French policy in Libya according to the former CSM AM, gen. Pasquale Preziosa: "the wolf loses its fur but not its vice"

(To Andrea Cucco)
05/08/17

General Pasquale Preziosa, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force up to 2016 and today president of PRP Channel - prpchannel.com - makes a detailed analysis of the issue of the Libyan crisis and of the French "assault" foreign policy. With an examination of the current and historical situation (mirror of a reality perhaps not really known to all), it suggests the unity of Italian political forces.

General Precious, has France always drawn against our country?

Nothing that was not foreseeable, the wolf loses his hair but not the vice. French behavior towards Italy must be analyzed with the eyes of geopolitics. The recent events that took place in the relations between the 2 countries, which seemed idyllic, even recalling the meetings at "Ventotene", can be summarized in a few steps. Macron wins the elections in France and Italy laughed for having "found" an ally who should share the same convictions to reform the Eurozone and better resist German pressure for the deficit and debt problem: we went out too soon. Unfortunately, the first negative signal came with Italy's request for aid for the ongoing migration problem and French refusal. France and Spain subsequently rejected the possibility that some ships carrying migrants could sail in Spanish and French ports. In order not to miss anything, France organized the meeting in Paris between Serraj and Gen. Haftar, to rupture leadership on the Libya dossier first assigned to Italy. Italy responded, upon request, with a plan to send some ships into Libyan territorial waters to help the Libyan Coast Guard to fight illegal migration.

Are we talking about Libya only?

Recently France announced its intention to nationalize the French shipyards Stx, recently acquired by Fincantieri with the agreement with the previous French president. The Italian concern is that the new French administration has strongly reoriented its relations with Germany by weakening those with Italy, and the Franco-German choice to cooperate for a new fighter aircraft, excluding Italy regardless, is clear testimony, France had previously combined its destinies on remotely piloted combat aircraft with Great Britain, always excluding our country.

And we?

Italy is worried that its current political weakness may further shrink after the German elections next September. For France, the internal situation, outside appearances, is also complex because in France there is a south linked to the Mediterranean and separated from the north linked to Northern European logics. Our country, on many problems of the reform of the Eurozone, shares the same concerns but for Italy to assume that Mediterranean France could have prevailed in Macron's new policy was, at least, risky. France sees Germany linked to Paris through two channels: the European Union and NATO. However, France is starting to think of itself using all diplomatic means and not, to maintain the status of great power in the international scenario. It is trying to be perceived as indispensable in Berlin for the control of Europe. È a difficult challenge, but France has years of experience and diplomatic intrigue behind it: Machiavelli "docet".

Can we hope for a positive policy change for the future?

From France, Italy cannot expect anything good that does not serve the interests of the other side of the Alps. For internal aspects of Libya, France, through its emissaries in the country, has always been present on the ground, one of the many is a Libyan Mirage pilot from the Gaddafi period who was also a military attaché in France: the names are known to those who need to know them. With him the French defense maintained strong links with the tribe of Zintan and with the gen. Haftar. The Paris declaration signed by Serraj and Haftar is to be considered low-profile and political, aimed at obtaining a national amnesty for all the Libyan factions in the struggle, which can cancel the crime of uprising committed by a part of the Libyan army against Gaddafi for the facts of 2011 and mentions a possible period for the possible next elections in Libya. Which country promoted the uprising against Gaddafi? Certainly not Italy, which had privileged relations with Libya and a great cooperation agreement, the relationship with Italy was not possible to attack diplomatically or politically. As regards the foreign and energy policy aspects, however, it is clear that the Berlusconi Gaddafi agreement for ENI was not appreciated by the French.

Well this is now in the public domain. What do the Italians not know?

France had and has the oil wells running out in Algeria, while the Libyan ones were and are still to be exploited, they have remained intact by the Iranian libyan sanction act. Great Britain with British Petroleum has also remained indifferent. In the past, as lightning strikes in the clear sky, Great Britain released the Lockerbie (Libyan) assailant with some protests from the United States, but as business is seen, business is business. With crude oil at $ 50 per barrel, everyone now has the need to pump oil without using sophisticated technologies - even the Russians. This is the game today in Libya, the great challenge that united Italy must face, albeit at the end of the legislature and with a political future to be built, because the developments of this national, European and international confrontation will be the legacy Of those who will take over.

What is this competition with France?

To understand French behavior it is necessary to examine a few geopolitical facts. Historically, one of the side effects of the French Revolution was the concept of nationalism: the population with common origins, the same lineage and common language, shares the same destiny, this will historically become the basis of the nation state. Another important point, always from a geopolitical point of view, is that even after the end of the Cold War, France has not yet closed the chapter with Germany and is looking for a way to coexist with this country in the light of the great global changes in act, reunification of Germany, German GDP which places Germany as the first European economic power and request for an increase in military spending to 2% by the USA. We recall that in 1940 France was fighting for its existence against the German danger and was defeated (swallowed), in a short time, by the Germanic army. In 1945 with the American nuclear protection things changed in Europe: the fallacious new Maginot line, for France was represented by West Germany, France flourished with a strong tendency to nationalism, UK began the reconstruction of its country destroyed by hard confrontation, Spain was under the dominion of Franco, while Italy, Austria with Germany came under the control of the occupation forces.

We lost.

For Germany and for Italy, European cooperation was the only way to return to the international community. For France, the European Union project was debated between feeling of fear and ambition: fear to prevent Germany from being allied only to France and ambition to become a global power without having to worry about defending itself from Germany. During the Cold War, France has not always had an American policy and its good relations with the Soviet Union were known. France has developed its own independent nuclear deterrence from NATO, in which it only returned politically (not militarily), claiming great gratitude, then granted, for high-level NATO assignments. He also broadly developed his relationships with the Second and Third World.

The end of the Cold War was celebrated all over the world, but not in France, which did not perceive great threat from the Soviet Union. The reunification of Germany was another element, which did not rejoice many French people, for the concern arising from the events of the Second World War. In fact, France sought in all ways that Germany could remain anchored to the European institutions, and when it was reunited, it strongly supported the Maastricht Treaty so that the two countries were linked by a common currency. To rejoice in the Germans, the French shared the policy of the German Central Bank to keep the ECB low inflation rates. The European rules today certainly do not disadvantage the Germans; indeed, if these rules fall, the two countries will be on opposite sides. The Germans have their own agenda and today they are the European Union's strongest economy, while France has not maintained the same leadership as the Cold War period.

The supposed co-leadership of the European Union between the two countries appears to be biased in favor of Germany. One of the significant data is the unemployment rate between the two countries: about 10% for France, well above the European average which is 8%, about 4% for Germany. Another significant fact is that France has had a trade deficit since the 2000s with the introduction of the euro, the public sector employs a quarter of the French workforce, with high prices, high taxes and consequently high public debt. . The French demography has changed a lot in recent years, with the formation in many municipal communities, of "neighborhoods" of Muslim and North African immigrants, epicenters of fights, crime and sometimes radicalization, with difficulties of integration into the social fabric.

Economic stagnation and social tensions have produced great discontent in France: the political forces - socialists and conservatives - have recently been joined by strongly nationalist, anti-European forces, endangering the supposed continuity of Franco-German relations.

During the colonial period, the main objective of France was to complicate life in the colonies for other European powers, Italy in the first place, but also for the English colonies of south-east Asia and North America, we remember the Fayette who led the independence of the USA from Great Britain. The profitability of the colonies was not as important as the possibility of complicating life for others, for supposed enemies. The same strategy continued throughout the Cold War period by employing some Third World leaders to complicate life for the US, the British, the Soviet Union and Germany. History is full of these alleComfortably from the French, even in order to obtain a global influence.