• 305: Italy’s Election Paradox: Why America and the EU Should Root for a Far-Right Populist, submitted on 2022-09-26 07:26:16+08:00.
• 306: What Mobilization Means for Russia: The End of Putin’s Bargain With the People, submitted on 2022-09-27 22:57:35+08:00.
• 307: Iran’s Crisis of Legitimacy: An Embattled Regime Faces Mass Protests—and an Ailing Supreme Leader, submitted on 2022-09-29 00:08:51+08:00.

305: Italy’s Election Paradox: Why America and the EU Should Root for a Far-Right Populist, submitted on 2022-09-26 07:26:16+08:00.

—– 305.1 —–2022-09-26 07:35:51+08:00:

[SS from the essay by Elettra Ardissino, Europe Analyst at Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm and Erik Jones, Director of the Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.]

Now that Meloni has consolidated her leadership among protest voters, she has every incentive to present herself as a reliable prime minister in waiting and to bolster her international credibility. She knows that the long-term viability of her government will depend on whether markets accept her leadership. She is thus making efforts to appear mainstream. Recently, she reassured allies that her government would remain committed to supporting Ukraine. She also clarified that, contrary to her previous pronouncements, she unequivocally supports Italy’s membership in the eurozone. And the joint election manifesto that Meloni agreed on with Salvini and Berlusconi is broadly reassuring to moderates: it promises “respect for [Italy’s] commitments as part of the Atlantic Alliance” and “full adherence to European integration.”

Salvini wants to challenge Meloni’s leadership, and he can do so only by clawing back the protest vote. His strategy is to outflank Meloni on the extremes. Lega has proposed a flat tax to replace the existing progressive income tax and a pension reform that would give every Italian access to a full pension after 41 years of employment. Estimates suggest that these plans alone would cost an additional 57 billion euros annually, roughly 3.3 percent of gross domestic product. Such plans for heavy borrowing would likely spark another budget showdown with Brussels, similar to one that Salvini engineered in 2018. In turn, this might create another market crisis of confidence in Italy, a highly indebted economy facing poor demographic prospects and a grim forecast for economic growth. It would be made worse by the fact that the European Central Bank has made it clear that it will not step in to prevent market turmoil in member states that do not abide by Brussels’s fiscal rules. A crisis of confidence in Italy’s ability to service its debt might call into question the long-term viability of the common currency, as it did in 2011-12. From a geopolitical standpoint, too, Salvini’s stance is unreliable. A few weeks ago, he publicly called for a reconsideration of EU sanctions on Russia, though he later backtracked…

The difficulty for Meloni is to find a way to moderate or accommodate Salvini without reducing her credibility with EU partners and international investors. By compromising with him on these issues, Meloni would risk fracturing the West’s united front on Ukraine, starting a fight with the EU over budgets, or both—a nightmare scenario. Even if Meloni holds firm, the very presence of a strong Salvini within her government would raise doubts about how long she would be able to sustain his pressure.

306: What Mobilization Means for Russia: The End of Putin’s Bargain With the People, submitted on 2022-09-27 22:57:35+08:00.

—– 306.1 —–2022-09-27 23:01:08+08:00:

[SS from the essay by Michael Kimmage, Professor of History at the Catholic University of America, and Maria Lipman, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies of George Washington University]

The conscription represents a dramatic turning point in the war, and in Putin’s rule. The Kremlin expected the war to be brief. When it did not end quickly, Putin found a way of waging it that was consistent with the political style he has employed since coming to power in 2000. The few Russians who thrilled to the war’s imperial promises could wave the flag and display the letter “z,” the official symbol of the war. Those who were apprehensive or disturbed by the war could quietly harbor their uncertainties. Those voicing discontent in public were invariably punished: thousands were arrested for marching or holding signs that read, among other things, net vojne (“no to war”) or the phrase dva slova—“two words,” a euphemism for net vojne. Nobody could come out against the government or give voice to their dissent in the public sphere. Any organizing against the war was strictly prohibited, and violators have been harshly punished.
This response was not fascism, despite the common application of that term to describe Putin’s rule. It was, instead, the preservation of an atomized and compliant society, one that was securely apolitical and that would not disrupt the Kremlin’s actions. For this atomization to stay in effect, the war had to remain far away. It had to be a mutable abstraction onto which Russians’ subjective attitudes could be projected, whether they were pro-war or antiwar. Polling data suggest that, prior to the mobilization, the war retained the support of more than 75 percent of Russians. Such acquiescence was the best possible public response from the Kremlin’s point of view. Indifference was a close second.

But the war did not go as planned, and Putin has run out of options.

307: Iran’s Crisis of Legitimacy: An Embattled Regime Faces Mass Protests—and an Ailing Supreme Leader, submitted on 2022-09-29 00:08:51+08:00.

—– 307.1 —–2022-09-29 00:15:04+08:00:

[SS from the essay by Sanam Vakil, Deputy Director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program.]

On September 17, the ayatollah made a televised appearance at a mourning ceremony for Arbaeen, the national holiday commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, whose death during the seventh-century Battle of Karbala is a foundational event in Shiite history and theology. At the ceremony, Khamenei could be seen not just sitting upright but standing, waving, and striding around with a microphone exhorting his audience to ignore “bandits” whose lies might undermine their faith. The cane Khamenei has used in public for more than 40 years was nowhere to be seen.
But within hours, Khamenei’s carefully choreographed reemergence had been overshadowed as protests that erupted in northwestern Iran that morning at the funeral of 22-year-old Mahsa Amiri—whose death following her arrest by Tehran’s religious police over an improperly tied headscarf sparked widespread outrage—began to spread to nearby cities. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s government, distracted by the president’s first appearance on the world stage, at the UN General Assembly in New York, was caught off guard. Over the next few days, as Khamenei made several more public appearances, all exhaustively covered by Iranian state media, the demonstrations—many of them led by young women, some of whom brazenly burned their headscarfs in public to protest the mandatory veiling requirements—spread to more than 80 cities across Iran. The protests have continued to intensify, and calls to abolish the religious police have given way to full-throated attacks on the clerical establishment and on the supreme leader himself. The current protests are now believed to be the most serious challenge Iran’s government has confronted since the Green Movement protests in 2009. A series of challenges facing the Iranian regime—widening frustration over social restrictions; outrage over economic collapse and mismanagement; and seething anger at Khamenei and a clerical establishment that has shown little regard for the needs of the people—have now converged into a crisis of legitimacy for the Islamic Republic.