Italy’s voters, though, keep strengthening her hand.

Unlike Claude Rains’s Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca, President Macron does not envision the “beginning of a beautiful friendship” with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Rather, the Gallic leader has tried to render Italy’s female premier invisible on the world stage.

By excluding Ms. Meloni from a policy dinner with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Zelensky, Monsieur Macron coupled narrow-minded nationalism with a measure of misogyny. Italy’s prime minister is not a rabble-rousing extremist. According to Stefano Bonaccini, a center-left heavyweight, Ms. Meloni is “not a fascist” and is a “highly capable individual.”

Enrico Letta — another center-left opponent who had depicted Meloni as a threat to democracy — is quoted in the NYTimes as conceding that Ms. Meloni has proven to be “better than we expected” on economic and financial issues. Mr. Letta also acknowledges that “The reality is she is strong.” 

Ms. Meloni leads the third-largest economy and the second-largest manufacturer (after Germany) in the European Union. Rome is also a founding G-7 power and the guardian of NATO’s southern flank. Ms. Meloni’s support of beleaguered Ukraine is as sinewy as it is steadfast. Her journey to Kyiv yesterday — just after President Biden’s jaunt — underscores Italy’s firm commitment to Ukraine and to allied solidarity.

Still, the Financial Times’ Rome correspondent, Amy Kazmin, quotes Stefano Stefanini, Italy’s former ambassador to NATO, as saying: “The ‘non-invitation’ is something that really creates angst in Italy.” Mr. Stefanini says the exclusion gives ammunition to Ms. Meloni’s domestic critics to say, “You see, Italy was internationally on top with Draghi and now we’ve gone to the junior league.”

There is no denying that Mario Draghi was an institution unto himself. As president of the European Central Bank during the EU’s period of deep financial turbulence in 2012, Super Mario stabilized the continent’s markets, reanimated the European project, and saved the common currency. 

Few recall that even Mr. Draghi was viewed with suspicion and faint disdain by the Germans before becoming the ECB president. Other Italian leaders have also been similarly derided. When Romano Prodi was bidding to become president of the European Commission, he discovered that his Italian nationality ranked as one of the negatives on his curriculum vitae, at least according to a poll in the Economist.

And the outré Silvio Berlusconi was essentially ousted as Italy’s prime minister thanks to an agreement between Brussels and Berlin. Then there was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, wherein Chancellor Merkel actively blocked Italy’s participation even though Rome has centuries of ties to Persia, remains an ally of Israel, and is one of Tehran’s biggest EU trading partners.

What’s more, Iran’s president at the time, Hassan Rouhani, had specifically requested that the Italians be included. But the JCPOA marked the unveiling of the P5 + 1: Berlin’s official return as a leading power. The Germans did not want to share that status with the Italians. Such an incomplete directorate ill serves the West.

Which brings me back to Monsieur Macron. His response to the dust-up with Ms. Meloni was to double-down on the exclusionary Paris-Berlin relationship:  “I wanted to receive him, President Zelensky, with Chancellor Scholz” — alluding to Germany and France’s “particular role” as partners in the Minsk accords.

Though initially irked by the French president’s snub, Ms. Meloni has called for European unity. Unlike prior technocratic Italian governments, she speaks with the knowledge that her mandate to govern is a strong one. Ms. Meloni’s center-right administration was elected by the Italian people, not the bureaucrats at Brussels or pols at Berlin.

The conservatives’ victories in the February regional elections in Lombardy and Lazio — with the Premier’s Fratelli d’Italia Party emerging as the biggest vote-getter — have strengthened Ms. Meloni’s hand domestically and globally.

Italy’s President of the Council of Ministers is using her increased political capital and clout in pursuit of peace, stability and prosperity in accord with the Magic Boot’s national interests and global responsibilities. To that end, Italy and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement announcing an intensification of the two allies’ defense coordination at a summit at Roma Aeterna (aka Italy’s capital). 

According to the document’s signatories — the Italian and British defense ministers — this pact will deepen military ties between the two nations’ armed forces while providing greater interoperability in the space and cyber realms.

This development comes on the heels of another agreement highlighting Ms. Meloni’s policy of allied unity: the Global Combat Air Program, linking Italy, Britain, and Japan in a project to develop the next generation of military aircraft by 2035.

Rather than exacerbating tensions with Mr. Macron, Ms. Meloni has given the green light to a joint accord between Italy and France to produce the SAMP/T NG (New-Generation) air defense system.

Monsieur Macron would be wise to embrace Ms. Meloni’s call for comprehensive allied unity. After all, France owes a civilizational debt to Italy — from Julius Caesar and Catherine de Medici to Emile Zola and Napoleone Buonaparte. -RAI

[This essay appeared in the online The New York Sun on 2/23/23]