A "CARROT" TO EACH

Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas and prominent French lawyer Jacques Verg?s intend to file a lawsuit against French President Nicolas Sarkozy. They accuse the president of "crimes against humanity" in Libya. Dumas and Verg?s announced their intention to sue Sarkozy in Tripoli. Dumas said he was "amazed to see that this NATO operation, aimed at protecting civilians, had become the cause of their death". Verg?s, who called NATO countries "murderers", said: "The French state is governed by crooks and murderers. We intend to break the silence." According to some media, including the English version of the Arabic channel Al-Jazeera, European special forces have long been operating in this country, outlining targets for NATO bombs and training armed rebels, although UN Security Council Resolution № 1973 contains a separate provision banning the presence of "foreign occupation forces in any form and on any part of Libyan territory".

However, despite the fact that Dumas and Verg?s are not the only ones who condemn the NATO action in Libya, the West is not going to retreat, especially after they received the go-ahead from Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev at the G8 summit in Deauville. It was at this summit that the presidents of the United States and France, Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy, asked Dmitriy Medvedev to help persuade the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to resign in exchange for saving his life and the opportunity to quietly leave Libya for any location which he thinks is safe. In exchange for the Kremlin's agreement, the White House and Palace of the Elysee stated their intention to take a constructive position on some issues in relations with Moscow.

Dmitriy Medvedev got Barack Obama to promise a compromise on the deployment of a missile defence system in Europe. In addition, Obama said he hoped that the issue of Russia's accession to the WTO will be resolved soon. Another "carrot" for Moscow in this bargaining was Washington's promise to include Doku Umarov in the Rewards for Justice national programme, as reflected in the joint Russian-American statement. Henceforth, the US offers $5 million for information leading to the tracking of the terrorist who claimed responsibility, inter alia, for the bombings in the Moscow metro, the terrorist attack on the railway between St Petersburg and Moscow in 2009, as well as for the explosion at Domodedovo airport.

Paris, for its part, consented to the early signing of a contract under which Russia will acquire from France four Mistral helicopters used by NATO troops. Although the intergovernmental agreement was signed in January this year, this caused complaints from France's NATO allies. Apparently, the North African geopolitical interests of the West pushed this discontent into the background. It was also agreed that France will fully assist in the development of resorts in the Russian North Caucasus. It is planned to implement a joint project to create the Height 5642 tourism cluster aimed at developing winter ski resorts in Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia and Dagestan, as well as at creating and developing spa resorts on the Black and Caspian seas. According to Gazprom CEO Miller, an alliance between the Russian gas monopoly and the French oil company Total for cooperation on global markets is also a possibility.

The aforesaid favours for Russia helped to get "the go-ahead" for the further action of the international coalition on the Libyan "front". The Russian president said that Gaddafi's departure would be useful for the country and the Libyan people. A few hours after Dmitriy Medvedev sent his envoy, Mikhail Margelov, to Libya for talks with rebels in Benghazi and representatives of Gaddafi's regime, NATO aircraft carried out massive air strikes on Tripoli. In addition, NATO and coalition partners decided to extend the operation against Libya for another 90 days. Although it was planned to end on 27 June, its term has now been extended until the end of September. The Libyan opposition, the Transitional National Council of Libya (TNC), which had sent a delegation from Benghazi to Moscow, headed by Libya's former foreign minister, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, to "get Moscow's vote in the UN Security Council" welcomed Medvedev's position on the resignation of Gaddafi. Moreover, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council on Defence and Security, Viktor Ozerov, did not rule out that if the UN Security Council decides to conduct an operation to stabilize the situation in Libya, Russia may send peacekeepers there. Arriving in Benghazi, the Russian president's special envoy, Margelov, said after talks with the leaders of the Libyan opposition: "I can say that these are serious and responsible people who are undisputed leaders. These people do not express extremist ideas and are interested in the stable development of Libya as a unified and coherent state."

Of course, it would be wrong to say that NATO did not abandon its plans in Libya only because it obtained the consent of the Kremlin. But the Deauville agreements with Moscow allow the West to achieve several major goals. Firstly, Russia, like the USA and its allies, recognized the TNC as a legitimate partner for dialogue on the future of Libya. And this is a very serious factor in the event that NATO troops are brought into Libya at the request of the same TNC. Secondly, Washington is now trying to push through the UN Security Council a resolution, similar to № 1973, with respect to Syria, which Moscow still resists. But, on Libya the Kremlin took the same position from the beginning. It is possible that by offering a few more "constructive" agreements, the West can win Russia's loyalty on the Syrian issue.

On the other hand, it would also be wrong to assume that Moscow shows a disposition to compromise only because of the favours proposed by the West. After all, the proposals to the Kremlin are mostly hypothetical in nature. Understanding on missile defence, according to Dmitriy Medvedev himself, will not be reached any time soon. With regard to WTO accession, Washington has verbally expressed its support in the past few years. But they know full well that today, the main stumbling block on this path is the intransigence of Georgia - Tbilisi is unlikely to give the green light to Moscow's accession to the WTO until it agrees to review the "results" of the August 2008 war, especially as the United States fully supports Tbilisi's position on the August issue. The promise to help apprehend Umarov also looks vague.

In its bargaining with Moscow on the Libyan issue, Paris also got off with mainly hypothetical promises, except for Mistral sales. But, according to most military experts, without the handover of appropriate technology, the acquisition of these aircraft carriers cannot be considered complete. Thirdly, Russia does not have serious levers to influence geopolitical events in a given region (excluding the CIS) and requires the West, at least for form's sake, to coordinate its actions with Russia in some matters of principle, which would allow Moscow to keep its image as a world power in the international arena. And apparently, they succeeded in Deauville.

But there are pitfalls here. Yes, Washington agreed to meet Moscow halfway, but only for the current president, Dmitriy Medvedev, in contrast to whom Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin strongly condemned the actions of the international coalition in Libya. It is no accident that in Deauville, Barack Obama specifically focused on his personal excellent relations with Dmitriy Medvedev. The subtext of this statement is that Washington is willing to promote the preservation of Russia's image as a great power in the international arena, if Dmitriy Medvedev is elected president in 2012, because the West considers him the more democratic figure in the Russian government tandem.

But, according to some Western experts, engaging in the Libyan issue, Dmitriy Medvedev puts too much at stake, including his domestic political ratings in an election year. They believe that the Russians have a better understanding of Putin's anti-Western rhetoric than the propensity to cooperate with the West on issues such as Libya.

Moreover, the position of key persons in the Russian government is in tune with that of Putin. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the NATO operation, which began after the adoption of the resolution on Libya by the UN Security Council, has gone far beyond the originally stated goal of creating a no-fly zone over Libya. According to Lavrov, in this regard Russia will demand in the future that the mandates of the UN be more specific. He also believes that the extension of NATO's operation in Libya for three more months will not contribute to a settlement in this country, recognizing that it does not seem possible to force the West to carry out the UN Security Council resolution on Libya to the "letter".

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov (formerly Vladimir Putin's potential successor as Russian president and now one of the key figures in the Russian political establishment) noted that NATO's actions in Libya can only be described as interference in the civil war on the side of one of the factions. "Supporting the UN Security Council resolution, we proceeded from the fact that its adoption was aimed at promoting peace and preventing an escalation of the conflict and civilian casualties. However, NATO actions, covered by an arbitrary interpretation of UN Security Council resolutions, cannot be described as anything other than intervention in the civil war on the side of one of the warring factions," Ivanov said.

Touching upon events unfolding around Libya, it is impossible to ignore one more issue. It is obvious that with the blessing of the United States, the main role in this game has been given to France, while another major European country, Germany, appears to have been pushed into the background. We can assume that in doing so, Washington is trying to cool the ardour of Berlin, which seems to be dictating terms in the EU, limiting US influence in Europe. The White House is unlikely to have forgiven Germany for the tripartite (Germany-Russia-France) summit in the same Deauville last November when, on the initiative of Berlin, these countries discussed security issues in Europe, bypassing the United States. Although the summit was held in France, Washington rightly believed that the agenda was determined by Berlin. In addition, while the United States advocates various energy projects in order to ensure the energy independence of European countries from Russia, Berlin supports projects backed by Moscow. It is also true that Germany initially took a very cautious stance on the Libyan issue by offering to impose economic and political sanctions against Gaddafi's regime.

Thus, it is clear that by highlighting one or another of its allies in Europe, Washington wants to prevent the excessive strengthening of the positions of any of them. The basis of such tactics was laid by the American geostrategist, godfather of "containment" and founder of classical realism in the American theory of international relations, Nicholas Spykman. He coined the phrase that the US should maintain a geopolitical struggle not only against its enemies, but also allies, not allowing them to negotiate behind its back and strengthen their influence in the world.

On this basis, we can assume that in the geopolitical game being played in North Africa, Washington bets not on Germany in the unification and strengthening of which it played the title role, but on France, another key country in Europe. This geopolitical game, aimed at turning the Mediterranean Sea into an inland sea of Europe, fully fits the concept of the Mediterranean Union and dialogue, which is closed to Russia. However, this is a different subject of discussion.