| | | | | | |  Spanish far-right party Vox leader Santiago Abascal during a campaign meeting in Palma de Mallorca on July 14 ahead of the general election. (Jaime Reina/AFP/Getty Images) |
Five years ago, Spain’s foreign minister explained why his country had so far resisted the siren song of right-wing populism. “We have been vaccinated by the [Spanish] civil war and by the long years of [Francisco] Franco’s dictatorship,” Josep Borrell told me in an interview in Washington, arguing that Spain’s turbulent experience of anti-democratic, fascist rule inoculated it from the “virus” of ascendant nativism and illiberalism seen in some of its European neighbors. Half a decade later, Borrell, now the European Union’s top diplomat, may be wondering whether the continent — and, in particular, his nation — is in need of a booster dose. Spanish voters go to the polls Sunday in a snap election that could well see the far right return to power for the first time since the era of Franco’s dictatorship, which fell almost a half century ago. Opinion polls show the right-wing establishment People’s Party (PP) ahead of Spain’s center-left Socialists, who have been in power in coalition governments for the past eight years. But if given a mandate to form the next government, the PP will likely need support from ultranationalist Vox, a party to which some PP politicians vowed never to find common cause. Vox is a faction that’s a little more than a decade old. It emerged from the far-right fringes, steeped in an ethos of Catholic traditionalism, animosity to Catalonian and Basque separatism, antipathy to migration, climate science denialism, and ideological fury at pro-feminist and pro-LGBTQ+ laws and protections in Spanish society. Despite the PP’s initial aversion to Vox, the more mainstream right-wing party has in the last couple years allied with the latter to form a handful of local and regional governments. Now, Vox’s particular brew of 21st-century culture warring and 20th-century illiberalism has earned it a solid base of some 10 to 15 percent of the Spanish vote. It’s a bloc that’s no longer on the margins of Spanish politics and may determine the fate and agenda of the country’s next government. That’s certainly the warning of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who urged voters to opt against bringing the values of former president Donald Trump or former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, both far-right firebrands, to the halls of power in Madrid. But never mind the politics across the Atlantic. The developments in Spain mark only the latest, albeit perhaps most striking, chapter in a larger European story. Steadily, far-right parties once considered beyond the pale have entered into the continent’s mainstream and in many places wield genuine power. Illiberal nationalists already rule in Italy, Poland and Hungary, and support governments in Finland and Sweden. The far-right is surging in Austria and Germany — where, dramatically, recent polls show the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, overtaking the ruling Social Democrats and their allies, the Greens. There’s no single source for the momentum of powering these movements. In a recent essay in the Journal of Democracy, German political scientist Michael Bröning pointed to a “collapse of trust” in political institutions that is “compounded by an extraordinary lack of optimism” felt by many in the European public, certainly in Germany. In such a gloomy void, far-right nativists offer a simpler, emotive appeal than their establishment counterparts. “As the soft-spoken nationalism of mainstream European parties made it impossible to integrate the continent and erect a continental public power that would respond to the many worries of Europeans, the far right has stepped in with its overt, aggressive ethnic nationalism, offering the masses intimidated and confused by the problems of the modern era a familiar place of shelter: the ethnic nation,” wrote Italian academics Lorenzo Marsili and Fabrizio Tassinari. Meanwhile, the far right in quite a few European countries has co-opted or supplanted the center right that once held sway. The most illustrative case in point is Italy, whose Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni leads a party that can trace its political lineage to Italy’s 20th century neofascist movement. “The distinction between what is the mainstream right and what is the far right is less and less clear,” Pietro Castelli Gattinara, an Italian scholar of the far right, explained in an interview last year. “It’s also more difficult to set apart the European model from what we’re seeing in the U.S. and in other parts of the world, where similarly, the distinction is becoming less and less clear.” What’s clearer now than, say, half a decade ago, is that Europe’s far right finds itself closer to continental power and influence. Last week, Meloni beamed virtually into a Vox rally in Spain, urging solidarity among “patriots” in Europe. “It is crucial that a conservative, patriotic alternative be established,” she said. “Europe needs to become aware of its role and influence again to be a political giant instead of a bureaucratic one.” That larger illiberal vision for Europe is no longer just a fantasy lurking in the demagoguery of fringe populists or the gnarled resentment of politicians like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “We tend to idealize the E.U. as an inherently progressive or even cosmopolitan project — making it seemingly incompatible with far-right thinking,” wrote Hans Kundnani, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. But, he went on, that implicit faith in the E.U.’s “expression of cosmopolitanism” may have blinded analysts to other political possibilities, including the embrace of a European project tethered more around what he calls “ethnoregionalism,” or a narrow European identity that’s connected to the “idea of whiteness.” Kundnani added that far-right parties are also defying assumptions around their inability to cooperate and coordinate on the international stage, and, instead, “seem to be cooperating with each other quite effectively — and some may even be willing to accept further integration, for example on migration policy, provided it is on their terms.” Marsili and Tassinari concur: “As opposed to the superficial Euroscepticism of its previous incarnations, the new European far right increasingly uses Europe, its institutions and its superior negotiating power to its own advantage.” Spain assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union this month. There’s the distinct possibility that a far-right-backed government may soon be in a commanding position to push policy in Brussels. | | | 1,000 Words A Bradley at the secret workshop. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post) |
 A 47th Brigade soldier works on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post) |
Reporting from the Zaporizhzhia region, our colleagues report on how Ukraine’s new Bradley Fighting Vehicles face damage and quick, often secret, repairs: The Ukrainian commander of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle planned to transport three injured soldiers back to a field hospital. “But in that one minute, you suddenly have 30, 40, 50 shells flying in — everything explodes, soil is flying around, everything lights up,” said the commander, CZ. The Bradley — a heavily armed troop transporter that can destroy other armored vehicles — was damaged by shrapnel, but CZ and his crew survived. In the opening month of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, newly provided Bradleys and German Leopard tanks — predictably — have taken hits. Many have been fixed and returned to the battlefield. Some must be sent to Poland for more extensive repairs. Ukraine has several secret locations near the front where its brigades rush to repair new Western weaponry. | | | Talking Points• Ukraine has begun firing U.S.-provided cluster munitions against Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials. On Sunday, Putin threatened to retaliate with the Kremlin’s own supply although Russia has already used the bombs in populated areas of Ukraine at least 24 times in the war, according to the U.N. Cluster bombs, outlawed in more than 120 countries, explode in the air over a target, releasing dozens to hundreds of smaller bomblets across an area potentially as big as several football fields. Children are particularly vulnerable, as the submunitions can fail to explode until they’re picked up, potentially years after a conflict has ended. • Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports. • Our colleague William Booth reports on the growing desire in Europe to attach names to extreme heat events, which are becoming so common that they sometimes blur together in people’s consciousness. But what naming system to use, which forecasts warrant names and who should make the calls are far from settled. • Iraq’s prime minister said he was expelling the Swedish ambassador after that country’s government allowed a protest in Stockholm in which a copy of the Quran was desecrated. • Egypt announced presidential pardons for two of its most prominent political prisoners: Patrick George Zaki, a human rights researcher who was jailed after publishing an article regarding the treatment of the Christian minority in Egypt, and and Mohamed El-Baqer, a human rights lawyer. Advocacy groups say tens of thousands of political prisoners have been detained during President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi’s decade in power, some on the basis of social media posts deemed critical of the government. | | | Top of The PostBy Shawn Boburg, Emma Brown and Ann E. Marimow ● Read more » | | |
By Spencer S. Hsu, Josh Dawsey, Jacqueline Alemany and Tom Jackman ● Read more » | | |
| | | ViewpointsBy Jamsheed K. Choksy and Carol E. B. Choksy | Foreign Affairs ● Read more » | | |
| | | Rich lodes Miners work to extract gemstones including kunzite and tourmaline in a mine in the Parun Valley in Afghanistan’s Nurestan province. In doing so, they unearth lithium-bearing ore. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post) |
CHAPA DARA, Afghanistan — Sayed Wali Sajid spent years fighting American soldiers in the barren hills and fertile fields of the Pech River Valley, one of the deadliest theaters of the 20-year insurgency. But nothing confounded the Taliban commander, he said, like the new wave of foreigners who began showing up, one after another, in late 2021. Once, Sajid spotted a foreigner hiking alone along a path where Islamic State extremists were known to kidnap outsiders. Another time, five men and women evaded Sajid’s soldiers in the dark to scour the mountain. The newcomers, Sajid recalled, were giddy, persistent, almost single-minded in their quest for something few locals believed held any value at all. “The Chinese were unbelievable,” Sajid said, chuckling at the memory. “At first, they didn’t tell us what they wanted. But then I saw the excitement in their eyes and their eagerness, and that’s when I understood the word ‘lithium.’” A decade earlier, the U.S. Defense Department, guided by the surveys of American government geologists, concluded that the vast wealth of lithium and other minerals buried in Afghanistan might be worth $1 trillion. In a 2010 memo, the Pentagon dubbed the country the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.”  Workers on a lunch break outside a mine in the Parun Valley in Nurestan province, where rock formations rich in lithium often host major gemstone deposits, such as kunzite. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post) |
But now, in a great twist of modern Afghan history, it is the Taliban — which overthrew the U.S.-backed government two years ago — that is finally looking to exploit those vast lithium reserves, at a time when the soaring global popularity of electric vehicles is spurring an urgent need for the mineral, a vital ingredient in their batteries. Afghanistan remains under intense international pressure — isolated politically and saddled with U.S. and multilateral sanctions because of human rights concerns, in particular the repression of women, and Taliban links to terrorism. The tremendous promise of lithium, however, could frustrate Western efforts to squeeze the Taliban into changing its extremist ways. And with the United States absent from Afghanistan, it is Chinese companies that are now aggressively positioning themselves to reap a windfall from lithium here — and, in doing so, further tighten China’s grasp on much of the global supply chain for EV minerals. The surging demand for lithium is part of a worldwide scramble for a variety of metals used in the manufacture of EVs, widely considered crucial to the green-energy transition. But the mining and processing of minerals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese often come with unintended consequences — for instance, harm to workers, surrounding communities and the environment. In Afghanistan, those consequences look to be geopolitical: the potential enrichment of the largely shunned Taliban and another leg up for China in a fierce, strategic competition. Around the time Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, a boom shook the world’s lithium market. The mineral’s price skyrocketed eightfold from 2021 to 2022, attracting hundreds of Chinese mining entrepreneurs to Afghanistan. In interviews, Taliban officials, Chinese entrepreneurs and their Afghan intermediaries described a frenzy reminiscent of a 19th-century gold rush. Globe-trotting Chinese traders packed into Kabul’s hotels, racing to source lithium in the hinterlands. Chinese executives filed into meetings with Taliban leaders, angling for exploration rights. In January, Taliban officials arrested a Chinese businessman for allegedly smuggling 1,000 tons of lithium ore from Konar province to China via Pakistan. What is certain, according to Afghans, Chinese and Americans alike, is that Afghanistan is in the midst of a sweeping transition after decades of war. And as long as the Taliban is ostracized by the West, they say, Afghanistan will drift by necessity, if not by choice, into the embrace of China. – Gerry Shih and Lorenzo Tugnoli Read more: Rich lode of EV metals could boost Taliban and its new Chinese partners | | | Afterword | | |
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