Europe’s far-right parties spent a decade selling themselves as the defenders of national sovereignty. France’s Rassemblement National ran on “Les Français d’abord,” the AfD on “Deutschland zuerst,” and Giorgia Meloni promised to “start from national interests.” Jacopo Custodi’s essay in Jacobin’s “The New Empire” issue argues the US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon — and the genocide in Gaza before it — exposed that vocabulary as theater.

When Washington or Tel Aviv calls, the sovereigntists fall in line:

  • Italy’s defense minister, Guido Crosetto, was stranded in Dubai when the war began because the United States never informed him of the imminent attack — Meloni’s government authorized the use of US bases on Italian soil anyway.
  • The same parliament passed a law equating much criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
  • Geert Wilders praised Netanyahu for making the world safer by bombing Tehran, and said he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize.
  • Nigel Farage attacked Keir Starmer for endangering the “special relationship” with Washington; Spain’s Vox complained that Madrid had “hindered” the bombings and angered Trump.

The essay’s sharpest section is on the establishment, not the fringe. Ursula von der Leyen brands every Iranian attack “reckless,” “unjustifiable,” and “indiscriminate” while never mentioning the US-Israeli strikes they retaliate against. The institutions that invoked the language of attacker and attacked — and the sanctity of international law — over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have abandoned that posture entirely.

For Custodi, the only real defense of sovereignty came from the Left. Spain’s government under Pedro Sánchez called the attack on Iran illegal, named the costs for Europe, and refused to let the United States use Spanish bases for the operation. He concedes left criticism that Sánchez hasn’t drawn every conclusion, above all on NATO — but treats Spain’s isolation as the point: sovereignty means the willingness to say no to imperial escalation under pressure, not theatrical nationalism.

That is the essay’s real argument. For the left, sovereignty has never meant militarism, hatred of migrants, or fantasies of ethnic homogeneity. It means popular sovereignty — upholding Europeans’ own preference for peace — plus state sovereignty as a pillar of peace, cooperation, and international law. Everything else is a ring to be kissed.