These reports are still largely unsubstantiated. Yet if true
it would hardly come as a surprise.
From Russia's standpoint, the best defense is a good offense.
NATO continues to move on their borders and so it is in their interest to make
trouble for NATO whenever and wherever they can.
The risk is that this will be sold as Russian 'aggression'
within the Western Media. But at this point as we've entered a new era of
Red-Baiting Neo-McCarthyism, Putin probably figures what does he have to lose?
NATO seems dedicated to toppling secular regimes and
seemingly has no problem backing Islamists. There are potential allies for
Putin within Libya and this also will open doors with Egypt as Cairo watches
nervously what is happening across their borders. They fear the chaos and the
secular al-Sisi dictatorship doesn't want to see ISIS enter Egypt and replace
the now suppressed Muslim Brotherhood.
It may very well be that General Haftar feels somewhat
betrayed by the West. A Gaddafi regime defect and long a CIA asset, he is
either being wooed by Moscow or by some indications has already flipped.
Washington has a long record of betraying its assets and allies and perhaps he
decided to move before it was too late.
Libya is the simmering story that has long been ignored. The
NATO campaign destroyed its civil society in 2011 and the country has been in a
state of near-chaos ever since. Overshadowed by the far more brutal Syrian
Civil War, the North African nation is already bloody warzone but it could get
a lot worse.
Putin's meddling is not morally defensible. And yet Western
criticisms of his actions smack of the rankest hypocrisy. Sadly, this continued
tit-for-tat escalation and complication only puts the world at greater risk. If
war breaks out... the stage is being set for a global conflagration. Let us
hope that wisdom and reason temper the hot-heads and the military figures who
always eager to start shooting.
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