One month into Trump’s second presidency, many have heard echoes of America’s late 19th-century foreign policy in his aggressive protectionism and his penchant for an older form of imperialism, from the gentlemanly sport of buying and swapping territories to the violent colonial expulsion he has proposed for the people of Gaza. But, beyond Trump, today’s Western far right has a close but contradictory relationship to the imperial age.
Imperial Nostalgia
Of course, many of these far-right parties trace their lineage to 20th-century attempts to protect the crumbling imperial global order with the glory and spoils it guaranteed to older powers and promised for newer ones. But even those without fascist or colonial roots still loudly proclaim their nostalgia for the most violent and exploitative points in their nations’ pasts. They imagine this past as a time when their states could ensure adequate provision for their citizens through the domination of those outside of their national, ethnic, and racial communities. After all, as Eric Hobsbawm writes, “never did white men of European descent dominate [the world] with less challenge [than in the third quarter of the nineteenth century].”
In the 21st century, that kind of empire-building is no longer possible. European global domination was established through the unmatched technological advantages of “the gunboat and the expeditionary force,” meaning domination usually cost relatively few lives. Conversely, in the post-war world, most states—and many non-state actors—possess the same types of military technology, making invasions often long and expensive quagmires. International power has come to rest on more than just military strength: it requires economic, technological, and diplomatic prowess and the ability to weaponize interdependence in decentralized institutional environments. Western hegemony has not ended, but, for the far right, it has become Americanized, bureaucratized, demilitarized, financialized, and woke. Imperialism has not ended, but the new forms it takes produce little unity or glory for the nation.
Western hegemony has not ended, but, for the far right, it has become Americanized, bureaucratized, demilitarized, financialized, and woke. Imperialism has not ended, but the new forms it takes produce little unity or glory for the nation.
If the foreign policy of the far right seems confused and inconsistent, it is partly a result of this tension between imperial nostalgia and the realities of today’s world. Some, like former French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, still insist on a return to outright colonialism; some just wish to smash the institutions of liberal internationalism; others, like Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, pick what aspects they oppose based on their particular grievances. What has emerged from this confusion is a set of loosely connected, half-tried principles and ideas. What is most interesting about Giorgia Meloni’s foreign policy is its seeming attempt to unite, modernize, and implement these whims in a more coherent manner.
The New Realism
Many of the far right’s criticisms of liberal internationalism center around state power. In their view, international institutions prevent member states from pursuing policies according to their national interests and unique cultural priorities. Transnational corporations and competition erode traditional businesses, industries, and ways of life. They see the nation-state being subsumed into a broader “global administrative state” staffed by a new class of professional bureaucrats and managers committed to using state resources to spread and enforce liberal ideas and institutions.
Against this, nationalist and illiberal governments, like Narendra Modi and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s, have fashioned new foreign policies around more assertive pursuits of geopolitical power, strategic self-sufficiency where possible, autonomy—but not realignment—from traditional allies, and politicized foreign policy institutions. These efforts collectively imply a new “realism”: a growing emphasis on prioritizing hard power and avoiding dependency.
The efforts of illiiberal governments imply a new “realism”: a growing emphasis on prioritizing hard power and avoiding dependency.
Meloni and her Brothers of Italy (FdI)-led government has followed this trend. The government’s Defense Minister has sought to increase the political power and integration of the armed forces with other state institutions. They have increased and courted investment in defense technology, namely cyber and AI capabilities, heavy artillery, aeronautical systems, and naval capacities. Italy has also forged new alliances. Despite canceling Italy’s Belt and Road Initiative agreement, Meloni initiated a diplomatic offensive with China, signing a deal for closer coordination, particularly “in the fields of shipbuilding, aerospace, new energy, artificial intelligence.”
To become a strong and autonomous middle power, Meloni has placed great emphasis on acquiring stable, high-value geopolitical instruments and diplomatic links.
But the FdI government has understood that in today’s world order, hard power is not enough. To become a strong and autonomous middle power, Meloni has placed great emphasis on acquiring stable, high-value geopolitical instruments and diplomatic links, represented by her Mattei Plan. This envisions significant investment throughout Africa, aiming to halt refugee movements while turning Italy into an “energy hub.” So far, it consists of 17 infrastructural, agricultural, educational, and medical projects in nine countries, alongside four regional ones. The most significant ones include plans for a hydrogen-ready pipeline from Tunisia to central Europe, the interconnection of electricity grids across North African states, biofuel production in Kenya, and renewable energy projects elsewhere in Central Africa.
Towards Western powers, the hope is that an Italian energy hub would allow the country to compete with the European agenda-setting power of France and Germany—long a focus of Meloni’s campaign rhetoric—as well as insulate the party from EU pressure and punishments. Further away, the Plan’s aim looks more assertive. Meloni is most candid about this initiative’s diplomatic goals, seeking to increase Italian political and economic influence “in areas of Africa where Italy has not been traditionally present.” To that end, instead of investing in national private sectors, as other EU states tend to, Meloni has relied on “national champions”: large, state-controlled firms, like ENI, the leading Italian oil and gas company. Furthermore, critics have noted the top-down nature of these plans, which have often excluded civil society organizations. Consequently, African NGOs have labeled this “neo-colonialism,” allowing Italy to extract cheap energy, sidestep local economies, and gain coercive leverage over African governments.
The New Multilateralism
Meloni’s push for greater unilateral geopolitical power seems at odds with her willingness to work with mainstream conservative EU leaders and parliamentary groups and her strong Atlanticism. Commentators have noted how “moderate” her international behavior has been, a welcome surprise given many European far-right parties are passionately Euroskeptic and retain links to Vladimir Putin’s regime. It is all the more odd considering Italian public opinion is more skeptical of NATO than most other member states.
This overlooks the “varieties of Euroskepticism” that do see a place for multilateralism, even if they brand current institutions as paternalistic, technocratic, and globalist. Guillaume Faye, a key intellectual figure of the Nouvelle Droite, supported early European integration efforts, which he described as “a common agricultural policy and a philosophy of continental protectionism.” Such views have been particularly prominent in Italy. Giorgio Almirante, the founder and longtime leader of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) party, often voiced support for a united European far-right party and a right-wing EU that could bolster European autonomy from American geopolitical and cultural hegemony. When the MSI fractured in the late 1990s, its more moderate branch supported continental investment in technology and energy. FdI descends from both parties.
There are varieties of Euroskepticism that do see a place for multilateralism, even if they brand current institutions as paternalistic, technocratic, and globalist.
Between the rhetoric of Orbán and Meloni, a clearer image of what a contemporary “Europe of Strong Nations” would look like has emerged. In it, the EU would be reformed towards a more confederal structure, relinquishing its regulatory, technocratic, and monetary powers in favor of closer coordination on strategic areas: security, migration, and infrastructure and technological investments. It would be stripped of its bureaucratic and interest-forming functions and, instead, become national power amplifiers. The EU would play a facilitating role, providing resources individual states cannot muster, a forum for states to avoid over-extension, and motivation towards mutually beneficial initiatives.
Meloni has become a bridge between liberal and illiberal party groupings, making cooperation—and establishment concessions—easier to achieve.
Earlier advocates of “sovereign internationalism” have mostly lacked a real strategy for transformation. Orbán has been particularly obstructive and transactional within the EU and frequently calls for like-minded groups to “occupy” the EU to little avail. Instead of antagonism, Meloni has adopted a more cooperative approach by refusing to join the most extreme far-right EU party groupings and demonstrating an ability to dissuade more intransigent allies, namely Orbán, from vetoing EU Commission initiatives, like aid for Ukraine. She has become a bridge between liberal and illiberal party groupings, making cooperation—and establishment concessions—easier to achieve. Using her leverage, she has removed pro-abortion and LGBT language from official EU statements and blocked environmental reforms.
More ambitiously, Meloni has sought to build new norms for a faciliatory EU. First, to center national foreign policy over EU initiatives, she has used her Mattei Plan to lead the EU, best seen in the 2023 Tunisia-EU deal. The government, on its own, could not marshal sufficient funds to achieve its dual goals in Tunisia of energy investment and aggressive refugee policing from the local government. Consequently, Meloni took on a unilateral diplomatic offensive, incentivizing significant investments from Italian firms and negotiating a set of joint infrastructure projects. She involved the EU only after she had secured economic and diplomatic relations. The EU ultimately agreed to release €127 million to the Tunisian government. In January, Meloni stated that “Europeanizing” the Mattei Plan was a primary goal for 2025, by linking investments to existing European and G7 projects.
Second, Italian diplomacy has focused on EU geopolitical insecurities, demonstrating how uncoordinated foreign policymaking can guarantee collective benefits. Tackling Europe’s energy insecurity is a clear example, but it is also visible in attempts to forge closer economic and diplomatic ties with former French colony African states currently shifting towards Russia or China, particularly Algeria and Sahel states. This suggests a further goal: decentralization would allow the EU to maintain and renew its influence with—and power over—weaker countries, even if individual member states face local backlash.
The New State
There appears to be tension between the goal of increasing the geopolitical power of the Italian state and the prominence given to private firms in the Mattei Plan. The firms that Meloni relies on—from energy firms ENI and ENEL to military firms Leonardo and Fincantieri—are all ones where the Italian state is the largest, but often not the majority, shareholder. Meloni has aggressively increased the state’s stake in these companies and has often prioritized other firms with similar ownership structures for contracts related to the Plan.
These moves underscore a broader interventionist approach towards large and strategic Italian firms. One motivator of this new approach is domestic: to “cement power” over domestic economic institutions by ramping up investment in state-controlled firms to create national champions in a variety of sectors. However, the government has focused most closely on “strategic” firms in both their rhetoric and action. Meloni has appointed political allies to senior and executive positions at these firms and has been increasingly present in their financial negotiations, even blocking the previous government’s agreement to sell control of the national airline to an American-led consortium. Her use of the state’s “Golden Powers” to intervene in investments and transactions of strategic firms has risen even beyond the record highs set by the previous government.
One think tank described this as a nascent “state capitalism”; others may hear echoes of fascist Italy’s corporatismo. But it is better to understand this as part of the same strategy of institutionalization and state reformation pursued by other far-right populists who seek not only to change national policy, but to embed their values, policies, and strategies in the machinery of the state and the economy where they may remain even after these parties lose power. It resembles the economic policies of Orbán, who has sought to “build and co-opt” a domestic and politically aligned collection of powerful business owners. But, with the additional step of turning these firms into agents of national foreign policy, the FdI wishes to make their profit-making opportunities inseparable from state pursuits of geopolitical power, aligning financial markets with the project.
Illiberal Hegemony
It is worth distinguishing between the potential of these policies and the actual effect they have had. These plans have already faced political setbacks in Tunisia and economic ones in Kenya; there are significant doubts about the overall money committed to these projects and the ability of the stagnant Italian economy to sustain them. Moreover, frustration with Meloni’s conciliatory EU diplomacy is growing among her far-right allies. Over the summer, she was unable to use her position to determine EU Commission appointments and, for all her moderate international posing, she has since run into trouble with both the Commission and the ICC.
Perhaps then, the biggest innovation of this policy program is its ability to simultaneously lodge an illiberal critique of the liberal international order while affirming—and redefining—many of its core concerns. All three principles of Meloni’s foreign policy reflect a greater willingness to engage with and work through establishment institutions, with the goal of re-orienting them around a more nationalistic and realist policy platform. This is only clearer in her rhetoric.
All three principles of Meloni’s foreign policy reflect a greater willingness to engage with and work through establishment institutions, with the goal of re-orienting them around a more nationalistic and realist policy platform.
Discussion of the Mattei Plan combines an emphasis on energy security with new discourses on climate change. Most of the Plan’s funding comes from the Italian Climate Fund and recent initiatives have attempted to design new financial instruments for accumulating private financing for environmental initiatives in partner countries. Despite mixed results, Meloni often singles out renewable energy projects in speeches and press releases. Meloni’s rhetoric around engagement with African countries reflects this too, lodging a criticism of “liberal imperialism.” In contrast to other aid models used by Western states, Meloni claims her plan is “not predatory, not paternalistic, but not charitable either.” Italy will not hoist liberal, cosmopolitan values on states of the Global South, she insists, but will let them choose their policies. Unlike older fascists, today’s far right does not look to colonize weaker others: they hope for a world where civilizations can pursue their own goals, secure in their faith that their power will be guaranteed by the competition of the global market. Despite their rejections of liberal internationalism, their vocabulary retains a thin understanding of global rights and takes clear inspiration from dominant free market norms.
Meloni’s reforms are unlikely to either revive far-right visions of their imperial past or unite her disparate allies. But while other illiberal leaders, like Trump and Putin, look to change the global political order through shock and fury, Meloni’s tightrope-walking strategy offers a smoother journey into the world of nationalist realpolitik, one capable of winning over support from allies and mainstream parties alike.
Alberto Polimeni is a researcher based in London. He has an MA in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA in War Studies and Philosophy from King’s College London. His research is interested in how far-right populist parties make strategic political decisions, how they prompt systemic changes in political systems, and their emerging foreign policy ideas.
Image made by Aaron Irion using “Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, Giorgia Meloni – 2023,” by Visit of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, to Malta licensed under CC Attribution 4.0 International and images in the public domain.
