganda. The evidence of the use of these weapons in Korea is not negligible. The US did have a substantial research effort in the field, and had recently spared from prosecution and brought back to the US several of the Japanese microbiologists and doctors who had been part of the notorious Brigade 731 which had, as the Japanese government itself has now admitted, taken part in bacteriological warfare and experimentation on Chinese, Russian and American prisoners of war in China. Independent investigators of the Korean allegations at the time were themselves divided on the evidence, so it is unsurprising that, to quote Luttwak, the claims are ‘still believed today by many middle-aged Italians’.

The more serious problem with Luttwak’s analysis refers however not to the past but to the present and future, the role of the Northern League. He sanguinely describes its seemingly inexorable rise in Lombardy as a necessary part of a federalist modernisation of the Italian state. In doing so he ignores the strong racist and anti-semitic elements within the League’s political agenda and its ideological affiliations with other parties and groupings of Europe’s emerging extreme Right. If the rise of the League is really a precondition for Italy becoming Luttwak’s ideal of a ‘normal’ state I for one would not wish to live in such ‘normality’.

James Jonas
London WC1