But it has. Although at the end of May there was more waffling by the EU’s foreign policy wonk, Spanish socialist Josep Borrell, who, undoubtedly frustrated by the EU’s initial role of funding dictators in many African countries – which led to the horror of African migrants being treated as slaves in Tripoli – has now resorted to double talk and euro-gibberish which is even confusing EU folk in Brussels.

“Libya is the test of EU credibility, right at our doorstep. We have seen the absurd situation of fighters wearing masks to protect themselves against COVID-19 while exchanging fire with machine guns”, he says.

“We continue to work towards a ceasefire, knowing how difficult this is. We have launched Operation Irini to help enforce the UN arms embargo – even if not everybody is happy with that – but all Member States need to invest in the effort,” he added.

So what’s wrong with this statement? Nothing really, except the minor detail that while most MEPs who gave it the nod in the European parliament thought that it was about blocking arms shipments but also illegal flows of immigrants (or mercenaries) and was widely reported as such, it seems that it has been downgraded to the former.

Now, according to Borrell, when he speaks of Irini, he only talks about it in a context of arms smuggling. And these days the big picture, grandiose speeches about blocking arms shipments has notably been reduced to merely “help enforce” the UN arms embargo.

If only even this was accurate. Or rather if only these statements were less disingenuous in the first place, as the EU’s parades a farcical notion to MEPs and the public that it is neutral in this war.

In reality, the position that the EU has taken, is to very much side with Haftar – and therefore Russia, UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia – and with his LNA army which is attempting to overthrow the weak and somewhat illegitimate regime holding out in Tripoli.

Even if we are to take Borrell’s comments as face value, what it all adds up to is simply that the EU will use its military capability at sea to attempt to block arms shipments.

There’s only one problem with this strategy.

Given that the UAE and Russia never use the sea to send neither arms nor troops, but Turkey does, one could be forgiven for thinking that the EU policy is just a tad corrupt and unfair. Or, put differently, the EU strategy seems heavily tilted against Turkey which supports the UN-backed president.

The EU has the technology at its disposal to scan the skies and track planes flying into Libya. And it certainly has the satellite spy technology to do the same with overland movements from the Egyptian border. Are any MEPs or, dare we suggest, curious Brussels-based journalists going to query why the EU chooses not to? Why it opts for the maritime plan only? Could it be that it kills two birds with one stone?

On the one hand, it helps Haftar as, while a number of ships laden with arms for the al-Sarraj government have been intercepted by vigilant EU navy vessels, whereas no arms or mercenary movements on Haftar’s side have, it also creates a precedent in that part of the world for the EU to have a presence in the water with battleships.

And here’s where it gets a bit complicated and shows the EU to be anything but a neutral player, rather a wannabee superpower which punches way above its weight.

Whereas any two-bit geopolitical buff can see how Erdogan has become a hate figure of the EU, made much worse by a maritime agreement Turkey signed with Libya to lay claim to a massive part of the Mediterranean for oil and gas, the EU sides with Cyprus and Israel who are increasingly worried about this development. This is the real reason why EU ships are in the area. A show of force to Erdogan and his partners with their bold, ambitious plans in the Eastern Mediterranean. The EU has real problems in this region, but Libya is providing the basis for the justification for much scuttling back and forth and the manic writing of press releases and rambling in the European parliament – to MEPs who really aren’t up to speed on Libya and most of the time rely heavily on lobbyists in Brussels to brief them. It they even bother to do that.

But how much longer can this nefarious farce continue to be covered up by the media in Brussels or so-called experts working on the news desks in London, Paris and Washington? The EU is hardly a neutral player and has a lot to gain if Libya falls under the total control of Haftar and Turkey’s plans in the region are shattered. Awkwardly, its agenda is aligned to Russia’s but Moscow played a much smarter game and is guaranteed a big slice of the spoils regardless of which side wins. The EU is playing a much dicier game with higher stakes, with top people prepared to destroy the EU simply to keep face and their highly paid jobs. Brussels, acting on behalf of EU countries taking a decisive role in backing one side in Libya is scary enough, given that we have seen what militias and rogue governments do to EU countries when they are dealt a bad hand by them – going back as far as Lockerbie or even the Madrid train bombing right through to more recently with London attacks, Manchester bombing, Paris terror attacks, Brussels metro bombing.

In fact, the Manchester bombing was a direct result of Britain’s Mi6 helping the bomber earlier on travel to Libya and fight in a terror cell against Gaddafi, before being ushered through Heathrow airport by security officers on his return. Western governments no longer assassinate despots, but usually outsource such dirty work to terrorists whom they train. Western countries back militias and even extremist groups when it serves their purposes in a given country, whose leader isn’t playing ball, like in Syria, for example. But now we are expected to allow a completely untested EU foreign affairs department of the EU, which blows over a billion dollars a year on paying for “diplomats” to talk up the EU project in over 120 countries (mainly poor countries) where palatial embassies are paid for, to play at being a super power in Libya.

Light touch paper and stand well back.

Libya’s long-running civil war has taken a new turn in recent weeks after the Turkish-backed Government of National Accord launched an offensive against would-be strongman Khalifa Haftar, pushing him and his Libyan National Army out of Tripoli and a number of near-by strongholds. But anyone who thinks that peace is at hand after nine years of anarchy and collapse should think again. Odds are all but certain that all it will do is introduce new chaos into a country that has already seen more than its fair share.

But before we speculate about the future, let’s pause for a moment to consider the past and how the craziness began. When historians conduct their post-mortem analyses, chance are good that they’ll zero in on one date in particular – Apr. 13, 2011. That’s the day Barack Obama welcomed Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, emir of Qatar, to the White House. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had just spent weeks lining up support for the effort to topple Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi in the wake of the Arab Spring. But in mid-March, she decided that the coalition was too western, too Euro-centric, for delicate post-colonial sensibilities, and so she set out to woo energy-rich Qatar as well. When Al-Thani at last agreed to come on board, his reward was an audience with His Coolness himself, the U.S. president.

But Obama should have paused before leaping into the unknown. Although Qatar enjoys a benign reputation thanks to its extensive economic and cultural ties with the west, its political profile has long been strangely bifurcated – liberal in some respects, increasingly Islamist in others. By the late 1990s, it was making a name for itself as a center for the ultra-austere branch of Islam known as Salafism. By 2003, reports were growing that local charities were funneling money to Al-Qaeda. But Washington paid little attention. How could such reports be true if Qatar was helping to depose the Gaddafi, long a thorn in the side of American imperialism? If he was working in behalf of U.S. hegemony, which is to say the ultimate good, didn’t that mean that he had to be good as well?

Such is the cartoonish mindset that prevails in Washington. After privately conferring with Al-Thani, Obama then paraded him before the press. “I expressed to him my appreciation of the leadership that the emir has shown when it comes to democracy in the Middle East,” he told reporters, “and, in particular, the work that they have done in trying to promote a peaceful transition in Libya.… He’s motivated by a belief that the Libyan people should have the rights and freedoms of all people. And as a consequence, Qatar is not only supportive diplomatically but is also supportive militarily.”

At which point, some emperor-has-no-clothes type might have popped up to ask: how can an absolute autocrat like Al-Thani care about rights and freedoms in Libya when it denies such privileges to his own people at home? A few hours later, Obama offered a few comments at a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago that were picked up by na open mike.

“Pretty influential guy,” he said of Al-Thani. “He is a big booster, big promoter of democracy all throughout the Middle East. Reform, reform, reform – you’re seeing it on Al Jazeera.”

Then he added: “Now, he himself is not reforming significantly. There’s no big move towards democracy in Qatar. But you know part of the reason is that the per-capita income of Qatar is $145,000 a year. That will dampen a lot of conflict.”

Immense energy wealth – adjusted for inflation, oil prices at the time were pushing $130 a barrel – evidently means that Qatar gets a free pass when it comes to democratic niceties that other countries are expected to observe.

But Obama was wrong about what all that money would do. Rather than tamping down conflict, it fanned it. Using his position in the U.S.-led alliance serving for political and diplomatic cover, Al-Thani seized the opportunity to distribute an estimated $400 million to Libyan Salafist rebels in the form of machineguns, automatic rifles, and ammo. Within months, insurgents were hoisting the maroon-and-white Qatari flag over Gaddafi’s once-impregnable presidential complex in Tripoli.

The result was bedlam. Even though Libya would eventually elect a national parliament, gunmen flush with Persian Gulf cash forced it to adopt a host of Islamist “reforms” – burkhas, gender segregation, compulsory hijabs at universities, the works. Islamists went on a rampage, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in September 2012, kidnapping Prime Minister Ali Zeidan in October 2013, kidnapping a group of Egyptian diplomats the following January, and then storming the national parliament two months later, shooting and injuring two lawmakers. The Obama administration thought of punishing Qatar by holding off military assistance and the like. But after objections from both the Pentagon and the State Department, and the administration held its tongue. A Libyan politician named Mohammed Ali Abdallah would later say of the Americans:

“They created the monsters we are dealing with today, which is these militias that are so empowered they will never subordinate themselves to any government.”

Quite right – and those monsters have only grown bigger and more vicious as the years have passed. So why did the U.S. allow a close ally to overturn the apple cart? One reason is incompetence, but another is America’s longstanding alliance with Sunni extremism. Remember – rather than merely cooperating with such elements, America helped call them into existence by partnering with the Saudis to create an anti-Soviet holy war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Even though the effort left Afghanistan in ruins, the pattern has repeated itself again and again in Bosnia, Syria, Yemen, and Libya as well. Whenever Americans intervene in the Muslim world, Sunni jihadis backed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other Persian Gulf oil monarchies invariably follow. Despite occasional blowback in the form of 9/11 and other such incidents, the U.S.-jihadi alliance has continued without major interruption.

The result in the case of Libya is a black hole where a more or less functional state used to be. Since geopolitics abhor a vacuum, outside powers can’t resist throwing themselves into the fray. But not only are Islamists on the GNA side – they are increasingly prominent in the Haftar camp as well. Since such elements are ultimately loyal only to their paymasters in the gulf, deepening chaos can be the only result.

Keep that in mind as the anarchy in Libya intensifies and spreads, leading in the worst-case scenario to a military blow-up between Turkey and Russia, which is among Haftar’s prime supporters. While no one knows how far the process will go, we have a good idea of how the breakdown began – with Barack Obama’s belief that money would buy peace. This is how corrupt oligarchies think. But it made no sense then, and it makes even less now that energy prices are crashing through the floor and the region is sliding deeper and deeper into ruin.

Turkey was the second party at the summit acting as a mediator, along with Russia. Ankara is a staunch supporter of the UN-recognized Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli. Moscow recognizes the GNA too, but it also has strong links with the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar which is based in the eastern city of Tobruk.

Potentially, the diplomatic process that has got underway could bring an end to nearly nine years of conflict in Libya. The constructive involvement of Russia and Turkey is analogous to what these two nations have achieved in forging a political settlement for ending the war in Syria.

Arguably, Libya could represent an even more challenging task compared with Syria. At least in Syria there was a central, functioning national state with which to build peace on. By contrast in Libya, there is no unifying national state. The conflict there is more defined as an archetypal civil war, whereas in Syria the conflict was based on the defense of a state in the face of foreign-backed aggression. The task of procuring a comprehensive peace accord in Libya could therefore be more complicated and elusive.

As Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed out this week: “The Libyan statehood was bombed by NATO in 2011, and we are still facing the consequences of this illegal, criminal escapade, the Libyan people first of all.”

We may recall that the US and its European NATO allies conducted a seven-month aerial bombing campaign from March-October 2011 in Libya under the false and derisory pretenses of organizing “a humanitarian intervention”. That murderous NATO blitzkrieg resulted in the brutal lynching of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The oil-rich country then became overrun by islamist extremists and warlords, and has remained in a state of chaos ever since. Syria could have fallen by the same nefarious fate of NATO-backed regime change, only for Russia’s military intervention at the end of 2015 to defend the state owing to their long-time alliance.

The NATO destruction of Libya has had disastrous geopolitical consequences. Extremists travelled from there to wage war against the state of Syria. This covert deployment of militants and weapons trafficking to Syria had the backing of the US and Turkey. That lethal conduit greatly exacerbated the war and death toll in Syria.

Libya, as a failed state, then became a gateway for millions of refugees from the Middle East and Africa attempting to enter Europe across the Mediterranean Sea. Hundreds of thousands of people have died from drowning in capsized shoddy boats. Crime and human trafficking have burgeoned. And Europe has borne sharp internal political divisions from the destabilizing inward migration.

For the past nine years, the NATO powers have washed their hands of their criminal destruction of Libya and the horrendous repercussions for the region.

Russia has shown commendable leadership in trying to piece Libya together through diplomatic engagement.

As an opinion article in the Washington Post observed: “While President Trump spends his time tweeting insults and threatening to start Middle Eastern wars, Russia is filling the vacuum in international diplomacy. In the case of Libya, ending a bloody conflict at the doorstep of Europe in an oil-rich country is a major deal.”

The conference in Moscow this week produced a shaky ceasefire. GNA leader Fayez Sarrij signed up to the truce, but the LNA’s Khalifa Haftar left Moscow with-holding his signature, saying that he wanted more time to consider. A truce does seem to be holding, however.

A follow-up peace summit is taking place this weekend in Berlin, hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The two Libyan leaders are expected to attend, as are Russia and Turkey, the two main guarantors. Other nations invited to participate include the US, China, Britain, France and Italy. Arab states which back different factions in Libya are also slated to attend: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE (which support the LNA) and Qatar (which backs the GNA).

Turkey has reportedly sent militia under its control from Syria to back up the GNA. Relations between Ankara and LNA leader Haftar are volatile. Turkey’s President Erdogan has threatened to deploy Turkish troops to Libya if Haftar’s forces resume their offensive to take over Tripoli.

Libya’s combustible conditions could yet explode into war, a war which may become another bloody proxy battlefield for international powers.

Nonetheless, Russia has created a diplomatic space for political progress towards stability and peace in the North African country. Can a government of national unity be formed by the warring sides? It’s not clear if the GNA has the inherent political stability to make a partnership work.

But one thing is clear. Russia’s diplomatic prowess has salvaged a chance for peace out of the unholy mess that NATO left behind.