Aldo Moro not Killed

I asked this a few weeks ago. Got one reply that said something along the lines of 'not much, the Historic Compromise wasn't going to achieve that much and all it would do is associate the angry left with violence a little bit less'.
 

Thande

Donor
I seem to recall reading that the negotiations wore out the Pope and hastened his death, that seems like a significant change--especially since it was an ultimatum by his successor John Paul II that made Argentina back down from her invasion of Chile in December 1978. Give Paul VI a few months more life and there could be a Chilean-Argentine war.
 
It's quite difficult to give an exhaustive answer, there are simply too many factors to consider.

The second Historical Comprimise (the first happened in the early sixties and brought the socialist into goverment) would have changed a lot the italian political landscape.

1) The communist party, even with a gradual partecipation to the goverment, would have distanced itself from Soviet Union. This process had already started in the seventies. Berlinguer, the PCI leader, had claimed several times the right to take decisions indipendently by Moscow.
Being coopted into goverment would have accelerated this, since it would have been necessary to have more moderate position to be "acceptable" to as many electors as possible. On the other hand, PCI would have influenced the italian policy both internal and external, getting so the possibility to gain more support and become the first party in Italy.

2) With a solid and wide moderate alliance in being, the extremist of both sides would have been excluded from power. So we could expect a sudden flare up of terrorism both "red" and "black".
If the alliance keeps on and produce tangible results, extremists would see their support base shrink and then die off.

3) Relations with USA would sour. Usa were not exactly thrilled to have communists theoretically still in contact with Russia privvy to Nato's secret.

4) Italy could have got out of the late seventies crisis better than OTL. Many of the italian economical problems, such as high inflation, were caused indirectly by decisions taken in those years. But, of course, we have no way to know that an alliance with PCI could have solved the crisis. It could even have got worse.

Long term consequences are, of course, nearly impossible to foresee. Moro was by far a better statesman than most of those politicians that marred, and still marr, Italy. So we could see a better Italy, still there are too many factors...
 
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