Post by demos on Jul 29, 2020 15:30:53 GMT
Congress Pushes for Sanctions on Turkey, Russia Over Libyan War
U.S. lawmakers are advancing a bill that would compel the Trump administration to levy sanctions on Russia and Turkey for fueling an escalation in the civil war in Libya, as the Defense Department has warned about the deployment of foreign mercenaries into the war zone.
The Libya Stabilization Act, which is expected to pass out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week, would impose mandatory sanctions on both countries within six months, giving the White House wide leeway to revoke U.S. visas or freeze funds in American banks, a bid to keep Russia in particular from establishing a bridgehead across the Mediterranean...
Aides said the legislation would allow for sanctions on Egypt if President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi goes ahead with his threat to send the Egyptian military into Libya in support of the so-called Libyan National Army in the east, which is also backed by the United Arab Emirates. The decision by the Egyptian parliament this month to approve a troop deployment to Libya could put Ankara and Cairo on a collision course and further aggravate the proxy conflict...
U.S. lawmakers are advancing a bill that would compel the Trump administration to levy sanctions on Russia and Turkey for fueling an escalation in the civil war in Libya, as the Defense Department has warned about the deployment of foreign mercenaries into the war zone.
The Libya Stabilization Act, which is expected to pass out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week, would impose mandatory sanctions on both countries within six months, giving the White House wide leeway to revoke U.S. visas or freeze funds in American banks, a bid to keep Russia in particular from establishing a bridgehead across the Mediterranean...
Aides said the legislation would allow for sanctions on Egypt if President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi goes ahead with his threat to send the Egyptian military into Libya in support of the so-called Libyan National Army in the east, which is also backed by the United Arab Emirates. The decision by the Egyptian parliament this month to approve a troop deployment to Libya could put Ankara and Cairo on a collision course and further aggravate the proxy conflict...
So, NATO (and the US) fuels a problem, then get mad when other parties (one of them a NATO ally) decides to play in that sandbox. What's happening in Libya (and involving Turkey more broadly) demonstrates that the tensions and issues within NATO preexist Trump and will continue long after he gets through loudly demanding NATO partners spend 2% of GDP on defense (as if that's a meaningful measure of anything). Of course, this will not lead to any re-examination of NATO's mission or actions, and probably no action on booting Turkey either.
Then there's this comment from a House aide: "With [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and [Vladimir] Putin and more broadly, they act when there’s a stick involved or a penalty held above their head." Which is completely undermined later in the article when this is noted: "The new legislation would continue using U.S. sanctions against Wagner, after Washington previously hit the group’s affiliates with sanctions, freezing any U.S. assets they may have and barring them from doing business in the United States for their activities in eastern Ukraine and Syria."
Sanctions aren't changing their behavior. And we completely ignore our role in creating this mess to begin with which gave Turkey, Russia, etc. an opportunity to increase their involvement. (Same with Syria, Yemen, etc., et al).
And finally, "This bill would be the closest we’ve been to a coherent U.S. Libya policy that we’ve been in a long time." L-O-fing-L.