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      The Italian Far Right’s Long-Term Investment

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      When the government led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was unable to find eleven lawmakers willing to join its ranks in the house of representatives in order to keep his ruling majority, President Sergio Mattarella decided to offer the former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, the possibility to try to form a new governo tecnico. Italy’s last technical government was led by Mario Monti between 2011 and 2012. A third Conte cabinet did not materialize because of the opposition by Matteo Renzi, the leader of Italia Viva, a party currently polling at 2%.

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      All political parties in the Italian parliament supported Draghi’s appointment except one: Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy). Even the Euroskeptic and anti-immigration populist-radical Lega (League) agreed to support Draghi, with its leader Matteo Salvini affirming, “I rather prefer to play the game and manage 209 billions of euros than not,” referring to the Italian share of the Next Generation EU plan agreed in July last year.

      Next Generation EU

      Next Generation EU, a €750-billion ($904-billlion) stimulus package designed to boost post-pandemic recovery, will be the largest ever financed by the European Union. Taken together with the EU’s long-term budget, overall recovery funding stands at a total of €1.8 trillion, aimed at rebuilding, “a greener, more digital and more resilient Europe.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      The complex intergovernmental dynamics that have led to the agreement behind Next Generation EU are well known. What began with the initial opposition by the so-called “Frugal Four”  — Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden — to the French-German initiative in May 2020 ended in an impasse provoked in late November by Hungary and Poland’s veto of the EU budget. Warsaw and Budapest were concerned about the Rule of Law Mechanism attached to the stimulus that would make it easier for Brussels to sanction violations of democratic principles by withdrawing aid.

      Of the €750 billion, about two-thirds would be non-repayable grants financed by joint borrowing, and one-third will consist in loans. With the aim to help less wealthy countries, Italy and Spain will get the biggest chunk, €209 billion and €140 billion respectively, with France “only” allocated €40 billion. Next Generation EU has been hailed by many as the “new Marshall Plan” that helped lift Europe out of the ruin of the Second World War. However, its practical implementation is revealing to be more complicated than earlier expected.

      For instance, the Spanish government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has already officially declared it will not seek €70 billion in loans, in a move similar to the one announced by Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa. In Italy, the recent political crisis erupted when Matteo Renzi quit the government over an objection to Conte’s plans for how to spend EU recovery money. In particular, Renzi, once an enfant prodige of Italian and European politics, was critical of the highly technocratic governance that the Conte cabinet was originally seeking to adopt vis-à-vis the stimulus package, including a task force composed of more than 300 experts. Conte, whose popularity has increased over the course of the pandemic, in order to avoid possible vetoes, had previously defended the move by highlighting that it was required by the EU.

      Grand Strategy

      With the Italian government desperately trying to avoid a return to the ballot box during a pandemic, which has already killed nearly 100,000 Italians so far, and an executive struggling to produce a consistent dossier on how to allocate the money from the EU recovery plan, the move by Giorgia Meloni to not lend support to the new government might appear pointless. In fact, Meloni was the only Italian political leader who called for new elections. According to polls, an election now would give to the Italian populist radical-right parties a landslide victory, with Salvini’s League and Meloni’s Brothers of Italy potentially garnering 40% of the votes.

      However, the Brothers of Italy, which in the last year has moved from 10,7% to the current 17%-18%, could vastly benefit from this “isolating abstention.” By simply waiting for the end of the honeymoon between Draghi’s technocratic executive and Italian political parties, the Brothers of Italy could easily build narratives based around blaming the incapacity of the current executive to efficiently utilize the EU funds; denouncing a technocratic agenda dictated by the European “bureaucrats” in Brussels or by “foreign” policymakers in Berlin and Paris; and by criticizing the opportunistic and inconsistent attitudes of other Italian parties, including the League.

      What is certain is that a highly deteriorated and inflamed post-pandemic landscape could provide a perfect context for the Brothers of Italy to gain support by reverting to social policies that à la Orban or à la Kaczyński, focusing on the pillar of “traditional” family. The Brothers of Italy was formed in late 2012 following the open disagreement with the center-right People of Freedom party launched by Silvio Berlusconi, and since then, Miloni has been clearly outlining social and family policies she wants to adopt in Italy. Those policies are based on the principles of conservativism and nationalism, and on intelligent, soft Euroskepticism in the name of sovereignty.

      The policies are the focus of a grand strategy to increase birth rates and protect the traditional family, with generous incentives for both parents and children alongside investment in social housing. It is important to note here that, differently from the League’s economic policies, based on a syncretic and opportunistic mix of both neoliberal and autarchic worldviews protecting small and medium enterprises, the Brothers of Italy has a clear and organic economic vision. As Mitchell Orenstein, among others, has brilliantly demonstrated in the case of Hungary and Poland, these types of policies can be particularly effective in buying many voters into the nationalist right’s vision of a social state. Could this be the case in post-pandemic Italy?

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Will Iran Take Over the Ottoman Mantle in the Middle East?

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      When the Ottoman Empire was dismantled in 1922, it created a vacuum which a series of powers have attempted to fill ever since. None has succeeded, and the result has been a century of wars, coups and instability. Iran ruled all these lands before the Arab and Ottoman conquests. It could do so again. President Joe Biden’s intention of restarting the dialogue with Tehran is an opportunity to build, at last, an enduring successor to the Ottomans and prevent Iranian dominance.

      How did we reach this point? The story begins on May 29, 1453, a Tuesday, with the moon in its final crescent quarter. Constantinople had been under siege for months, and tens of thousands of Turks were outside its massive impregnable walls. Inside were just 50,000 remaining Greeks, including the last Roman Emperor Constantine XI, or Constantine Paleologos. There were only 7,000 armed men, outnumbered at least 10 to one by the Turks. The Greeks had fresh water and could grow enough food within the walls to feed themselves. They could hold out. However, in the early hours of that morning, a Greek raiding party left the city to harry the sleeping Turks.

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      On the way back into the city through a narrow entrance, the Kerkoporta, the last Greek in forgot to lock the door. The Turks followed them, opened the main gates, and Mehmet II’s Janissaries poured in. The Byzantine empire was no more.

      Two days of looting, rape and blood-letting followed. According to custom, three days were allowed, but it was so awful that Mehmet stopped it after two. To commemorate the conquest, Mehmet added the crescent moon to the Ottoman flag, and since then, Tuesday remains the unluckiest day of the week for the Greeks. No Greek gets married on a Tuesday, and any Greek looking at the Turkish flag with the crescent moon is reminded of that calamity.

      Consent to Be Ruled

      The intervening 469 years were not of uninterrupted peace and stability, but the Ottomans did provide an overarching continuity of rule over the region. The legitimacy of the sultan and the caliph was accepted by all of the Sunni Muslim world. Ottoman rule over Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and what is now Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states provided stability and a common rule of law. The Turks were not loved — they were authoritarian and brutal — but there was some consent to be ruled.

      On November 17, 1922, the last sultan, Mehmet VI, was loaded onto a British warship, HMS Malaya, and sent off to exile in Malta and later Italy, never to return. He was allowed to take his four official wives with him, all of them Turkish. However, there were still about 400 concubines from all over the world in the Topkapi hareem. A young British officer was dispatched to the palace with a sack of gold sovereigns to pay the women off. Each got one sovereign for every year of service. 

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      The Ottoman defeat and collapse of the empire after the First World War created a vacuum in the Middle East that the British and the French in particular wanted to exploit. The infamous Sazenov-Sykes-Picot Treaty negotiated in 1916 was the plan to carve up the carcass of the Ottoman lands between Britain, France and Russia. Russia, as party to the treaty, was to get Constantinople and surrounding lands, all of Armenia and parts of the Black Sea, but lost its place at the table after the 1917 revolution ended its participation in the war.   

      Vladimir Lenin’s new Soviet government found the Russian copy of the treaty and publicized it. A century before WikiLeaks, this was deeply embarrassing to the British who were telling the leaders of the Arab revolt that they were fighting the Turks for Arab independence. The Turks lost no time in giving as much publicity to the treaty as possible and telling the Arabs that they had been deceived into fighting with Christians against their own Muslim caliph. Although this had some effect, causing some Arab tribes to change sides, it was too late, and the Turks were expelled. The Arabs were indeed betrayed and, instead of the Arab kingdom they had been promised, they were divided into British and French protectorates. 

      The First War of Succession

      The Brits and the French may have carved up the Ottoman Empire, but they soon came to regret it. Although they installed their own or client regimes in all the Ottoman provinces, there was little peace and certainly no profit for the Europeans. Enver Pasha, an Ottoman general and hero of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the future first president of modern Turkey, led the nationalist war to expel the British and other allied powers from Turkey proper. The British and their allies had intended to carve up mainland Turkey itself as well as the Ottoman Arab possessions. When Enver Pasha prevailed, the Treaty of Sevres was torn up and the Treaty of Lausanne, negotiated in 1922-23, established present-day Turkey as the successor to the Ottoman state. It also forced Turkey to renounce all claims to former Ottoman lands. 

      The Arabs in all the new colonial possessions of the British and French were restless. This was particularly true in Palestine, where the British ruled. In 1917, the British government had issued the Balfour Declaration expressing support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. That year, the British were losing the war because German U-boats were sinking a large number of ships bringing food and supplies from America. Britain was being strangled. The one area where the British — with Arab help — were winning was in Palestine. Former UK Prime Minister Arthur Balfour saw an opportunity to leverage the Jewish American vote to bring the United States into the war. It worked.

      But with the British now in control of Palestine, the Zionists insisted that the UK live up to its promise. Large numbers of Jews began to arrive in Palestine. This caused conflict between newly arrived Jews, the indigenous Arabs and the hapless British, who were supposed to keep the peace. Ethnic unrest and independence movements grew in the other provinces. The British and French rule did not last: Both powers gave up or were forced out by a series of nationalist uprisings in the 1940s and 1950s.

      In the period between 1920 and 1925, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud led a successful series of wars to establish the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 1945, the Saudi king held a fateful meeting with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on board the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal that marked the beginning of the ambitions of the latest would-be successor to the Ottomans — the United States. At the same time, the Soviet Union was also eyeing the spoils, and while neither great power was able to take control of the Ottoman lands, their division between the two great rivals provided some stability, but not a permanent solution. 

      The Second War of Succession

      The Russians had missed an opportunity both before and after the Sykes-Picot affair but have not lost their interest. The leftist revolutions in Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Algeria gave them an entrée, as did the sharpening Arab-Israeli conflict that put the US on the wrong side as far as the front-line Arab states were concerned. Russian arms sales, economic assistance, trade deals and leftist solidarity were all employed in what would become one of the theaters of the Cold War. At stake was control of the oil fields and trade routes through the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal. If the USSR gained total control, it would have given it a stranglehold on the West.

      While the Cold War rivalry lasted, there was some stability — or at least an absence of an all-out conflict, though the Yom Kippur War of 1973 tested this fragile equilibrium almost to destruction. The origins of the Yom Kippur War were not in great-power rivalry but local feuding — in this case, the struggle for land between Arabs and Israelis — but it was super-power hegemony that stopped the war. At one point, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger moved America’s military stance to DEFCON3 — ready for nuclear war.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The USSR backed down, and a truce was agreed. While the balance of power between the USSR and the West held, in the Middle East, as elsewhere, low-intensity cold conflicts ensued, with no one winning overall control. The continuing retreat of British and French interests accelerated, and the US and the USSR competed for successor rights.

      The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a shock. Iran had been America’s main proxy in the region. The Arabs opposed its ambitions, but Iran had been favored by the US as a bulwark against Soviet encroachment. The Sunni nations with sizable Shia populations saw the revolution as a major threat. They feared, rightly, that the Iranians would want to export not just the ideas of their revolution but also the facts. Iran agitated among the Shia in Iraq, Bahrein and Saudi Arabia, and sought to expel US influence from the region by launching terrorist attacks on US installations.

      Saddam Hussein particularly feared the Shia majority in Iraq and, with encouragement from the Sunni Arabs and the US, invaded Iran in 1980. But his war aims were thwarted. The revolutionary Iranian regime survived; in fact; the country unified behind it. The war lasted until 1988 and ended with Iraq’s defeat. The Iraqis had been supported financially by all the Arab states as well as provided with logistics and intelligence by the United States and its allies. The US was reluctant to become directly involved, and so were the Russians. It had been a local war, held within bounds.

      The Iran-Iraq War was an example of the instability resulting from the absence of an overall peace settlement in the region. It did have one remarkable result: All the petrodollar surpluses built up by the Arab and Iranian oil exports since the quintupling of oil prices in 1975 flowed back into the West. By the time the war was over, all of the Middle Eastern oil exporting nations’ foreign exchange reserves were exhausted while Western economies were booming.

      The Third War of Succession

      The fall of empires continued. The USSR collapsed in December 1991 after rotting from economic failure and internal rivalries for years. The Soviet contraction and internal focus also meant a retreat from its overseas interests and the Middle East in particular. In Europe, NATO and then the EU lost no time moving into what had been the Warsaw Pact, signing up a number of former Russian satellites and USSR republics to be part of the alliance, taking membership from 19 to 26 in its eastward expansion.

      In the Middle East, none of this happened — a missed opportunity. The partial order the Cold War had imposed on the region was gone, and, once again, local rivalries erupted without the moderating influence of either one of the two global superpowers to temper them. 

      In 1990, Saddam Hussein attempted to extort billions of dollars from Kuwait to replenish his reserves that had been exhausted by the war with Iran. When Kuwait refused, Iraq invaded, without the international community trying to restrain the aggression, and the First Gulf War began. Kuwait had allies that eventually came to its defense. But as soon as Iraqi forces had been expelled, they departed, leaving a regional vacuum still unfilled, with no general peace settlement.

      The defeat of Saddam Hussein gave the Iranians a golden opportunity to meddle in Iraqi Shia politics. The situation in Iraq festered, and the absence of any stabilizing force eventually led to the second US intervention in 2003. The chaos that this fateful invasion produced was again an enabler for the Iranians to fill the vacuum that emerged after Iraq’s dictator was overthrown. By now, Iran’s focus has shifted from its zeal to export the revolution toward more realist politics. The rise of Iranian nationalism since the Iran-Iraq War had replaced revolutionary idealism with national interests — an overriding policy that prevails to this day. Here, yet again, Washington failed to seize the initiative and establish a general peace settlement or a Pax Americana. 

      The Fourth War of Succession

      The Arab Spring, a series of revolutions and counterrevolutions that first ignited in Tunisia in 2010 before spreading throughout the region, set off a cycle of civil wars that are still with us. These conflicts flourished in the vacuum left by the collapse of regimes such as in Libya or Yemen, inviting intervention of regional players.

      The current situation is typical. We have civil wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen, and in each case, local powers are interfering in order to win a supposed tactical advantage. Russia is in the category of a local player; it no longer has the overall superpower or imperial advantage it had but, like Turkey, it wields enough military force to make a nuisance.

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      The civil war in Libya may worsen if Turkey and the UAE on one side, and Russia on the other, escalate their involvement. Syria, still engulfed in a decade-long civil war, has been carved up into Turkish, Russian, Syrian government and Iranian zones. Iraq appears to have slipped even more into the Iranian orbit. The slow US exit from Iraq and Afghanistan — the latter to the evident satisfaction of the undefeated Taliban — will further encourage struggles for a share of power. 

      The decline of US interest in the region is driven by the decreasing importance of oil and gas. In addition, the threat of regional domination by the USSR, or now Russia, has vanished. Public fatigue with the appalling loss of life, money and prestige the US has endured over the last 20 years has soured any appetite for further overseas wars. Arms deals and attractive opportunities for investment are declining, highlighted by the anxiety the Saudis are showing in trying to drum up disinterested foreign direct investment. The only motivators for continued US involvement are the security of Israel and the possibility that Iran, unchecked, may emerge as the local superpower.

      More War or Peace?

      Former US President Donald Trump’s policy was to try to force regime change in Iran. The campaign of maximum pressure to drive oil exports to zero, foment unrest and impose hardship was promoted as a way to push the Iranians back to the negotiating table and make more concessions in order to resuscitate the nuclear deal. The reality was that Trump sought the destruction of the regime. Despite enormous hardship, Iran did not buckle. It has a structural advantage: an educated and innovative population with well-balanced demographics, a diversified economy, fertile and productive agriculture, mineral resources and, of course, abundant hydrocarbons. It is a sleeping giant of an economy.

      Moreover, in almost every other sphere, from historical legacy, self-sufficient industry, military prowess, agriculture, architecture, food, to art, poetry and literature, Iran has been the dominant cultural influence in the region since the Seljuk empire — the same empire that brought the Ottomans, a Seljuk offshoot, to Turkey. History may again be moving in Tehran’s direction.

      The failed US, Israeli, Saudi and Emirati policy of pressure on Iran was tactical, not strategic. It had a short-term objective of regime change which, if reached, would actually accelerate the loss of US interest in the region and further underline the retreat of the most recent would-be successor to the Ottomans. Another vacuum is developing and, unchecked by binding treaties, Iran could regain its position as the major power in the region. Before Iran attempts to become the Ottoman successor, it is in the interest of all the other countries in the region to reach a general settlement. 

      Instead of examining short-term tactics based only on hatred or fear of the current Iranian regime, there is a need for a strategic view. Since the collapse of the Ottomans, the Middle East has seen continuous fighting, on and off, among international powers and regional players for the remnants of empire. The British and the French have come and gone, the US and Russia have come and are retreating — although they do intervene on a tactical basis here and there, usually leaving a worse situation than the one they found.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Americans are clearly in the final stages of disengagement, driven, in part, by that declining need to keep the region and its oil in the Western camp. The power vacuum is growing, and if the sanctions are lifted, Iran will be back in business. The unity of Iraq and Syria is in question, Lebanon is a failed state and the future of the Saudi regime is not secure given the failure of the Vision 2030 initiative and the outlook for oil in a decarbonizing world economy. Turkey is eyeing the opportunities, as is Russia. Both have historical claims to Ottoman lands.

      But there is very little likelihood that any big power might be willing or able to assert sovereign rule over the Middle East. Even thinking about this is to court accusations of neo-colonialism. The solution lies in a different direction, not in more confrontation and threats of military conquest. A better vision is for an economic, political and security dialogue among all the parties in the region must be conceived. All parties are suffering in one way or another from the current disorder, whether it is the Iranians, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis or Saudis. The current situation is unsustainable, and any idea that any sort of victory is possible is an illusion. On the other hand, all the countries around the Gulf, including Iran, have much to gain from a cessation of hostilities, economic cooperation and the settlement of disputes through negotiation.

      The model of what the Europeans were able to achieve after the Second World War is a good one, and this time no Marshall Plan will be needed as the wealth and resources of the regional players are already enormous. Every country has something to gain. But there will be losers. They will be the autocratic dictators who currently stand in the way of such a general settlement.

      A human rights and a democratic track will be essential parts of any such dialogue in order to ensure sustainability and continuity. This will require the Iranian regime and other authoritarian rulers to surrender power — perhaps not all of it right away — but over time, enough to give their citizens confidence in their own personal security and investment in the governance of their own countries and their neighbors. A good start would be a regional security dialogue and some confidence-building measures. This is where the Biden administration must begin its work.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Georgia’s Democracy Is on the Brink of Chaos

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      The ongoing political crisis in Georgia has been ramped up a notch over the last few days. The polarization of Georgian society, which is reflected at the political level, has reached a new high after the parliamentary elections last October, but especially so since the arrest and imprisonment of opposition leader Nika Melia and the raid on his United National Movement (UNM) headquarters on February 23. In a gesture of defiance, Melia threw away his police tracking bracelet, which he had to wear due to the charges of inciting violence during protests in 2019, when the opposition accused the governing Georgian Dream party of being pro-Moscow and demonstrated against what they believe is Russian occupation.

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      Following the charges being brought against Melia, Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia resigned in protest. This has led to a situation now being described by people in Georgia as “hate being in the air,” drawing protesters into the streets in support of the opposition. While this has been a gradual development over the past decade, penetrating deep into the social fabric of Georgia, there is a looming danger of escalation today.

      Turbulent Road to Democracy

      Since the Rose Revolution in 2003, Georgia has been on a road to real reform and European integration. In January 2004, Mikheil Saakashvili became president and initiated, among other things, significant and wide-ranging reforms in justice and policing. Real change was visible and also felt by the population. Saakashvili’s UNM stayed in power until 2012, when it was voted out and replaced by the populist billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream coalition, which continues to run the country. Even though Ivanishvili withdrew from politics last month, he has a history of pulling the strings from the shadows — an impression reinforced by the recent appointment of Irakli Garibashvili, former defense minister and close ally of Ivanishvili, as Gakharia’s replacement.

      Nevertheless, even today, Saakashvili exerts influence on the politics of the UNM, despite having left the country in 2013 and having only stepped down as party leader in 2019. Saakashvili currently leads the executive committee of Ukraine’s National Reform Council, and his recent inflammatory comments mentioning civil war are clearly unhelpful and serve to further division in Georgian society. As is the case in most political crises, there seems to be no option for neutrality within Georgia at the moment. Even a new election, which the UNM is calling for, would most likely result in nothing but another 50/50 split.

      Embed from Getty Images

      While the governing Georgian Dream coalition has certainly acted irrationally in case of Melia’s arrest, to a certain extent, the events have been provoked by the UNM to further deepen the divide. These events come alongside accusations of Georgian Dream being too pro-Russian. Ivanishvili, the former prime minister the country’s richest man, made his nearly $5-billion fortune in the Russian Federation — a feat clearly only possible with close ties to the Kremlin. Yet the current government follows the approach of European integration and has even, rather optimistically, set a goal to apply for EU membership in 2024. This apparent disconnect can be explained by Georgian Dream trying to remain the party of the economy by maintaining open trade with Russia while embracing deeper European integration.  

      On the other hand, although the pro-European agenda of the UNM is beyond doubt, by undermining certain European values during its time in power, the party has shown its willingness to use authoritarian methods of governance, including human rights violations such as the Gldani prison scandal, which strongly contributed to its electoral downfall in 2012. It has since remained in opposition.  

      Volatility and Opportunity

      The South Caucasus is becoming increasingly volatile. In September 2020, the hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan erupted once again in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, leading to a six-week war between the two countries. In the Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement signed on November 9, Azerbaijan gained control over the territories captured during the fighting, and beyond. Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power via peaceful protests in 2018 — the so-called Velvet Revolution — has now had to face protests himself. On February 25, the Armenian army demanded his resignation, which he refused, calling it an attempted coup.

      Political instability in Georgia and Armenia, the persisting unsolved issue of breakaway territories and continued Russian involvement in the region, on top of the current COVID-19 crisis, make the region uncomfortably unstable at present. The pandemic has hit Georgia especially hard. As a country reliant on foreign tourism, many thousands in the industry have lost their jobs. With proportionally little government aid compared to Western European countries and with Georgian society only recently beginning to come out of a lockdown, societal tensions are running high and patience is wearing thin.

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      However, with woeful tidings comes an opportunity for the European Union’s regional policy in Georgia. On March 3, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, will visit Georgia. Once again, this will be a delicate mission, as the main task must be to call on all parties to calm down, and the EU will need to take the lead in facilitating that process. While the recent attack on the opposition should be condemned, it is possible that this could be interpreted by supporters of Georgian Dream as Brussels backing the UNM. Such as scenario needs to be avoided at all costs in order to prevent further escalating the conflict.

      The EU finds itself in a uniquely advantageous position in Georgian politics. Both the UNM and Georgian Dream are committed pro-European political parties and actively seek EU membership for Georgia. If the EU were to engage both sides bilaterally, it could calm political nerves and potentially lead to it mediating a dialogue. Georgia has long looked to Brussels as a democratic role model to fulfill its European aspirations. In offering to mediate, the EU could incentivize both sides to come to the table and demonstrate their political maturity.

      Although EU foreign policy has often struggled to find a common approach supported by all member states — still the dominant players in the external relations of the bloc — Michel might just be the right person. As Belgium’s former prime minister, he has at least some experience in mediating internal political and societal polarization. And while Georgian politics is a far cry from the halls of Brussels, Michel can make use of the fact that both the UNM and Georgian Dream would bolster their pro-European credentials significantly if they were to heed Brussels’ advice in this matter.

      Staying on Course

      Ultimately, if this political crisis cannot be solved, authoritarianism will be the only winner in this situation. Georgia’s authoritarian neighbors — Russia, Azerbaijan and Turkey — have made it through the pandemic politically unscathed, while Azerbaijan’s recent victory in Nagorno-Karabakh has strengthened the Aliyev dynasty and left Armenia’s extremely vulnerable democracy in peril. If Georgia’s dwindling beacon of democracy, human rights and the rule of law were to falter, there may be little hope in salvaging its remarkable advancements the country made over the last 20 years.

      If the EU truly values the Eastern Partnership and shares Georgia’s vision for eventual EU membership, more than warm gestures will be necessary on its part in this crisis. In order to save democracy in the Caucasus, the EU may have to show its mettle and get creative, for only it can provide the necessary incentives, be they political or economic, to inspire Georgia to stay on course.

      In order to remind ourselves why events in this lesser-known region carry a wider significance, it is worth looking at its history. Almost to the day 100 years ago, the Red Army entered Tbilisi and Georgia lost its independence. Although the Soviet Union is long gone, there is a real danger that Georgia may lose its political independence if all parties involved do not find a way for a real dialogue.

      Another conflict in the South Caucasus might just set the necessary precedent for another regional power play. We should not forget that the Russian army has been present on Georgian territory since the five-day war of 2008, with Moscow supporting Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s declaration of independence. The Kremlin has always been quick to seize an arising opportunity. It will surely be ready to reassert itself over Georgia and to restore fully its sphere of influence in the Caucasus.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Time for a Just and Equitable Society

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      While keeping a wary eye on the Republican Party bloodbath from a safe distance, it is probably time to get a grip on the Democratic Party, shake really hard, and hope that what comes pouring out is a commitment to the progressive policy agenda that so many in the party have worked so hard to define. This is not the time to cave in again to the nonsense about the perfect being the enemy of the good, a phrase that so quickly drips off the lips of those who promise a good game but are never willing to risk anything to realize that promise.

      It should be easy to start with two simple propositions, each of which by now must be considered essential to any principled American social order after having been fully exposed like never before by the pandemic lens. It is way beyond time for universal access to meaningful health care to be the law of the land, not some dumbed-down public/private partnership, but the real thing. And it is way beyond time to double the minimum wage because no one can be expected to meet even the basic necessities of life at a pay rate of $7.25 per hour. That amounts to $15,080 per year, generally without benefits or paid leave, so don’t get sick, feed your kids from a real grocery store, live in a decent place or go anywhere.

      Will Biden Overturn Sanctions on the ICC?

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      I don’t care about handwringing, I don’t care about the national debt (only raised as a problem when America tries to spend more on social programs), I don’t care about compromise, and I sure as hell don’t care about sanctimonious talk of incremental change where these two issues are concerned. The only people in favor of incremental change are those who already have access to meaningful health care and those making a whole lot more than $7.25 an hour. If you want to see what unanimity looks like, take a poll on these issues among those working for minimum wage pay with no benefits.

      Moreover, even with respect to these two most fundamental components of any moral and just society’s collective response to those in the community writ large, there will be no Republican Party legislative support at all. So, Democrats, sit down and have a meeting, draft legislation to address these two priorities now, and then ram it down the legislative throats of anyone in the way. President Joe Biden will sign the bills, and then we can move on to other priorities, having finally demonstrated that Democrats can promise what is right and deliver on that promise.

      There will be a lot more because there is a lot more that needs to be done and because progressives have long studied the problems, have responsible solutions, and they and their constituencies are really tired of waiting. With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging and causing continued disease, death and economic disruption, it goes without saying that a broad range of public health and economic relief measures will be an overarching priority in these early days of the Biden administration. However, these are mitigation and relief measures seeking to restore a way of life for many that is always secured at the expense of weaker others.

      “Build Back Better”

      That is another way of saying that it is impossible to restore a balance that never existed in the first place. As we watch the battle play out in America for something as fundamental today as vaccine distribution equity, try to project your view onto the daily lives of those who almost always are on the inequity side of the balance equation. Many of these people aren’t even on the vaccine playing field because they are too busy looking for food for their family, affordable housing, enough education to give their kids a chance in life and enough wages to meet basic needs. When they get that taken care of by the end of the day, they can go online to check out the latest vaccine opportunities and the multiple bus routes needed to get there.

      Embed from Getty Images

      It isn’t just that inequities exist — it is that way too many among us seem to believe that to be an acceptable norm. I don’t know why this pisses me off so much, but it does. For how long and through how many pitiful iterations of America’s “greatness” have Americans of supposed goodwill noted the poverty and hopelessness in their midst and bemoaned racial and social divides that dehumanize, all while happily building monuments to consumption and unregulated capitalism that always attempt to give greed a good name? No more. Ya no más.

      There is so much to change for the better and so little apparent political will to change much of anything that it is hard to imagine what Biden means when he says he wants the nation to “build back better.” To my ear, that sounds a lot like a slogan to inspire Americans to create little more than a glossier version of whatever the nation looked like “before,” maybe even something like making America “great” again.

      To many people of color, the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the undereducated and the sick, what it looked like “before” will take more than a catchy slogan to fix. In the weeks ahead, watch the public discourse, the constant reference to an undefined return to “normal,” and most importantly, how quickly any broad consensus about the need to confront long-neglected fundamental reform gets lost in detail and division.

      More Than Words

      Beyond the pandemic’s public health and relief measures lie critical commitments to invest now in America’s failing infrastructure, to implement comprehensive and humane immigration reform, to develop a meaningful and likely inconvenient national and international response to climate change, to address the nation’s epidemic of gun violence, and to renew and reinvigorate regulatory frameworks for the financial, energy and communication sectors. Then, if any of this is to be truly transformative, it will have to be done with racial justice and economic equity at the core of meeting each of these critical commitments.

      The challenges are great and the moment may be fleeting. Democratic Party leadership and its progressive allies have to actively drive each other to take advantage of this moment to give birth to another round of renewed hope in America. That having been said, it will take more than words to do so, after so many failed promises.

      The place to start is with those two simple propositions mentioned earlier. Demonstrating that universal access to meaningful health care can be realized now and that the dignity of work and economic participation inherent in a living wage can be realized now could do much to convince those in need that the rest of the progressive policy agenda is possible to achieve.

      In a political world filled with hyperbole, credibility is a good foundation on which to build the long-term political power necessary to deliver on the promise of a more just and equitable society.

      *[A version of this article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Will Biden Overturn Sanctions on the ICC?

      by

      From the get-go, US President Joe Biden’s administration has focused on reversing the worst of Donald Trump’s policy decisions. One of the very worst was the imposition of sanctions on individual officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump administration was so enamored of sanctions as a weapon of mass intimidation that it extended the policy beyond the traditional response to hostile governments to target individuals who failed to show the US sufficient respect.

      This was a logical consequence of Trump’s vaunted “America First” policy. This translates as national interest first, international law last. In September 2020, Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, singled out ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for sanctions. He “announced a freeze on assets held in the US or subject to US law by Bensouda and the court’s head of jurisdiction, Phakiso Mochochoko.” Even Rodrigo Duterte, the thuggish Filipino president who unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from membership in the Rome Treaty after the ICC received a complaint of crimes against humanity resulting from his brutal and chaotic war on drugs, never imagined imposing sanctions on the chief prosecutor.

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      In other words, Trump’s initiative can only be considered extreme. Bensouda, whose job consists of carrying out investigations related to procedures of justice, complained of “unprecedented and wholly unacceptable threats, attacks and sanctions.” Appearing to sympathize, the Biden administration issued this statement: “Much as we disagree with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Israeli/Palestinian situations, the sanctions will be thoroughly reviewed as we determine our next steps.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Thoroughly review:

      Examine an abusive practice with the hope of finding a devious way to justify its continuation

      Contextual Note

      The word “review” literally means “to look at again.” When politicians use the term, they imply that they will take a more critical look at the issue under consideration with a view to engaging remedial action. This is especially significant at moments in history where one party or political personality has been replaced by another with a highly contrasted worldview. Biden has already taken steps to return to the essential international treaties Trump so casually abandoned, as well as undo the former president’s complicity with the murderous Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The Biden administration needs to show that it is free not just to review but to thoroughly overturn dangerous and sometimes criminal policies.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In reality, the promise to “thoroughly review” often serves a more devious purpose. It creates an expectation that whatever policy emerges — even if it is identical with that of the past — will be legitimized. Rather than remedy a mistake, it may stand as a ploy to seek a better argument in favor of perpetuating the effects of the mistake. Former President Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of ending the war in Iraq. After thoroughly reviewing it with the help of the Pentagon, he continued it.

      The question of the ICC is no ordinary political issue. It contains within it the very idea of justice and fairness that Americans like to see as the core of their “exceptional” ideology, a system of values that never tires of proclaiming its allegiance to the idea of “liberty and justice for all.” On that basis, it should be easy for the Biden administration to cancel Trump’s sanctions and apologize for his arrogance. In terms of PR, it provides a perfect pretext for a new president to demonstrate a willingness to correct the injustices of the past.

      But as with so many issues Biden has inherited from Trump, there is a hidden risk and potentially a serious embarrassment. By provoking the ICC, Trump shouted from the rooftops what previous presidents accomplished by whispering in private amongst themselves. The US has never demonstrated the intention of respecting the principles it so assiduously promoted when the victorious Allies launched the Nuremberg trials. The message those trials sent was that every nation on earth must answer the accusation of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The refusal to be judged by the legal criteria it uses to judge others may provide the best definition of the meaning of “American exceptionalism.”

      Because the nation that invented democracy “believes” with all its soul in everything that is good and just, it can never be held to account for being bad and unjust. At best, American individuals are sometimes guilty of a lapse of judgment, but the American nation as a whole is, as the song says, “a soul whose intentions are good.” Since “no one alive can always be an angel,” the nation feels justified pleading to the heavens, “Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” 

      If Biden follows through and repeals Trump’s sanctions, the consequences could be serious. It would implicitly allow the ICC to pursue the complaints against both the US in Afghanistan and Israel with regard to Palestinians within its borders. Those were the two causes that prompted Pompeo to impose sanctions, citing the principle of national sovereignty. 

      That the US should defend Israel’s putative sovereignty — especially if it means shielding that nation from being prosecuted for war crimes — makes no serious legal sense. But it does reveal a basic truth about US foreign policy. If anything, the immunity the US claims for Israel can be compared with the principle in US law of someone who pleads the fifth amendment in a courtroom to avoid incriminating their spouse (“the spousal testimonial privilege”). Do both Trump and Biden consider the US and Israel a married couple?

      How far is Biden willing to go to undo Trump’s devilry? How much can he backtrack without exposing the US to the principle of universal justice? This is a serious quandary for a president who repeats in nearly every one of his speeches that the US must “not lead by the example of its power, but by the power of its example.”

      Historical Note

      Another issue has just emerged in the news cycle that also requires a thorough review. It concerns the production of semiconductors. The Verge offers this headline: “Biden signs executive order calling for semiconductor supply chain review.” American industry is facing a penury of chips, the essential component of nearly everything Americans buy these days (apart from fast food). From PCs and smartphones to cars, watches and refrigerators, chips rule the consumer economy. Will this be as “thoroughly reviewed” as the reconsideration of the ICC sanctions? It should be because it concerns a problem that affects the entire economy.

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      Not so long ago in recent history, the US was the world’s major manufacturer of semi-conductors. But because it became cheaper to outsource production to Asian nations, US manufacturers preferred to move their supply chain across the Pacific Ocean. Asia has since achieved a quasi-monopoly on semiconductor production.

      The Associated Press recently reported on the “widening global shortage of semiconductors for auto parts” that has forced “major auto companies to halt or slow vehicle production just as they were recovering from pandemic-related factory shutdowns.” The penury of semi-conductors could send an economy already battered by the pandemic into a tailspin. 

      This would be especially true if the Asian countries that produce more than 80% of the world’s and America’s supply were unable or unwilling to deliver. The entire question has evolved into something even more dire. Business Insider summarizes the dilemma in a headline: “The global chip shortage is hurting businesses and could be a national security issue.”

      It is not hard to imagine a war, even a limited war, breaking out between the US and China over navigation in the contested South China Sea or Chinese threats against Taiwan. In such an event, the US could potentially be starved of the supply of essential components required both for its military capacity and its consumer economy. The Biden administration must be aware of this and ready to review it. But once the review is completed, what can they do to remedy it? Not much, at least in the time frame that would be required to lead a military campaign.

      Rather than challenge China and risk alienating nearly all of Asia, the Biden administration can only hope to solve the problem of penury through cooperation and the recognition of interdependence, in contrast with the attitude of confrontation nurtured by Donald Trump. The Biden administration may be forced to engage a particularly “thorough review” on this issue.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Biden Should Rejoin the Iran Deal Before It’s Too Late

      by

      As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on the new US president and his foreign policy after successive administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system.

      Cautious optimism toward President Joe Biden is very much based on his commitment to Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement in 2015: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement with Iran. Biden, along with his fellow Democrats, excoriated then-President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 and promised to promptly rejoin the deal if elected. But Biden now appears to be hedging his position in a way that risks turning what should be an easy win for the new administration into an avoidable and tragic diplomatic failure.

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      While it was the United States under Trump that withdrew from the nuclear agreement, Biden is taking the position that the US will not rejoin the agreement or drop its unilateral sanctions until Iran first comes back into compliance with the terms of the JCPOA. After withdrawing from the agreement, the US is in no position to make such demands, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has clearly and eloquently rejected them, reiterating Iran’s firm commitment that it will return to full compliance as soon as the US does so.

      Biden should have announced US reentry as one of his first executive orders. It did not require renegotiation or debate. On the campaign trail, Senator Bernie Sanders, Biden’s main competitor for the Democratic nomination, simply promised, “I would re-enter the agreement on day one of my presidency.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      It wasn’t just Sanders. Then-candidate Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said during the Democratic primary, “We need to rejoin our allies in returning to the agreement, provided Iran agrees to comply with the agreement and take steps to reverse its breaches.” Gillibrand said that Iran must “agree” to take those steps, not that it must take them first, presciently anticipating — and implicitly rejecting — Biden’s self-defeating position that Iran must fully return to compliance with the JCPOA before the US will rejoin.

      If Biden just rejoins the JCPOA, all of the provisions of the agreement will be back in force and work exactly as they did before Trump opted out. Iran will be subject to the same International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and reports as before. Whether Iran is in compliance or not will be determined by the IAEA, not unilaterally by the United States. That is how the agreement works, as all the signatories agreed: China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union — and the United States.

      Neocons and Hawks

      So, why is Biden not eagerly pocketing this easy first win for his stated commitment to diplomacy? A December 2020 letter supporting the JCPOA, signed by 150 House Democrats, should have reassured Biden that he has overwhelming support to stand up to hawks in both parties. But instead, he seems to be listening to opponents of the Iran deal telling him that Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement has given him “leverage” to negotiate new concessions from Iran before rejoining. Rather than giving Biden leverage over Iran, which has no reason to make further concessions, this has given opponents of the JCPOA leverage over Biden.

      American neocons and hawks, including those inside his own administration, appear to be flexing their muscles to kill Biden’s commitment to diplomacy at birth, and his own hawkish foreign policy views make him dangerously susceptible to their arguments. This is also a test of his previously deferential relationship with Israel, whose government vehemently opposes the JCPOA and whose officials have even threatened to launch a military attack on Iran if the US rejoins it, a flagrantly illegal threat that Biden has yet to publicly condemn.

      In a more rational world, the call for nuclear disarmament in the Middle East would focus on Israel, not Iran. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently wrote in The Guardian, Israel’s own possession of dozens — or maybe hundreds — of nuclear weapons is the worst kept secret in the world. Tutu’s article was an open letter to Biden, asking him to publicly acknowledge what the whole world already knows and to respond as required under US law to the actual proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

      Instead of tackling the danger of Israel’s real nuclear weapons, successive US administrations have chosen to “cry wolf” over non-existent nuclear weapons in Iraq and Iran to justify besieging their governments, imposing deadly sanctions on their people, invading Iraq and threatening Iran. A skeptical world is watching to see whether President Biden has the integrity and political will to break this insidious pattern.

      The CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), which stokes Americans’ fears of imaginary Iranian nuclear weapons and feeds endless allegations about them to the IAEA, is the same entity that produced the lies that drove America to war on Iraq in 2003. In December 2002, WINPAC’s director, Alan Foley, told his staff, “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so” — even as he privately admitted to his retired CIA colleague Melvin Goodman that US forces searching for WMDs in Iraq would find “not much, if anything.”

      What makes Biden’s stalling to appease Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the neocons diplomatically suicidal at this moment in time is that in November 2020, the Iranian parliament passed a law that forces its government to halt nuclear inspections and boost uranium enrichment if US sanctions are not eased by February 21.

      It’s Getting Complicated

      To complicate matters further, Iran is holding its own presidential election on June 18, and election season — when this issue will be hotly debated — begins after the Iranian New Year on March 21. The winner is expected to be a hawkish hardliner. Trump’s failed policy, which Biden is now continuing by default, has discredited the diplomatic efforts of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, confirming for many Iranians that negotiating with America is a fool’s errand.

      If Biden does not rejoin the JCPOA soon, time will be too short to restore full compliance by both Iran and the US — including lifting relevant sanctions — before Iran’s election. Each day that goes by reduces the time available for Iranians to see benefits from the removal of sanctions, leaving little chance that they will vote for a new government that supports diplomacy with the United States. The timetable around the JCPOA was known and predictable, so this avoidable crisis seems to be the result of a deliberate decision by Biden to try to appease neocons and warmongers — domestic and foreign — by bullying Iran, a partner in an international agreement he claims to support, to make additional concessions that are not part of the agreement.

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      During his election campaign, candidate Biden promised to “elevate diplomacy as the premier tool of our global engagement.” If President Biden fails this first test of his promised diplomacy, people around the world will conclude that, despite his trademark smile and affable personality, he represents no more of a genuine recommitment to American partnership in a cooperative “rules-based world” than Trump or Obama did.

      That will confirm the steadily growing international perception that, behind the Republicans’ and Democrats’ good cop-bad cop routine, the overall direction of US foreign policy remains fundamentally aggressive, coercive and destructive. People and governments around the world will continue to downgrade relations with the United States, as they did under Trump, and even traditional US allies will chart an increasingly independent course in a multipolar world where the US is no longer a reliable partner and certainly not a leader.

      So much is hanging in the balance, for the everyday people of Iran suffering and dying under the impact of US sanctions, for Americans yearning for more peaceful relations with our neighbors around the world, and for people everywhere who long for a more humane and equitable international order to confront the massive problems facing us all in this century. Can Biden’s America be part of the solution? After just weeks in office, surely it can’t be too late. But the ball is in his court, and the whole world is watching.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Fascism and Peace: Incompatible or Inseparable?

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      For Benito Mussolini, life was an eternal struggle. Shaped by a social Darwinist worldview and following Georges Sorel’s philosophy of the virtue of violence, Il Duce (the leader), as Mussolini was known, regarded war as men’s essential purpose in life. It was through war that he intended to revolutionize Italian society and politics, destroy Italian vices like corruption, regionalism and individualism, and create the “new man” — a masculine, athletic peasant-soldier. Il Duce was convinced that “the character of the Italians must be forged in combat.”

      However, in January 1940, he confessed to his son-in-law and then-foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, that so far he had failed in this task: “Have you ever seen a lamb become a wolf? The Italian people is a race of sheep. Eighteen years is not enough to change them. It takes a hundred and eighty years or maybe a hundred and eighty centuries.”

      The New Man in Fascism Past and Present

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      However, it is not only Mussolini’s militaristic and violent rhetoric that put violence, war and struggle at the core of fascism. Il Duce and the fascist regime also followed up with violent action. Whether it was the bloody clashes between the fascist blackshirts and the Socialists in the 1920s, the brutal oppression of native rebellions in Libya in the 1920s and 1930s, the war crimes in Ethiopia or the atrocities committed during the Second World War, violence and war were fundamentally linked to the history of fascism. It is then not surprising that scholars who have attempted to define fascism emphasize the violent characteristics in an effort to capture the essence of the only “genuine ideology” of the 20th century, as Mussolini proudly called it in 1932.

      A Mutilated Victory

      Thus, the question arises: Where does “peace” fit in? Or was “peace” totally alien to fascist thinking and ideology? According to Johan Galtung, the founder of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, we can distinguish between a “positive” and a “negative peace.” Whereas the former refers to a constructive resolution of conflict and the creation of a social and political system that serves the needs of everybody, the latter refers to the absence of violence. How did fascists perceive a positive peace as promoted by Western democracies and new institutions such as the League of Nations after World War I? Did fascists’ long-term plans entail references to peace — at least in the sense of Galtung’s negative peace?

      Thomas Nipperdey began his history on 19th century Germany with the now famous words: “At the beginning was Napoleon.” When analyzing Italian fascism’s relationship to peace, one could make a similar statement: At the beginning was World War I. A majority of fascists, including Mussolini, Dino Grandi and Achille Starace, were staunch interventionists who were totally disappointed and appalled by the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference. They regarded the treaties as a betrayal to their own war commitment and perceived them as unjust terms that were forced onto Italy by Great Britain and France. When referring to these agreements, they commonly used the words “mutilated victory,” a slogan coined by Italian nationalist and poet Gabriele D’Annunzio.

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      When assessing the slogan’s devastating consequences for Italy’s political scene, it can only be compared with the infamous German Dolchstosslegende — the stab-in-the-back myth used by the German far right (including the National Socialists) against the Weimar Republic. On the one hand, Italian fascists used the mutilated victory myth against Italian liberals, whom they blamed for a failed negotiation strategy in Paris and consequently labeled traitors to the Italian nation. On the other hand, it was used to attack Western democracies accused of trying to stop Italy from taking its rightful place on the international stage.

      Interestingly, the phrase itself exposes the fascists’ preference for martial rhetoric. Instead of using the term “peace treaties,” the slogan “mutilated victory” implies an ongoing struggle as well as powerfully evoking those who returned from the war wounded. These soldiers who sacrificed themselves for the greater good of their fatherland had been shamefully betrayed by both Western democracies and liberal Italian politicians. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the main goals of Italian fascism was to seek a revision of the postwar peace order and thus turn a “mutilated victory” into a “true victory” for Italy.

      The Rejection of Peace

      The fascists’ attitude toward the Paris Peace Treaties is just one example that illustrates their overall stance toward the peaceful order democracies sought to create following World War I. In 1932, when the regime in Rome celebrated its 10-year anniversary, the government published the “Doctrine of Fascism,” written mainly by Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile. It contained one of the rare references to peace in an official government document, stating: “Fascism does not … believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. … War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it.”  

      This rejection of peace was not solely confined to the international arena; it also applied to domestic politics. The government attempted to infuse this anti-pacifistic attitude, which became a guiding doctrine for the fascists’ social and political agenda, into the every-day life of its citizens. The Italian new man was meant to embrace a fighting spirit, accept all kinds of risks and should not shy away from self-sacrifice. This concept of life mirrored the philosophy of Futurists such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who intended, as he outlined in his “Futurist Manifesto” of 1919, “to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness” and embraced “courage, audacity and revolt.”

      This concept of life stood in contrast to the bourgeois lifestyle, which the fascists rejected as individualistic, feminine and weak. A bourgeois society, according to fascist doctrine, was only able to survive if it created what fascism despised the most: long-lasting peace. For Mussolini, the embodiment of such a society was Great Britain. He explained to Ciano that he had “studied the different generations of the English people. He observed that 22 million men faced 24 million women and that 12 million citizens were over 50 years old and thus have crossed the line of belligerent desires. Consequently, the static masses dominated the youthful-dynamic ones. That means: quiet life, ready for compromises, peace.” Compromise and peace, however, were, in the fascist worldview, obvious signs of weakness, cowardice and decay.

      This quote leads to a final point. Whether in domestic affairs or in international politics, fascists rejected any kind of status quo. They defined their movement as dynamic, led by a charismatic leader who was energetic and powerful and always moving forward. Mussolini himself, portrayed as the nation’s soldier number one and a reincarnation of the condottiere — a leader of mercenaries in Renaissance Italy — claimed that he was born to never let the Italian people rest. A positive peace, however, would maintain and safeguard a certain status quo and thus undermine the fascists’ constructed self-image of a dynamic movement. Robert Paxton argues that a fascist movement must constantly renew itself and challenge the status quo. If it fails to do so, it turns into a normal form of dictatorship. Thus, one could conclude that if a fascist regime accepts a positive peace, it has ceased to exist.

      Is peace, therefore, just another area where we could define fascism as an essential anti-movement? Such a conclusion, however, would be too simple. Historian Roger Griffin convincingly argued that it would be misleading to understand fascism purely as an anti-movement. On the contrary, fascists seduced the masses by promoting the idea of the rebirth of the nation, coined by Griffin as a form of palingenetic ultra-nationalism. Fascists were not nihilists by nature but wanted to create a brighter, better future for the nation by leading it out of whatever crisis it currently faced, which, in turn, means manufacturing a crisis if none can be found.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More