The Nome Nugget

Stalin's Strategy
(By Jack Foster)

JUST WHY ITALIAN and French Communists are staging bloody riots and political strikes at this time is not altogether clear.

On the surface they appear self-defeating. Though aimed at the Marshall Plan, the Communist violence is increasing French and Italian support of the European recovery plan and at the same time building Congressional support in Washington.

We are not so sure as some that Stalin is short-sighted in all this. He simply may be sacrificing immediate gains for long-range advantage. He may figure that the Marshall Plan would go through anyway. It probably would.

If so, he is not losing much by driving more Europeans and Americans to support it—not if he is aiding sabotage of the plan after it begins operation.

From that angle the Stalin strategy makes sense.

Since both Italian and French Communists have failed to get political power by legal means, and since Moscow threats have failed to frighten any but Soviet satellites away from the Marshall Plan, the Red's best bet may be to create chaos.

They are succeeding in that. If the strikes continue they will weaken the already desperately sick nations to the point where European recovery will be far more difficult under the Marshall Plan.

If Italy and France can be plunged into civil war, or even if the threat of such class strife can be kept alive, those countries are not likely to make rapid headway toward the increased production and unity on which recovery depends.

And the American public, which now rallies to the Marshall Plan because it is under Red attack, may react in the opposite way when the Red-provoked European violence really gets under way.

Then American taxpayers may say there is no use to pour billions into countries more interested in class fighting than in working. Or at least Stalin seems to hope so.

Whatever the correct explanation of the Stalin strategy, this is no time for smug American certainties that the Reds are stupidly helping the Marshall Plan by attacking it. We could win the first battle and still lose the way for European recovery.