Among the consequences of this 'successful! drivehas been the relative weakening of Japan & capitalist governments in the semi-colonial world. Capitalism in Europe itself has become more vulnerable, particularly in the south. The hope is that Germany will continue to play a strong and stabilising role. But even that bastion cannot hold out indefinitely. The crucial dilemma is clear:the very successes of high-powered American economic competition undermine capitalism To a growing extent, the struggle is not simply between Europe and America but between the strong imperialist powers & the weak, the very successes of the strong further undermine the weak & thus threaten the entire system. This, in turn, exacerbates relations within the North Atlantic Alliance, that bloc of imperialist competitors aligned against the Soviet Union and against the world working class. Every single problem that was supposed to be solved by Kissingeris "Year of Europe" - that was in 1973 -has been exacerbated.
The basic conflict among the Atlantic allies is over who pays for depression and who pays for increasing competition. The notion that there could be a single Common Market evolving towards a single European entity in which the strong would help the weak, has become a willo'-the-wisp. Far from any capitalist United States of Europe, the strong are increasingly adamant about their refusal to help the weak -except insofar as it is in their interests. German imperialists look upon Italy in about the same way as Washington looks at New York City.
The second big problem facing the imperialists bourgeoisies, pressed by these worsening economic and social conditions, is military. How to organise - or re-organise - the policing of the world? How to get someone else to pay a bigger share of the arms cost. How to get gendarmes? How to make it possible for American imperialism to start intervening again with troops? If not with their own troops to begin with, then with troops from some other imperialist or satellite country? How to strengthen NATO? How to increase the war budget in France, in Italy, in Britain where the masses are demanding the oppwas able to do a few decades ago. The Truman administration openly and crudely intervened with the navy, the CIA, the threat of troops, massive amounts of secret subsidies, speeches by the US Ambassador and his military attaches, to put the government and parties they wanted in power in Greece, Italy and Japan. The of class forces on a world scale made it possible for the American ruling class to proceed in this manner.
But who can imagine the occupant of the White House going on television today to announce that in order to help the Christian Democrats in Italy he plans to send the Seventh Fleet into Italian waters, to threaten the land marines if the Communists win, while covertly aiding the Christian Democrats in a holy crusade against Communism. Such a course would sound a pipe dream in the US or Italy. Yet that is precisely what Washington got away with in Italy in 1947-48.
Today, in fact, the probability is that every time Kissinger or Ford or Alexander Haig gives a speech about how they 'cannot accept' the CP in any Italian government, the Communist Party wins thousands of votes.
The moral standing of the US rulers has dropped to bottom level. After Vietnam, after Watergate, after Lockheed, after all the events of the last decade and a half, the pretence of American democracy, of America as the anti - colonialist of America as the moral beacon, been destroyed. There is little confidence in the reality of American 'ideals', grand designs. The peoples of Europe know that the American government's ideal of a stable, successful ally is Brazil or Iran. They know how the Us ruling class approaches the difficulties of a New York City - cutbacks, layoffs, freezes on the working people.
The US press has not indicated the full effect on the domestic politics of Italy and Japan of the partial exposures of the role of the CIA and US corporations since WW II. These developments go beyond the simple 'internationalisation' of Watergate. They betoken the end of an era when ruling bourgeois parties in major imperialist countries could be created, financed and kept in power by the American ruling class and by its world-wide network of spies, industrialists, bankers and hoodlums.