THE WEEK

Well now, Mali and Guinea and Ghana have called for UN action toward a peaceful solution of the United States affair (with Cuba, that is) . They’ll just have to wait. The UN hasn’t even blown up all the hospitals in Katanga yet.

A little publicized element in the Italian government’s shift to the Left was the bland acceptance of the fact by the United States State Department. American diplomacy, one would have thought, would have done everything in its power to prevent the ruling Christian Democratic Party from joining in a united front with Pietro Nenni’s left-Socialists, who have, in the past, been faithful allies of the Italian Communist Party. Despite Dr. Fanfani’s assurances that his new coalition with Nenni does not mean an abandonment of the NATO alliance (“at present”) and a retreat into neutralism, those are the goals for which Nenni has always agitated. Even so, the State Department didn’t oppose this move; indeed, it supported it as it supports the apertura a la sinistra everywhere in the world! In the Dominican Republic, it replaced the anti-Communist Trujillo with a government of the Left; in Laos, it places pressure on the pro-Western Boun Oum in a coalition dominated by neutralists and including the Communists; in the Congo, it sides with the one-time Lumumbist, Cyrille Adoula, against the Western-oriented Moise Tshombe; in the United Nations it votes with the Algerian rebels against France, with the Angolan rebels against Portugal, with the non-aligned nations against Belgium. So in Italy this most serious penetration of NATO’s shield seems to have caused less of a tremor to our foreign policy leaders than the well-publicized peccadillos of the younger Trujillo.

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Well now, Mali and Guinea and Ghana have called for UN action toward a peaceful solution of the United States affair (with Cuba, that is) . They’ll just have to wait. The UN hasn’t even blown up all the hospitals in Katanga yet.

A little publicized element in the Italian government’s shift to the Left was the bland acceptance of the fact by the United States State Department. American diplomacy, one would have thought, would have done everything in its power to prevent the ruling Christian Democratic Party from joining in a united front with Pietro Nenni’s left-Socialists, who have, in the past, been faithful allies of the Italian Communist Party. Despite Dr. Fanfani’s assurances that his new coalition with Nenni does not mean an abandonment of the NATO alliance (“at present”) and a retreat into neutralism, those are the goals for which Nenni has always agitated. Even so, the State Department didn’t oppose this move; indeed, it supported it as it supports the apertura a la sinistra everywhere in the world! In the Dominican Republic, it replaced the anti-Communist Trujillo with a government of the Left; in Laos, it places pressure on the pro-Western Boun Oum in a coalition dominated by neutralists and including the Communists; in the Congo, it sides with the one-time Lumumbist, Cyrille Adoula, against the Western-oriented Moise Tshombe; in the United Nations it votes with the Algerian rebels against France, with the Angolan rebels against Portugal, with the non-aligned nations against Belgium. So in Italy this most serious penetration of NATO’s shield seems to have caused less of a tremor to our foreign policy leaders than the well-publicized peccadillos of the younger Trujillo.