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      New Generation of Combat Vets, Eyeing House, Strike From the Right

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      A class of political newcomers with remarkable military records are challenging old ideas about interventionism — and the assumption that electing veterans is a way to bring back bipartisanship.In early 2019, as the Defense Department’s bureaucracy seemed to be slow-walking then-President Donald J. Trump’s order to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria, Joe Kent, a C.I.A. paramilitary officer, called his wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologic technician who was still in Syria working against the Islamic State.“‘Make sure you’re not the last person to die in a war that everyone’s already forgotten about,’” Mr. Kent said he told his wife. “And that’s exactly what happened,” he added bitterly.The suicide bombing that killed Ms. Kent and three other service members days later set off a chain of events — including a somber encounter with Mr. Trump — that has propelled Mr. Kent from a storied combat career to single parenthood, from comparing notes with other antiwar veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to making increasingly loud pronouncements that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that the Jan. 6 rioters are political prisoners.In five weeks, Mr. Kent, 42, a candidate for a House seat in Washington State that was long represented by a soft-spoken moderate Republican, may well be elected to Congress. And he is far from alone.A new breed of veterans, many with remarkable biographies and undeniable stories of heroism, are running for the House on the far right of the Republican Party, challenging old assumptions that adding veterans to Congress — men and women who fought for the country and defended the Constitution — would foster bipartisanship and cooperation. At the same time, they are embracing anti-interventionist military and foreign policies that, since the end of World War II, have been associated more with the Democratic left than the mainline G.O.P. Alek Skarlatos, 30, a Republican candidate in Oregon, helped thwart a terrorist attack on a packed train bound for Paris, was honored by President Barack Obama and played himself in a Clint Eastwood movie about the incident. Mr. Skarlatos now says the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has been used as an excuse “to demonize Trump supporters.”Eli Crane, 42, running in a Republican-leaning House district in Arizona, saw five wartime deployments with SEAL Team 3 over 13 years — as a sniper, manning machine-gun turrets and running kill-or-capture missions with the Delta Force against high-value targets, some in Falluja. Mr. Crane presses the false case that the 2020 election was stolen.And Derrick Van Orden, 53, who is favored to win a House seat in Wisconsin, retired as a Navy SEAL senior chief after combat deployments in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Central and South America. Mr. Van Orden was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, hoping to disrupt the certification of President Biden’s election.Derrick Van Orden at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump in Waukesha, Wis., in August.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBeyond their right-wing leanings, all share in common a deep skepticism about U.S. interventionism, borne of years of fighting in the post-9/11 war on terrorism and the belief that their sacrifices only gave rise to more instability and repression wherever the United States put boots on the ground.Where earlier generations of combat veterans in Congress became die-hard defenders of a global military footprint, the new cohort is unafraid to launch ad hominem attacks on the men who still lead U.S. forces.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.“I worked for Milley. I worked for Austin. I worked for Mattis,” said Don Bolduc, 60, the retired brigadier general challenging Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, of Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current and former defense secretaries Lloyd Austin and Jim Mattis. “Their concerns centered around the military-industrial complex and maintaining the military-industrial complex, so as three- and four-star generals, they can roll right into very lucrative jobs.”Mr. Austin and Mr. Mattis declined to comment. A defense official close to Gen. Milley said, “there isn’t a shred of evidence indicating Gen. Milley has been concerned with maintaining the military industrial complex and has no plans to seek employment in the defense industry after retirement.”No one has questioned these men’s valor, as some have questioned that of another pro-Trump House candidate, J.R. Majewski of Ohio, who appears to have exaggerated his combat record.But their pivots to the far right have confounded other veterans, especially those who have long pressed former service members to run for office as problem-solving moderates less vulnerable to shifting partisan winds. Organizations like New Politics, and With Honor Action were founded in the past decade on the notion that records of service would promote cooperation in government. That ideal is under assault.“When you think about the faith of the mission, listen, this is hard,” said Rye Barcott, founder and chief executive officer of With Honor Action. “I mean, the trends have certainly gotten worse.”Democratic veterans, however, see the newer veteran candidates’ willingness to embrace Mr. Trump’s lies as a precursor to totalitarianism, and in contravention of their service. “We all took the same oath,” said Representative Ruben Gallego, a former Marine who saw some of the worst combat of the Iraq war. “We all understand the Constitution of United States, and some of these men are really leaning into outright fascism.”The candidates insist their views were informed by their combat experiences and demonstrate wisdom, not radicalization.Eli Crane saw five wartime deployments with SEAL Team 3 over 13 years.Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressMr. Crane said that he witnessed overseas the lengths to which people would go to seize and hold power, and that this fed his belief that Democrats had somehow rigged the 2020 election in President Biden’s favor. “I think that we’re foolish if we’re not willing to be skeptical of our own system,” he said.For Mr. Kent, the journey to the Trumpian right was both long and surprisingly short..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Inspired to join the Army at 13 by the Black Hawk battle in Somalia, he enlisted at 17 and applied for the Special Forces just before Sept. 11, 2001. Two years later he was in Iraq, where he fought in Falluja, hunted down members of Saddam Hussein’s government and briefed intelligence and State Department officers on the deteriorating war.By 2011, as U.S. forces were preparing to leave, he said, he told General Austin, then the Army commander in Iraq, that the United States’ support of “this Iranian-proxy, Shia government is going to result in Al Qaeda in Iraq.”But it was his wife’s death in Syria that pushed Mr. Kent, by then in the C.I.A., into the arms of Trumpism. “She was there because unelected bureaucrats decided to slow-roll” Mr. Trump’s withdrawal orders, he said. “You can disobey an order from a president fairly easily, because he’s so far up from the ground level, simply by dragging your feet. And that’s a lot of what happened.”Shannon M. Kent was killed during a suicide bombing in Syria.ReutersAt Dover Air Force Base, he met Mr. Trump, who was there to pay his respects to the bodies of those killed in Syria. Mr. Kent expressed his support for the president’s efforts to withdraw from the Middle East and Afghanistan. Within days, he was consulting with the White House and volunteering for Veterans for Trump.In a video he made for the Koch-funded Concerned Veterans for America decrying the post-9/11 wars, he appears as a bearded, longhaired grieving father.Today, clean-cut and square-jawed, he is seen by many as a right-wing radical, ready to connect what he calls the lies that dragged his nation into war and the stories he tells of stolen elections, political prisoners who attacked the Capitol, and the slippery slope to nuclear war that the Biden administration is on in Ukraine.“People can easily dismiss that and say, ‘Oh, he’s just a tinfoil hat conspiracy guy,’ but when you break down the nitty-gritty details of all of these different things, and the results that they’ve had on our country, I think it’s worth looking into,” Mr. Kent said.His former campaign manager, Byron Sanford, dismissed Mr. Kent’s candidacy as a “revenge tour” for the death of his wife — who, Mr. Kent said, was both more pro-Trump and more political than Mr. Kent was at the time she was killed.Mr. Kent had no problem with that. “If people want to characterize it as a revenge tour, yeah, I mean, I’d say it’s more of a populist uprising against the establishment,” he said. “But you know, call it what you will.”For Mr. Bolduc, the Senate nominee in New Hampshire, the ideological shift has been more dramatic. He was one of the first Americans to make contact with Hamid Karzai, who was installed as Afghanistan’s president shortly after the U.S. invasion, and was an outspoken defender of him. In 2018, just after Gen. Bolduc’s retirement, he decried the Trump White House in The Daily Beast for “exacerbating divisiveness by not demonstrating patience and restraint, not listening to experts, attacking people for their opinions, ruining reputations, threatening institutions, abusing the media, and leading people to question our position as a beacon for promoting democracy throughout the world.”Don Bolduc, center, with supporters at the American Legion in Laconia, N.H., in September.John Tully for The New York TimesNow, he tells voters the United States needs to avoid Iran, has done enough in Ukraine, and should undertake a wholesale re-evaluation of its posture in the world.Mr. Bolduc contends that the interventionist views of former Senator John McCain and successors like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — a belief in projecting power to solve problems — arose from a belief in what he called “the military easy button.”“My generation of combat veterans think the exact opposite,” he said.Mr. Crane shares those views, especially on Ukraine, which he says President Biden is defending more vigorously than he is the United States’ southern border. And he, too, sees capitalism driving interventionism — a view once pushed by intellectuals on the left.“It’s foolish, even dangerous when the industrial-military complex is driving or heavily influencing policy,” he said in an interview. “They make a lot more money when we’re at war.”Not everyone in that generation is of the same mind.Zach Nunn, a Republican challenging Representative Cindy Axne of Iowa, has used his Air Force combat record to burnish his credentials, but after deployments in Afghanistan, North Africa and as an election monitor in Ukraine, he has not soured on the projection of force around the globe — or on bipartisan cooperation.Mr. Nunn speaks at length of a battle in Afghanistan in which he flew reconnaissance, providing “a canopy of freedom” for special operations forces by watching enemy positions and calling in airstrikes.“We ended up doing three midair refuelings, we were out there for over 18 hours, and by the end of it, we had multiple ridgeline strikes and had kept the Taliban at bay long enough that the Special Operations Forces team was able to evac,” Mr. Nunn said.What his experience did not do was breed cynicism or push him to the political margins of his party. Mr. Nunn speaks proudly of his work on cybersecurity in the Obama White House and working with the Biden administration to get allies out of Afghanistan after the military’s pullout. He says his combat experience gave him an appreciation for Americans from all walks of life and political beliefs.Zach Nunn with his family after winning the Republican nomination for Iowa’s Third Congressional District in June. Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register, via Associated Press“It didn’t matter what our political belief was, it was all about, hey, we’re going to protect each other’s six and complete this mission,” he said, using military jargon for watching a comrade’s back.Mr. Barcott, of With Honor Action, argued that the new crop of right-wing veterans should not be seen as representing the political attitudes of former service members writ large. With Honor Action still asks veterans running for office to pledge to bring civility to Congress, participate in cross-partisan veterans groups, meet one-on-one with a member of the opposing party at least once a month and work with a member of the other party on one “substantial piece of legislation a year” while co-sponsoring other bipartisan bills.But finding veterans willing to make that pledge has become more difficult.By Mr. Barcott’s count, 685 veterans ran for the House or Senate this cycle. With Honor endorsed only 26 from both parties, many of them incumbents. Three Republican incumbents it had once endorsed, Representatives Mike Garcia of California, Greg Steube of Florida and Dan Crenshaw of Texas, were dropped for actions deemed out of keeping with the group’s mission.Several Democrats with national security backgrounds, like Representatives Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, are running explicitly on their service records to bolster their bipartisan bona fides.But more partisan veterans groups say this year’s candidates are pointing out a central fallacy: “People say if we just elect more veterans to Congress, things will be hunky dory, but there’s no precedent for that, no data that suggests veterans act different from anyone else,” said Dan Caldwell, an adviser to the conservative group Concerned Veterans for America.Mr. Kent was more cutting about organizations that ostensibly back veterans bound for bipartisanship but refused to back him.“It’s a gimmick,” he said, dismissing the groups as hawkish interventionists. “It’s just another way to get the neoconservative, neoliberal ideology furthered by wrapping it in the valor of service. Our service.” More

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      French Refineries Strike May Presage a Winter of Discontent for Europe

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      Bitten by inflation, workers are demanding a greater share of the surging profits of energy giants. It’s the kind of unrest leaders fear as they struggle to keep a united front against Russia.LE HAVRE, France — The northern port city of Le Havre is less than 25 miles away from two major oil refineries. But on Friday, the pumps at many gas stations were wrapped in red and white tape, the electric price signs flashing all nines. Little gasoline was to be had.Across France, a third of stations are fully or partly dry, victims of a fast-widening strike that has spread to most of the country’s major refineries, as well as some nuclear plants and railways, offering a preview of a winter of discontent as inflation and energy shortages threaten to undercut Europe’s stability and its united front against Russia for its war in Ukraine.At the very least the strike — pitting refinery workers seeking a greater share of the surging profits against the oil giants TotalEnergies and Exxon Mobil — has already emerged as the first major social crisis of Emmanuel Macron’s second term as president, as calls grow for a general strike next Tuesday.“It’s going to become a general strike. You will see,” said Julien Lemmonier, 77, a retired factory worker stepping out of the supermarket in Le Havre on a gray and rainy morning. He warned that if the port workers followed suit, “It will be over.”Striking employees of the Total refinery on Thursday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe widening social unrest is just what European leaders fear as inflation hits its highest level in decades, driven in part by snarls in post-pandemic global supply chains, but also by the mounting impact of the tit-for-tat economic battle between Europe and Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.Economic anxiety is palpable across Europe, driving large protests in Prague, Britain’s biggest railway strike in three decades, as well as walkouts by bus drivers, call center employees and criminal defense lawyers, and causing many governments to introduce relief measures to cushion the blow and ward off still more turbulence. Airline workers in Spain and Germany went on strike recently, demanding wage increases to reflect the rising cost of living.For France the strikes have touched a long-worn nerve of the growing disparity between the wealthy few and the growing struggling classes, as well as the gnawing worry about making ends meet in the cold winter ahead.Workers at half of the country’s eight refineries are continuing to picket for higher wages in line with inflation, as well as a cut of the sky-high profits their companies made over recent months, as the price of gasoline has surged.“The money exists, and it should be distributed,” said Pascal Morel, the regional head of Confédération Générale du Travail, or CGT, France’s second-largest union, which has been leading the strikes. “Rather than laying claim to the striking workers, we should lay claim to their profits.”Pascal Morel, the regional head of Confédération Générale du Travail, one of France’s largest unions, which has been leading the strikes. Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesSlow to notice at first, the country was rudely awoken to the strike’s effect this week, when pumps across the country ran out of fuel, forcing frustrated motorists to hunt around and then line up — sometimes for hours — at stations that were still open. Nerves quickly frayed, and reports of fistfights between enraged drivers buzzed on the news.In Le Havre, as in the rest of the country, residents revealed mixed feelings about the strikes. Some expressed solidarity with the workers, while others complained about how a small group was holding the entire country hostage. On both sides of the divide, however, many feared the strike would spread.The State of the WarA Large-Scale Strike: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia unleashed a series of missile strikes that hit at least 10 cities across Ukraine, including Kyiv, in a broad aerial assault against civilians and critical infrastructure that drew international condemnation and calls for de-escalation.Crimean Bridge Explosion: Mr. Putin said that the strikes were retaliation for a blast that hit a key Russian bridge over the weekend. The bridge, which links the Crimean Peninsula to Russia, is a primary supply route for Russian troops fighting in the south of Ukraine.Pressure on Putin: With his strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine, Mr. Putin appears to be responding to his critics at home, momentarily quieting the clamors of hard-liners furious with the Russian military’s humiliating setbacks on the battlefield.Arming Ukraine: The Russian strikes brought new pledges from the West to send in more arms to Ukraine, especially sophisticated air-defense systems. But Kyiv also needs the Russian-style weapons that its military is trained to use, and the global supply of them is running low.“It’s going to bring France to a standstill and I assure you it doesn’t need that,” said Fatma Zekri, 54, an out-of-work accountant.On Thursday, workers echoed the call for a general strike next Tuesday originally issued by the CGT and later supported by three other large unions. And a long-planned protest by left-wing parties over the rising cost of living scheduled for Sunday threatens to become even larger.For Mr. Macron, the strike holds obvious perils, with echoes of the social unrest of the Yellow Vest movement — a widespread series of protests that started as a revolt against higher taxes on fuel. The movement may have dissipated, but its anger has not.In Le Havre, residents revealed mixed feelings about the strikes. Some expressed solidarity with the workers, while others complained about how a small group was holding the entire country hostage.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe protests paralyzed France for months in 2018 and 2019, led by lower-middle class workers who took to the streets and roundabouts, raging against a climate change tax on gas that they felt was an insulting symbol of how little the government cared about them and their sliding quality of life.The current strikes illustrated a longstanding question that continues to torment many in the country, said Bruno Cautrès, a political analyst at the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po University — “Why do I live in a country that is rich and I am struggling?”Speaking of the president, Mr. Cautrès said, “He has not managed to answer this simple question.”After winning his re-election last April, Mr. Macron promised he would shed his reputation as a top-down ruler and govern the country in a more collaborative way.“The main risk is that he will not succeed in convincing people that the second term is dedicated to dialogue, to easing tensions,” Mr. Cautrès said.But even as he faced criticism that his government had allowed the crisis to get to this point, Mr. Macron sounded defiant on Wednesday night, saying in an interview with the French television channel France 2 that it was “not up to the president of the republic to negotiate with businesses.”The Total refinery, shuttered during a strike by workers.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesHis government has already forced some workers back to a refinery near Le Havre and a depot near Dunkirk.“I can’t believe that for one second, our ability to heat our homes, light our homes and go to the gas pump would be put at risk by French people who say, ‘No, to protect my interests, I will compromise those of the nation,’” he said.Still, Mr. Macron is treading a very fine line. The issue of “super profits” has become a charged one in Parliament, with opposition lawmakers from both the left and right demanding companies reaping windfalls be taxed, to benefit the greater population.Over the first half of the year, TotalEnergies made $10 billion in profit and Exxon Mobil raked in $18 billion. Western oil and gas companies have generated record profits thanks to booming energy prices, which have risen because of the war in Ukraine and allowed Russia to rake in billions in revenues even as it cuts oil and gas supplies to Europe. A recent OPEC Plus deal involving Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut production is likely to further raise prices.Earlier this week, Exxon Mobil announced that it had come to an agreement with two of four unions working at its sites, “out of a desire to urgently and responsibly to put an end to the strikes.” But the wage increase was one percentage point less than CGT had demanded, and half the bonus.In its own news release, TotalEnergies said the company continued to aim for “fair compensation for the employees” and to ensure they benefited “from the exceptional results generated” by the company.On Friday, two unions at TotalEnergies announced they had reached a deal for a 7 percent wage increase and a bonus. But CGT, which has demanded a 10 percent hike, walked out of the negotiation and said it would continue the strike.To date, Mr. Macron has been loath to tax the oil giants’ windfall profits, worrying it would tarnish the country’s investment appeal, and preferring instead that companies make what he termed a “contribution.”However, last week the government introduced an amendment to its finance bill, in keeping with new European Union measures, applying a temporary tax on oil, gas and coal producers that make 20 percent more in profit on their French operations than they did during recent years.On Thursday, France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire also called on TotalEnergies to raise wages for salaried workers. And he announced that 1.7 billion euros, about $1.65 billion, would be earmarked to help motorists if fuel prices continued to rise.“It is a company that is now making significant profits,” Mr. Le Maire told RTL radio station on Thursday. “Total has paid dividends, so the sharing of value in France must be fair.”The pumps at gas stations were wrapped in red and white tape, the electric price signs flashing all nines. Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe tangle of pipes and towering smokestacks of the hulking Total refinery in Gonfreville-l’Orcher, just outside of Le Havre, were eerily silent on Thursday, as union members burned wood pallets, hoisted flags and voted to continue the strike.Many believed their anger captured a building sentiment in the country, where even with generous government subsidies, people are struggling financially and are increasingly anxious about the winter of energy cutbacks. Inflation in France, though lower than in the rest of Europe, has surpassed 6 percent, jacking the prices of some basic supplies like frozen meat, pasta and tissues.“This era must end — the era of hogging for some, and rationing for others,” François Ruffin told the protesters on Thursday. Mr. Ruffin, a filmmaker turned elected official with the country’s hard-left France Unbowed party, rose to prominence with his satirical documentary film about France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, and the loss of middle-class jobs to globalization.If anything should be requisitioned, it should be the profits of huge companies, not workers, many said at the protest sites.David Guillemard, a striker who has worked at the Total refinery for 22 years, said the back-to-work order had kicked a hornet’s nest. “Instead of calming people,” he said, “this has irritated them.” More

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      U.S. and Russia Duel Over Leadership of U.N. Tech Group

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      Member countries vote on Thursday for an American or a Russian to lead the International Telecommunication Union, which sets standards for new technologies.WASHINGTON — The United States and Russia are tussling over control of a United Nations organization that sets standards for new technologies, part of a global battle between democracies and authoritarian nations over the direction of the internet.American officials are pushing more than 190 other member countries of the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency that develops technical standards for technology like cellphone networks and video streaming, to vote on Thursday for Doreen Bogdan-Martin, a longtime American employee, to lead the organization. She is running against Rashid Ismailov, a former Russian government official.The American campaign has been especially intense. President Biden endorsed Ms. Bogdan-Martin last week, capping months of public and private lobbying on her behalf by top administration figures and major U.S. corporate groups.Whoever leads the I.T.U. will have power to influence the rules by which new technologies are developed around the world. While the organization is not well known, it has set key guidelines in recent years for how video streaming works and coordinates the global use of the radio frequencies that power cellphone networks.The election has become a symbol of the growing global fight between a democratic approach to the internet, which is lightly regulated and interconnected around the world, and authoritarian countries that want to control their citizens’ access to the web. Russia has built a system that allows it to do just that, monitoring what Russians say online about topics like the invasion of Ukraine, while the United States largely does not regulate the content on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.Some worry that Russia and China, which also has closed off its internet, could use the I.T.U. to reshape the web in their images. The two countries put out a joint statement last year calling for preserving “the sovereign right of states to regulate the national segment of the internet.” They said they were emphasizing “the need to enhance the role of the International Telecommunication Union and strengthen the representation of the two countries in its governing bodies.”Doreen Bogdan-Martin of the United States at the opening session of the International Telecommunication Union in Bucharest, Romania, on Monday.Andreea Alexandru/Associated PressErica Barks-Ruggles, a State Department official and former ambassador to Rwanda who is representing the United States at an I.T.U. conference this week, said the organization would help determine if people around the world could have affordable access to new technology and communicate across borders, and “whether their governments are able to disconnect them from the internet or not.”“That’s why we’re putting time, money, energy into this,” she said.The I.T.U. was founded in 1865 to tackle issues involving telegraph machines. It traditionally focused on physical networks rather than the internet, but has become involved in setting standards for everything from smart home devices to connected cars. The agency’s plenipotentiary conference, which takes place every four years, began on Monday in Bucharest, Romania.Last week, Mr. Biden said Ms. Bogdan-Martin “possesses the integrity, experience and vision necessary to transform the digital landscape.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and other senior administration officials have also backed her candidacy.At a recent conference in Kigali, Rwanda, the United States hosted a reception at the city’s conference center where attendees heard a pitch from Ms. Bogdan-Martin, saw a video endorsement from Vice President Kamala Harris and listened to music from a local band.In response to emailed questions, Ms. Bogdan-Martin said she hoped her leadership of the I.T.U. could expand global access to the internet and improve transparency at the organization. She said she hoped to lead in “bringing an open, secure, reliable and interoperable internet to all people around the world.”Moscow is supporting Mr. Ismailov, a former deputy minister for telecom and mass communications for the Russian government and a former executive at Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company that American officials worry could leak data from its products to Beijing.The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.The proxy battle of the election may be the first of many more.“I see the U.S. really engaged in a new kind of foreign policy attack, where they see our adversaries and our competitors are wanting to change the rules of the game to shut off access,” said Karen Kornbluh, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. More

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      Turkish Author Ece Temelkuran Sees a Contested U.S. Election Through the Lens of an Attempted Coup

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      Ece Temelkuran, a Turkish author, sees parallels between Donald Trump’s claims of election theft and the 2016 attempt to depose Recep Tayyip Erdogan.This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which convenes this week in the Greek capital to examine the ways in which self-governance might evolve.When President Donald J. Trump announced in November 2020 that he had been robbed of victory in the presidential election that month, the author and political commentator Ece Temelkuran (pronounced eh-jeh) drew direct parallels with her homeland, Turkey.“Make no mistake, this is an attempted coup,” she wrote in an editorial for The Guardian. “If it were happening in Turkey, the world’s media would not think twice about calling it so.”Ms. Temelkuran spoke from experience. She lived through the July 2016 coup attempt against the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and left the country to avoid the crackdown that followed. Three years later, she published “How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship,” a nonfiction book that charted a democratic country’s potential slide into authoritarianism.Ms. Temelkuran was born into a political family. Her mother was a student activist who was imprisoned after a military coup in Turkey in the 1970s and rescued by a young lawyer whom she would go on to marry.When she was 16, Ms. Temelkuran started writing for a feminist magazine and went on to become one of Turkey’s most widely read political commentators.She remains a high-profile commentator today while she lives in Hamburg, Germany, where she is a fellow at the New Institute’s Future of Democracy program.In a recent interview, Ms. Temelkuran spoke of the threats to democracy in the West and in her native Turkey. This conversation has been edited and condensed.Since you published your book “How to Lose Your Country,” a few things have happened. Mr. Trump is no longer in power. Nor is the British prime minister Boris Johnson, who championed Britain’s exit from the European Union. How do you view the world today?I think there’s too much optimism, and also too much pessimism. The optimists think that if they get rid of Boris Johnson or Trump, everything will be back to normal in terms of democracy — that we can just fix a few mechanisms in the democratic machine, and we will be fine after that. I think this is a deeper crisis: a cluster of crises, actually, that we have to look deeper into.The crisis of democracy is very much intertwined with the crisis of capitalism. There is no way out, unless we address the issue of social equality.Ece Temelkuran is an author and political commentator who lives in Hamburg, Germany, where she is a fellow at the New Institute’s Future of Democracy program.Roberto Ricciuti/Getty ImagesYou say democracy in its present form is dead, because capitalism is essentially incompatible with democracy. Can you explain?Right-wing populist movements did not suddenly appear in the last 10 years. We have to go back to the 1980s to understand what really is happening in the world today, especially in terms of democracy.Democracy stands on the fundamental promise of equality and social justice. Capitalism does not promise social justice. If people are not equal in real terms, meaning financially and economically, how can you promise them equality as citizens?Why do you believe that capitalism is at odds with social justice?People pretend as if the rights that workers enjoy — Sundays off, eight-hour work days, etc. — are all thanks to capitalism. In fact, whatever the working classes have achieved or earned has come after a very long and hard struggle against the ruling classes.The depoliticization of society in the 1970s and 1980s contributed to an infantilization of citizens — to their perception of politics as being dirty. This massive depoliticization contributed to the right-wing populist movements of today. That’s why we have all these masses who believe that Trump is the savior, or that Brexit will make Britain great again.Another consequence was that we were made to be afraid of words like socialism, social democracy, regulation, financial regulation. These words became taboo after the 1970s.We’ve ended up in a place where we don’t even allow ourselves to think of a better system than capitalism. It is as if the end of capitalism were to lead to the end of the world.You use the word fascism to describe political realities in the West. That word has serious historical resonance. Why use it?Because I think we should use that word. We were made to believe that fascism was buried in the battlefields of the Second World War. The version that wears boots and uniform was buried, yes. But fascism does not just come in a uniform and boots, marching in goose step. If freedom of speech, freedom of organization, and the rights of the working classes are oppressed, that builds up to fascism.In countries such as the United States and Britain, the democratic establishment is powerful enough to protect itself. But in countries where the political and democratic establishment is not mature enough, you see fully formed oppression. There is no doubt that these are regimes that we can easily call fascism — in Turkey, in India, and in several other countries.Parliamentary democracies aren’t suddenly going to turn Hitlerian, are they?They don’t need to. At the time of Hitler, there was a need to be oppressive and violent because there was a massive union movement in Germany and the rest of Europe, a socialist movement. Nowadays, there is no such thing. So why use violence? They can use post-truths or social media to manipulate people, to spread misinformation and so on.If we can shift global politics to being more progressive, then we can get rid of these movements. At the moment, the center of the political spectrum is empty. Centrist politicians don’t have a story with which to mobilize and organize people. There’s a vacuum.Take French President Emmanuel Macron, for example. Why is he there? Because everybody is so afraid of far-right leader Marine Le Pen. For the last decade, at least, voting has become a tool to protect us from the worst.This is not politics. It’s a survival reaction.Unless the center opens its arms to the left and to progressives, there is no way out for democracy in the world.Turkey was for a long time a model when it came to the transition to democracy in the Muslim world. What’s going on there now?It’s a massive form of dictatorship. But then these dictatorships do not have to use violence. Now they’re using a different political tool, which is this very wide web of political money that spans the entire country. Even the smallest sympathizer to the party is getting this money. They have a good life. If you are part of the party, or in the party circle, you have a life. Otherwise, it’s not just economic transactions that are impossible. You cannot exercise your basic rights as a citizen.There are first-class citizens who are submissive to the party or Erdogan, and the others. The others, as Erdogan has said, are welcome to leave, and they are leaving. There is a massive brain drain from Turkey at the moment. It’s another tragic story. Doctors, nurses, well-educated people, academics: They’re all leaving.What’s the way out?The way out, which Turkish political forces are in a very inadequate way trying at the moment, is coming together: for all the opposition parties, despite their political differences, to come together and, in the interests of democracy, participate in elections. More

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      Italy’s Hard-Right Lurch Raises New Concerns in Washington

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      The Biden administration pledged to work with the country’s new leaders despite worries. Several Republicans hailed the Italian election results.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration publicly reacted with calm on Monday to Italy’s election of a far-right governing coalition, pledging to work with the country’s incoming leaders despite concern about their party’s fascist roots.But the latest rightward lurch of a European country — two weeks after a far-right party performed startlingly well in Sweden’s elections — is raising concerns in Washington about the continent’s combustible populism and what it could mean for some of President Biden’s foreign policy goals, including confronting Russia and defending democracy against authoritarianism.It has also underscored divisions within the United States, as members of the Trump wing of the Republican Party embraced the rise of a nationalist whose party has roots in Mussolini-era fascism.In the near term, the political success of Giorgia Meloni and her nationalist Brothers of Italy party, which leaves her poised to become the country’s next prime minister, is unlikely to rupture relations between Washington and Rome. Nor should it hobble the U.S.-led effort to unify Europe in defense of Ukraine against Russian conquest. Although Ms. Meloni has espoused radical nationalist views, and key members of her coalition openly oppose the European Union and call for friendlier relations with Moscow, as a candidate she expressed support for NATO and the defense of Ukraine.Writing on Twitter on Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken set a tone of comity, saying that the Biden administration was “eager to work with Italy’s government on our shared goals: supporting a free and independent Ukraine, respecting human rights, and building a sustainable economic future.”“Italy is a vital ally, strong democracy, and valued partner,” he added.Mr. Blinken’s comments appeared to reflect an initial belief that officials in the Biden administration can do strategic business with Ms. Meloni, even if many of her core values, including skepticism of gay rights and “gender ideology,” clash with their own.The Biden administration also understands that even an anti-establishment firebrand like Ms. Meloni will need financial support from the European Union to survive in office — a tall order if she wages political fights with Washington and Brussels. And with Italian public opinion slanted against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, Ms. Meloni would be hard-pressed to soften Italy’s line toward Moscow or seek to block the E.U.’s consensus-based support for Kyiv, analysts said.“From a foreign policy perspective, I do not expect a U-turn,” said Giovanna De Maio, a visiting fellow at George Washington University who studies trans-Atlantic relations. “It will be a moderate approach, at least for now,” she added.In an unsettling sign for the administration and centrist European leaders alike, however, several prominent Republicans hailed Ms. Meloni’s showing — a reminder of the growing kinship between European nationalists and the Trump wing of the Republican Party, who share a general philosophy of traditional social values, support for restricted immigration and deep skepticism of multilateral institutions.“This month, Sweden voted for a right-wing government,” Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, wrote on Twitter. “Now, Italy voted for a strong right-wing government. The entire world is beginning to understand that the Woke Left does nothing but destroy. Nov 8 is coming soon & the USA will fix our House and Senate! Let freedom reign!”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mike Pompeo, President Donald J. Trump’s secretary of state, who is of Italian heritage, also tweeted his congratulations. “Italy deserves and needs strong conservative leadership,” he wrote. “Buona Fortuna!”After Mr. Trump derided the European Union and clashed with longtime U.S. allies like Germany and France over foreign policy, Mr. Biden has worked to restore relations between America and Europe. That effort was accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Europe.But the shock wave from Italy is a reminder of Europe’s volatile politics and the threat they pose to the established, U.S.-backed order.The ascent of Ms. Meloni’s coalition also deals a blow to a central theme of Mr. Biden’s presidency: the effort to defend democracy and reject authoritarianism abroad. Europe’s right-wing parties have shown authoritarian tendencies in power, with conservatives in nations like Poland and Hungary cracking down on press freedom, an independent judiciary and other checks on central power.Europe’s far right may see greater opportunity in the months ahead, analysts said, as the continent stumbles toward winter amid soaring energy prices and other forms of inflation that many economists predict will produce a recession. Mr. Blinken and other administration officials have warned that winter will test Europe’s resolve on Ukraine, as analysts worry that economic pain could shift public anger away from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and toward the continent’s establishment leaders.“In the coming months, our unity and sovereignty will be tested with pressure on energy supplies and the soaring cost of living, caused by Russia’s war,” Mr. Blinken warned during a stop in Brussels this month.Daniel Baer, the director of the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that if economic conditions grew much worse, they could “drive populist strains on established democracies the way the 2008 financial crisis did.”Mr. Biden has worked with a set of strongly pro-American, internationalist leaders in Europe’s major capitals. France and Germany, along with Britain, have largely been in sync with Mr. Biden’s agenda. Italy was governed for nearly all of the Biden presidency by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, an economist who prioritized Italy’s international integration. Mr. Draghi’s resignation this summer triggered Sunday’s election.Mr. Baer noted that hard-right candidates had fizzled in two major elections over the past year. In April, the centrist French president, Emmanuel Macron, defeated his nationalist challenger, Marine Le Pen, and the moderate Olaf Scholz emerged from Germany’s elections last fall.Since then, the far-right Sweden Democrats won the second-largest share of the country’s vote, Ms. Meloni is poised to lead Italy once a government is formed there and Spain’s Vox party continues to gather momentum.“The sighs of relief that a lot of people breathed when Scholz was elected and Le Pen lost — was that premature?” Mr. Baer asked. More

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      Europe Looks at Italy’s Giorgia Meloni With Caution and Trepidation

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      Giorgia Meloni, poised to be the country’s first far-right leader since Mussolini, says she supports Ukraine and has moderated her harsh views on Europe, but there are doubts, given her partners.BRUSSELS — The victory in Italian elections of the far-right and Euroskeptic leader Giorgia Meloni, who once wanted to ditch the euro currency, sent a tremor on Monday through a European establishment worried about a new right-wing shift in Europe.European Union leaders are now watching her coalition’s comfortable victory in Italy, one of its founding members, with caution and some trepidation, despite reassurances from Ms. Meloni, who would be the first far-right nationalist to govern Italy since Mussolini, that she has moderated her views.But it is hard for them to escape a degree of dread. Even given the bloc’s successes in recent years to agree on a groundbreaking pandemic recovery fund and to confront Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, the appeal of nationalists and populists remains strong — and is spreading, a potential threat to European ideals and cohesion.Earlier this month, the far-right Sweden Democrats became the country’s second-largest party and the largest in what is expected to be a right-wing coalition.The economic impact of Covid and now of the war in Ukraine, with high national debt and rocketing inflation, has deeply damaged centrist parties all over Europe. Far-right parties have not only pushed centrist parties to the right, but have also become “normalized,” no longer ostracized, said Charles A. Kupchan, a European expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.“The direction of political momentum is changing — we had a wave of centrism before and during the pandemic, but now it feels like the political table is tilting back in the direction of the populists on the right,” he said. “And that’s a big deal.”Under the outgoing technocratic prime minister Mario Draghi, Italy played an important role in a Europe of weak leadership, both on vital economic issues and the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Italy has now turned away from the European mainstream.An Italy led by Ms. Meloni is likely to be constrained by European control over billions of euros in crucial funding. In the best case, diplomats and analysts say, it will not smash the European consensus, but could severely complicate policymaking.If Ms. Meloni and her coalition partners choose to side with other populist, Euroskeptic leaders inside the European Union, like Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland, she can certainly “gum up the works,” Mr. Kupchan said.For Italy to team up with “Orban and company is Brussels’ nightmare,” said Stefano Stefanini, an analyst and former Italian diplomat. “For over 10 years the E.U. has lived with the fear of being swamped by a tide of Euroskeptic populism,” he said. “Hungary is a pain, but Italy joining forces with Hungary and Poland would be a serious challenge to the mainstream E.U. and would mobilize the far right in other countries.”Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban last month. For Italy to team up with “Orban and company is Brussels’ nightmare,” a former Italian diplomat said.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesThe first European congratulations to her came Sunday night from Hungary. Mr. Orban’s political director, Balazs Orban, said in a Twitter message: “In these difficult times, we need more than ever friends who share a common vision and approach to Europe’s challenges.”Europe’s concerns are less about policy toward Ukraine. Ms. Meloni has said she supports NATO and Ukraine and has no great warmth for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, as her junior coalition partners, Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi, have evinced.Still, Mr. Berlusconi said last week that Mr. Putin “was pushed by the Russian population, by his party, by his ministers to invent this special operation.” The plan, he said, was for Russian troops to enter “in a week to replace Zelensky’s government with a government of decent people.”Italian popular opinion is traditionally sympathetic toward Moscow, with about a third of seats in the new Parliament going to parties with an ambiguous stance on Russia, sanctions, and military aid to Ukraine. As the war proceeds, with all its domestic economic costs, Ms. Meloni may take a less firm view than Mr. Draghi has.Mr. Kupchan expects “the balance of power in Europe will tilt more toward diplomacy and a bit less toward continuing the fight.” That is a view more popular with the populist right than with parties in the mainstream, but it has prominent adherents in Germany and France, too.Supporters of the far-right Sweden Democrats celebrating exit polls near Stockholm this month. Sweden Democrats are now the country’s second-biggest party.Stefan Jerrevang/EPA, via Shutterstock“These elections are another sign that all is not well with mainstream parties,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and spell a complicated period for the European Union.Even the victory a year ago of Olaf Scholz in Germany, a man of the center left, was ensured by the collapse of the center-right Christian Democrats, who had their worst showing in their history, while in April, France’s long-dominant center-right Republicans fell to under 5 percent of the vote.“People in Brussels are extremely anxious about Meloni becoming an E.U. prime minister,” Mr. Leonard said. “They’ve seen how disruptive Orban can be from a small country with no systemic role in the E.U. Meloni says she won’t immediately upend the consensus on Ukraine, but she could be a force for a much more virulent form of Euroskepticism in council meetings.”One or two troublemakers can do a lot of a damage to E.U. decision-making, he said, “but if it’s five or six,” it becomes very hard to obtain coherence or consensus.When the populist Five Star Movement led Italy from 2018 to early 2021, before Mr. Draghi, it created major fights inside Brussels on immigration and asylum issues. Ms. Meloni is expected to concentrate on topics like immigration, identity issues (she despises what she calls “woke ideology”), and future E.U. rules covering debt and fiscal discipline, to replace the outdated growth and stability pact.But analysts think she will pick her fights carefully, given Italy’s debt mountain — over 150 percent of gross domestic product — and the large sums that Brussels has promised Rome as part of the Covid recovery fund. For this year, the amount is 19 billion euros, or about $18.4 billion, nearly 1 percent of Italy’s G.D.P., said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe director for the Eurasia Group, with a total over the next few years of some 10.5 percent of G.D.P.“Draghi has already implemented tough reforms to satisfy Brussels, so there is no reason for her to come in and mess it up and agitate the market,” Mr. Rahman said. But for the future, there are worries that she will push for an expansionist budget, looser fiscal rules and thereby make the more frugal countries of northern Europe less willing to compromise.For Mr. Rahman, the bigger risk for Europe is the loss of influence Italy exercised under Mr. Draghi. He and President Emmanuel Macron of France, “were beginning to create an alternative axis to compete with the vacuum of leadership now in Germany, and all that will be lost,” Mr. Rahman said. Italy will go from a country that leads to one that Europe watches anxiously, he said.Italy’s outgoing Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, left, with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, on their way to Ukraine in June.Pool photo by Ludovic MarinThere was a sign of that anxiety just before the election, when Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, warned that Brussels had “the tools” to deal with Italy if things went in a “difficult direction.” It was seen as a hint that the European Commission could cut funds to Italy if it were deemed to be violating the bloc’s democratic standards.Mr. Salvini, seeing an opportunity, immediately responded: “What is this, a threat? This is shameful arrogance,” and asked Ms. von der Leyen to “respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people” and resist “institutional bullying.”Instead, Mr. Stefanini, the former diplomat, urged Brussels to be patient and to engage with Ms. Meloni. “The new government should be judged on facts, on what it does when in power,” he said. “The real risk is that by exaggerated overreactions the E.U. makes legitimate concerns self-fulfilling prophecies.“If she’s made to feel rejected, she’ll be pushed into a corner — where she’ll find Orban and other soulmates waiting for her, and she’ll team up with them,” he continued. “But if she’s greeted as a legitimate leader, democratically elected, it will be possible for the E.U. to do business with her.”Luuk van Middelaar, a historian of the bloc, also urges caution. European leaders know two things about Italian prime ministers, he said. First, “they are not very powerful at home, and two, they tend not to last very long” — since World War II, an average of about 18 months.“So they will wait and see and not be blown away,” Mr. van Middelaar said. If she lasts longer, however, she could energize other far-right Euroskeptics in other big countries like France, he said, “and that would make a real difference.” More

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      Meloni Faces Early Test of Italy’s Resolve on Russia and Ukraine

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      The hard-right leader Giorgia Meloni has been a full-throated supporter of Ukraine, but her coalition partners have sounded like apologists for Vladimir V. Putin.ROME — Throughout her time in the opposition to Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s national unity government, Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who is poised to become the next Italian prime minister after a strong showing in Sunday’s elections, railed against everything from vaccine requirements to undemocratic power grabs.But on the issue of Ukraine, perhaps the most consequential for the government, she unambiguously criticized Russia’s unwarranted aggression, gave full-throated support for Ukraine’s right to defend itself and, in a recent interview, said she would “totally” continue to provide Italian arms to Kyiv.The same cannot be said for Ms. Meloni’s coalition partners, who have deeply admired Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and have often sounded like his apologists. Just days before the vote, the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, once Mr. Putin’s best friend among leaders in Western Europe, claimed “Putin was pushed by the Russian population, by his party and by his ministers to invent this special operation,” and that a flood of arms from the West had thwarted Russian soldiers in their mission to reach “Kyiv within a week, replace Zelensky’s government with decent people and then leave.”The other coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League party, used to wear T-shirts with Mr. Putin’s face on them and has for years been so fawning toward Russia that he has frequently had to reject accusations that he has taken money from Moscow.Recently, with Ms. Meloni apparently uncomfortable as she sat beside him, Mr. Salvini doubted the wisdom of sanctions on Russia, which he said hurt Italy more than Mr. Putin’s government.How Ms. Meloni navigates those tensions in her coalition will now be a key factor in the European Union’s struggle to keep an unbroken front against Russia as the cost of sanctions begins to bite in winter.Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy, second from right, visited Ukraine in June with leaders from France, Germany and Romania. Under Mr. Draghi, Italy became a key player in Europe’s hard line against Russia.Viacheslav Ratynskyi/ReutersIf she wavers, especially on sanctions, European leaders who have stood up to Mr. Putin all these months fear it could begin a major unraveling of resolve, widening divisions in the European Union and between the United States and Europe.“We are ready to welcome any political force that can show itself to be more constructive in its relations with Russia,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said after the Italian election results, according to the Russian news service Tass.But analysts said Russia should not expect a change from Ms. Meloni anytime soon, believing that her position on Ukraine is credible and that the weak showing of her partners in the election will allow her to keep them in their place without blowing up their alliance.“I put my hand today on fire that she is not going to bend,” said Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Institute for International Affairs in Rome. “She’s very gung-ho about Russia.”Despite a widespread suspicion that political calculation lay behind Ms. Meloni’s pivot during the campaign to less hostile positions on the European Union and away from leaders such as Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France, analysts judged that on the issue of Ukraine, Ms. Meloni was not likely to budge.In the past, Ms. Meloni has admired Mr. Putin’s defense of Christian values, which is consistent with her own traditionalist rhetoric. But unlike other hard-right politicians and newbie nationalists, like Mr. Salvini, Ms. Meloni was raised in a post-Fascist universe in Italy where Russia — and especially Communist internationalists — represented an Eastern force that threatened the sanctity and peculiarities of Western European identities.For Ms. Meloni it was less difficult to step away from the Putin adoration that swept the populist-nationalist right over the last decade. During the campaign, she was happy to point out this difference with her coalition partners, as she was competing with them and it helped differentiate her and reassure the West of her credibility.Pummeling the competition in Sunday’s election will have made it easier to withstand any attempted pressure from Mr. Salvini or Mr. Berlusconi, who both failed to break into double digits in the polls and were thus left with little leverage.In any case, Mr. Berlusconi and Mr. Salvini had already supported the sanctions as part of Mr. Draghi’s national unity government and didn’t bolt over the issue then. Mr. Salvini, who has sought to distance himself from Mr. Putin, was so hobbled by his disastrous performance in the elections that Rome was rife with speculation that he could be replaced as his party’s leader by a more moderate and less ideological governor from the country’s north, where the League has its electoral base.Ms. Meloni meeting with her coalition partners, Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi, in October 2021. The two men admire Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and have often sounded like his apologists.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersThat is not to say Ms. Meloni faces no pressure at home for a more forgiving stance. Italy, a country with deep and long ties to Russia, has long had reservations about sanctions against Moscow and getting involved in foreign wars.“I think we should put the question up to the Italians in a referendum,” Stefano Ferretti, 48, a supporter of Ms. Meloni, said on Election Day. “Let’s see if they really want it.”And Italy is not alone in Europe when it comes to doubts about a continued hard line against Russia, and turning away from its cheap energy, ahead of a cold and economically painful winter.In Prague this month, a day after the Czech government survived a no-confidence vote over accusations that it had failed to act on soaring energy prices, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets to voice outrage on the issue while far-right and fringe groups led many demonstrators in calling for withdrawal from NATO and the European Union. In Sweden, a hard-right party more sympathetic to Mr. Putin was on the winning side in elections this month.Mr. Orban has created complications for the European Union in its efforts to present a united force against Mr. Putin by demanding, and receiving, carve-outs for oil imports in exchange for agreeing to an embargo on Russian crude oil imports, a sanctions measure that required unanimity among member countries. On Monday, Mr. Orban applauded Ms. Meloni’s victory, writing on Facebook: “Bravo Giorgia, A more than deserved victory. Congratulations!”But analysts did not foresee Italy, under Ms. Meloni, playing the same games Hungary has done with sanctions. In her acceptance speech, she emphasized “responsibility” and experts said she was a savvy politician who clearly understood that Italy’s leaving the fold would break the bloc’s Russia strategy.As a reminder, though, only days before the vote, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, responded to a question about “figures close to Putin” poised to win elections in Italy by saying, “We’ll see.”“If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools,” she said.Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League party, used to wear T-shirts with Mr. Putin’s face on them.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe tools included the cutting of funds for member states that Brussels considers in violation of the rule of law. Last week, the commission — which is the European Union’s executive arm — proposed to cut €7.5 billion of funds allocated to Hungary.But Italy is a central pillar not only of the European Union, but of its united front against Russia. Aldo Ferrari, head of the Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia Program at the Institute for International Political Studies in Milan, said Ms. Meloni had made her position “amply clear” throughout the election campaign, and that it was through Ukraine that she “sought legitimacy” among international leaders, especially members of the European Union and NATO.And as Russia is an ever less attractive ally, its pull on the West diminishes. The decision by countries of the European Union to endure economic pain together made it less likely that Italy, which is so woven into the fabric of the union, would break.“Our inclusion in the European Union and NATO,” Mr. Ferrari said, overcame the will “of individual politicians and individual countries.”Under Mr. Draghi, Italy became a key player in Europe’s hard line against Russia, which he has framed as an existential issue that will define the contours and values of the continent for decades to come.While some liberals had hoped he would rally to their side during the election campaign, or at least nod that he preferred them, Mr. Draghi stayed out of it completely. Analysts say he saw the polls, and the writing on the wall, and decided the most prudent coarse of action for his platform, legacy and, some critics say, future ambitions, was a smooth transition of power to Ms. Meloni.“I have a good relationship with Draghi,” Ms. Meloni said in an interview earlier this month. She said that more than once, “He could trust in us much more than the parties he had in his majority.”“Look on Ukraine,” she said. “On Ukraine, we made the foreign policy.”Elisabetta Povoledo More

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      Giorgia Meloni Leads Voting in Italy, in Breakthrough for Europe’s Hard Right

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      ROME — Italy appeared to turn a page of European history on Sunday by electing a hard-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, whose long record of bashing the European Union, international bankers and migrants has sown concern about the nation’s reliability in the Western alliance. Early projections based on a narrow sampling of precincts, as well as exit polls, on Sunday night suggested that Ms. Meloni, the leader of the nationalist Brothers of Italy, a party descended from the remnants of fascism, had led a right-wing coalition to a majority in Parliament, defeating a fractured left and a resurgent anti-establishment movement. The final results would not be clear until Monday, and it will still be weeks before the new Italian parliament is seated and a new government is formed, leaving plenty of time for political machinations. But Ms. Meloni’s strong showing, with about 25 percent of the vote, the highest of any single party, makes her the prohibitive favorite to become the country’s first female prime minister. While she is a strong supporter of Ukraine, her coalition partners deeply admire Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and have criticized sanctions against Russia.“From the Italians has arrived a clear indication,” Ms. Meloni, known for her crescendoing rhetoric and cult of personality, said in a measured victory speech at nearly 3 a.m., “for the center-right to guide Italy.”After saying she had suffered through a “violent electoral campaign” filled with unfair attacks, Ms. Meloni spoke about “reciprocal respect” and recreating “trust in the institutions.” She posed flashing a victory sign. “We are at the starting point,” she said, adding, “Italy chose us, and we will never betray it.”The victory, in an election with lower turnout than usual, comes as formerly taboo and marginalized parties with Nazi or fascist heritages are entering the mainstream — and winning elections — across Europe. This month, a hard-right group founded by neo-Nazis and skinheads became the largest party in Sweden’s likely governing coalition. In France this year, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen — for a second consecutive time — reached the final round of presidential elections. In Spain, the hard-right Vox, a party closely aligned with Ms. Meloni, is surging.But it is Italy, the birthplace of fascism and a founding member of the European Union, that has sent the strongest shock wave across the continent after a period of European-centric stability led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who directed hundreds of billions of euros in recovery funds to modernize Italy and helped lead Europe’s strong response to Russia. Giorgia Meloni preparing to cast her vote at a polling station in Rome on Sunday.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times“This is a sad day for the country,” Debora Serracchiani, a leader of the Democratic Party, which will now lead the opposition, said in a statement early Monday morning.Ms. Meloni’s victory showed that the allure of nationalism — of which she is a strong advocate — remained undimmed, despite the breakthroughs by E.U. nations in coming together to pool sovereignty and resources in recent years, first to combat the coronavirus pandemic and then Mr. Putin’s initiation of the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.How, and how deeply, a right-wing coalition in Italy led by Ms. Meloni could threaten that cohesion is now the foremost concern of the European establishment.Ms. Meloni has staunchly, and consistently, supported Ukraine and its right to defend itself against Russian aggression. But her coalition partners — Matteo Salvini, the firebrand leader of the League, and the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi — have clearly aligned themselves with Mr. Putin, questioning sanctions and echoing his propaganda. That fracture, and the bitter competition between the right-wing leaders, could prove fatal for the coalition, leading to a short-lived government. But some political analysts say Ms. Meloni, having attained power, may be tempted to soften her support for sanctions, which are unpopular in much of Italy. If she does, there is concern that Italy could be the weak link that breaks the European Union’s strong united position against Russia.Ms. Meloni had spent the campaign seeking to reassure an international audience that her support of Ukraine was unwavering. She sought to allay concerns by condemning Mussolini, whom she once admired, and Italy’s Fascist past. She also made more supportive noises about Italy’s place in the European Union and distanced herself from Ms. Le Pen and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, whom she had previously emulated. But that pivoting was more for international markets than Italian voters, who didn’t much care about her past, or even her affinity for illiberal democracies. The Italian electorate had not moved to the right, political scientists said, but instead again resorted to a perennial desire for a new leader who could possibly, and providentially, solve all its ills. Ms. Meloni found herself in the right place at the right time. Hers was virtually the only major party to remain outside Mr. Draghi’s national unity government, allowing her to soak up an increasing share of the opposition. Her support surged from 4 percent to nearly about 25 percent.After a revolt by a party in Mr. Draghi’s broad unity government in July, the right-wing parties, eager to go to elections they were favored to win, sensed opportunity and bolted, with Ms. Meloni in the pole position.There is little concern in the Italian establishment that she will undermine Italian democracy — she has been a consistent advocate for elections during unelected technocratic governments and has long served in Parliament. There is also a widespread belief that Italy’s dependence on hundreds of billions of euros in relief funds from the European Union will force Ms. Meloni and her government to follow the spending plans, reforms and overall blueprint established by Mr. Draghi. The money comes in tranches and the plans have to meet strict criteria. If she reverses course, Italy could lose out on billions of essentially free euros as rising energy prices and inflation — much of it stemming from the sanctions against Russia — are expected to worsen in coming months.Giorgia Meloni, addressing supporters during a rally in Piazza Duomo in Milan earlier this month.Piero Cruciatti/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut there is concern about Ms. Meloni’s lack of experience and her party’s lack of technical expertise, especially in running the eurozone’s third-largest economy, and Mr. Draghi has kept in close touch with her, both to ensure her support for Ukraine and, insiders say, to help find someone who can provide economic continuity.Nevertheless, Ms. Meloni represents a historic break at the top of Italian government. She came of political age in a post-Fascist, hard right that sought to redefine itself by seizing on new symbols and texts, especially “The Lord of the Rings” and other works by the British writer J.R.R. Tolkien, to distance itself from the taboos of Fascism. She grew up with a single mother in a working-class area of Rome, and being a woman, and mother, has been central to her political identity. She once ran for mayor while pregnant because she said powerful men had told her she couldn’t. Her most famous speech includes the refrain “I am a woman. I am a mother.” Being a woman has also distinguished her, and marked a major shift, from her coalition partners, especially Mr. Berlusconi, the subject of endless sex scandals.But Ms. Meloni, Mr. Berlusconi and Mr. Salvini share a hard-right vision for the country. Ms. Meloni has called for a naval blockade against migrants and spread fears about a “great replacement” of native Italians. The three share populist proposals for deep tax cuts that economists fear would inflate Italy’s already enormous debt, and a traditionalist view of the family that liberals worry will at least freeze in place gay rights and which could, in practice, roll back abortion rights.Despite the constraints of an Italian Constitution that is explicitly anti-Fascist and designed to stymie the rise of another Mussolini, many liberals are now worried that the right-wing coalition will erode the country’s norms. There was concern that if the coalition were to win two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, it would have the ability to change the Constitution to increase government powers. From left to right, Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi, and Giorgia Meloni attending the final rally of the center-right coalition in Rome on Thursday.Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressOn Thursday, during one of Ms. Meloni’s final rallies before the election, she exclaimed that “if the Italians give us the numbers to do it, we will.”But the coalition appeared not to hit that mark. The main party of the left, the Democratic Party, all but guaranteed its defeat by failing to heal its differences with other liberal and centrist parties, including a new group of moderates. The moderates, backed by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and attracting some former leaders of Mr. Berlusconi’s party, who were disillusioned with his following of the hard right, did better than expected, but still seemed to remain in the single digits.What really held the right back from a landslide were their former governing partners, the Five Star Movement, the once anti-establishment movement that triggered the collapse of Mr. Draghi’s government when it revolted in July.In 2018, the party’s burn-down-the-elite rhetoric led it to become the country’s most popular party and largest force in Parliament. Years of governing — first with the hard-right Mr. Salvini, and then with the Democratic Party, and then under Mr. Draghi — exposed its incompetence and infighting and it imploded. It seemed on the brink of extinction. But during the campaign, led by former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the party surged in the country’s underserved south.That development was mainly because Five Star passed a broad unemployment benefit known as the “citizen’s income,” which though roundly criticized by moderates and the right as a handout to the lazy and a disincentive to work, has become a cherished benefit.As a result, Five Star appeared to be becoming the party of the south.“This is what is emerging,” said Angelo Tofalo, himself a southerner and a leader in the party, as he cheered Mr. Conte, at a rally in Rome on Friday. He said the party had laid down deep roots in the south, but acknowledged, “the citizen’s income is a factor.”That unexpected strength ate into Ms. Meloni’s support, while she devoured the backing of the League party of Mr. Salvini. Only years ago he was the country’s most popular populist. Now he appeared to sink to single digits. Mr. Berlusconi, once the hinge upon which the coalition turned, and who legitimized the marginalized post-Fascists and secessionist League in the 1990s, also registered a modest result.But together they had enough to govern and Ms. Meloni had the clearest claim on the office of prime minister during negotiations and consultations with Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, which will take place over the next month. The new government is likely to be seated in late October or early November.But the message of the end of a period of European taboos, and of new change, has already been sent.Ms. Meloni said in one of her last interviews before the election that her victory would be “a redemption” for all the people who “for decades had to keep their heads down” and who had an “alternative vision from the mainstream of the system of power.”Elisabetta Povoledo More