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that Silvio Berlusconi has been elected Italy's new prime minister
with a clear majority for his center-right House
of Freedom coalition, he has been instantly transformed from a dangerous
threat to democracy into a pragmatic moderate with no serious mandate
for a major conservative reform program. Before the corpse of Rome's
center-left government is even lukewarm, the international punditocracy
has discovered that Berlusconi is not so very different from the
previous government, which also supported tax cuts, pension reform,
more efficient government, etc.
Headline conclusion: Small earthquake in Italy. Not many. frantic.
Right up to the closing of the polls, however, the leaders of Europe's
center-left governments and their allies in the media had been alternately
threatening and pleading with Italy's voters not to risk marrying
the flamboyant tycoon. He was personally untrustworthy ("not fit
to govern" in The Economist's headline phrase), allied to
undemocratic parties of the right, and even outside the European
"mainstream" with its regulated capitalism and welfare-state values.
The Belgian foreign minister even suggested that Berlusconi would
not be welcome as Italy's leader in the European Union — though
it is some time since the world trembled at a Belgian ultimatum.
These lurid anxieties were justified by reference to the fact that
Berlusconi's junior coalition allies included a party that had evolved
from a post-war neo-fascist party into a respectable nationalist
one. A prudent disquiet on this score would be legitimate enough
if it extended to all parties with a dubious undemocratic past.
Curiously enough, however, those most loudly shocked by Berlusconi's
allies were complacently silent about the fact that the senior
coalition party in the center-left "Olive Tree" coalition had evolved
from the Italian Communist party — a party that supported the
Soviet Union and its genocidal crimes until the late seventies.
Indeed, its leader and "Olive Tree" prime minister earlier in this
parliament had expressed pride in his communism without provoking
the Belgian foreign minister into any great paroxysms of indignation.
Whether expressing anxiety before the election or wishful thinking
after it, however, Europe's dominant center-left political elites
were acting on the same underlying analysis. They know that they
govern largely conservative societies and so are likely to lose
elections from time to time. If, however, they can exploit their
temporary dominance in the European Union to entrench social democratic
values in a new constitution, they may be able to place them beyond
later democratic amendment. High levels of state welfare (and the
tax levels needed to finance them), compulsory union representation
on corporate boards, intrusive business and lifestyle regulation,
support for continued European economic and political "integration,"
acceptance of high levels of immigration and multiculturalism, even
the abolition of the death penalty — these would be declared
"European values" which all governments were bound to respect and
forbidden to change.
Hence the need to keep Berlusconi out of power until the new social
democratic Europe has been constructed — and hence the hasty
assurances that he will nonetheless be welcomed in the EU provided
Italy behaves as if the center-left had won.
Europe's conservatives were slow to respond to these tactics, in
part because they have an instinctive dislike of intruding into
the politics of neighboring countries. In the closing stages of
the election, however, Lady Thatcher (whom Berlusconi admires) and
Jose Maria Aznar, the center-right prime minister of Spain, both
issued statements urging the Italians to vote for the center-right
coalition.
Mr. Aznar had reason in addition to ideological sympathy to want
a Berlusconi victory. Until now Spain was the only major nation
in the EU with a conservative government. Now the Spanish premier
has a powerful potential ally in intra-European disputes.
George W. Bush should feel the same way. As Mr. Berlusconi made
clear in an
interview with UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave, he is an Atlanticist
every bit as much as he is an Europeanist. In particular, he shares
the president's goals of tax reduction and missile defense. And
while he thinks Europe should take on a greater share of the common
defense burden, he wants a U.S.-led NATO to continue to be the main
vehicle for Atlantic security. That is, of course, the precise opposite
of the French government's position.
What may be emerging here is a conservative political bloc in the
Atlantic alliance to set against the social-democratic bloc built
around France, Germany, the EU and Brussels. It is plain that Berlusconi
(and Mr. Aznar and Lady Thatcher) have far more in common ideologically
and politically with the American President than any of them have
with Germany's Gerhard Schroeder or with France's Lionel Jospin.
And just as the Franco-German central bloc in Europe can usually
rely on the Benelux countries to support its politico-economic projects,
so the U.S. could assemble a supportive coalition from the EU's
periphery-traditional Atlanticist allies such as Britain, Denmark
and Italy and the new democracies in central and eastern Europe
such as Hungary which, having experienced the rigors of full socialism,
retain a suspicion of its anemic social democratic cousin.
What is required to make this hypothesis a reality is a recognition
by the Bush administration that it can no longer take "the European
allies" for granted. It needs to recruit European supporters in
order to influence the internal political debates of the European
Union. In that regard Washington has just been given a very salutary
"wake-up call" in the form of Europe's complicity in the ejection
of the U.S. from the United Nations Committee on Human Rights.
If Washington is to play the game effectively, however, it must
reject the notion that some political values are "European" and
some "American." In reality; such values divide every country internally.
And both Washington and Brussels have ideological allies on both
sides of the Atlantic.
Here Mr. Berlusconi rendered a great service by refuting those who
alleged that he and his political allies were outside the "European
mainstream" and thus a threat to democracy. Such allegations were
a blatant attempt to render conservative ideas-such as lower taxes,
smaller government, and national sovereignty unrespectable and even
unthinkable.
If these tactics had succeeded, millions of Italian voters would
have been effectively disenfranchised by being told that their values
and aspirations were not even worthy of democratic discussion, let
alone legislative implementation. And eventually elections would
be conducted on the same principle as the marketing of Henry Ford's
Model T: You can have any kind of government you want provided that
it's the socialist kind.
Silvio Berlusconi provided Italians with a conservative alternative
to this dishonest browbeating. And in voting for him, Italians defended
democracy in the most appropriate way possible. They threw the rascals
out.
This
originally appeared in the Chicago
Sun-Times.
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