"Let’s remember why we became part of a coalition to stop [Libyan dictator Muammar] Gaddafi from committing atrocities against his people.”
That’s from Hillary Clinton who defended here foreign policy credentials in Saturday night’s third Democratic presidential debate. Hitting back at Bernie Sanders, who accused her of being “too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be,” the former Secretary of State said the US “will not get the support on the ground in Syria to dislodge ISIS if the fighters there - who are not associated with ISIS, but whose principal goal is getting rid of Assad - don’t believe there is a political diplomatic channel that is ongoing.”
"I am not giving up on Libya and no one should," she added.
Unfortunately, we probably should “give up” on Libya, because the power vacuum created by Gaddafi’s fall has turned the country into a lawless wasteland and a breeding ground for ISIS. For those who might have forgotten what “democratic regime changed” looked like in Libya, allow us to refresh your memory:
Ah, yes, a peaceful transition in the true spirit of democracy.
For his part, Putin asked the following: "Who gave the West the right to carry out regime change?" Here's the clip from 2011:
Well, in the wake of Hillary's comments during the debate, Putin is out with a bit of fresh criticism with regard to what Russia calls illegitimate attempts to bring about the downfall of governments deemed "undesirable" by Western powers.
"Outsiders forcing change of legitimate powers in other countries is intolerable," Putin told Rossiya TV.
While geopolitical disagreements are “inevitable and "all right", foreign policy needs to be conducted "by civilized rules”, he continued. We assume that "civilized rules" do not include arming and funding Sunni extremists especially ones who The Pentagon knows are likely to establish Salafist principalities within the borders of sovereign states.
Putin went on to say that by becoming a puppet of the US, "Europe has given up [an] independent foreign policy" thereby surrendering part of its sovereignty to US."
When it comes to intervening in order to keep the geoplotical scales in balance, "Russia isn’t afraid" to step in, and will always act with "maximum caution," (we're not entirely sure one can classify the rather rapid and aggressive deployment in Syria as being conducted with "maximum caution", but it's certainly a more cautious approach than arming any and all anti-government elements in hopes that one of them will turn out not to be extremists).
In the end though, Putin concedes that Russia has no catch-all solution for color revolutions. The "only recipe for how to deal with them is to strengthen international law," he concludes.
Exactly. Which means that at some point, the international community needs to insist that the US and its allies both in the Mid-East and Europe cease the ubiquitous practice of fomenting discord within sovereign states. It never works where "works" means a stable deomcracy takes root in the ashes of a dictatorship. Between Libya, Iraq, and Syria, the US truly has "become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
