U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in Russia ostensibly to talk missile defense and regional security, but there is little doubt this agenda will be overshadowed by the latest developments in Libya. Gates' reputation as a Russia-friendly politician will hardly make the talks any less controversial. Nor will the Pentagon head's planned resignation later this year be much of a help.
It would be an overstatement to say that U.S.-Russian relations have now reached a critical point. But, clearly, there is a sense of building tension over Washington's initiative to launch airstrikes against sites of Muammar Gaddafi's government.
Not everyone in Russia's military and political staff believed that under Barack Obama the U.S. would be able to kick its habit of bombing foreign territories. The newly launched military campaign against Libya has proved those skeptics right.
This is not to say that the two sides have particularly high expectations of each other over the Libya issue. Russia stopped short of vetoing the UN Security Council's resolution on the use of military force against Gaddafi. Going as far as approving the U.S.-led intervention would be too much for it to stomach, and the Americans have no illusions on that count. Nor does Moscow cherish the illusory hope of Washington curtailing its Libyan operation any time soon.
Mr. Gates has echoed President Obama's point that the United States has no intention of being the driving force behind this military campaign, but Russia remains unconvinced.
Even more awkwardly, although Mr. Gates did not back intervention in Libya he will now have to prove to Moscow that it was the right thing to do.
The Russian side, taking issue with the Americans over Libya, may, for its part, have a hard time explaining to Washington just what it finds so disconcerting about the UN-sponsored military intervention.
During the campaigns in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, Moscow's main argument was that even the world's wealthiest and most powerful country must not set itself above the law by launching operations without United Nations authorization. But now that the UN has given it the go-ahead for the Libyan campaign, this argument is no longer valid.
Another complicating factor is the fact that prior to the adoption of Resolution 1973, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev urged Gaddafi to stop using military force against civilians and joined other world leaders in the economic and political sanctions against the Libyan dictator.
Perhaps those who masterminded the resolution should be held responsible. Instead of proposing an international contingent under common UN leadership be sent in, they drafted a document entitling any interested country to attack Libya unilaterally.
This resolution, reminiscent of the old barbaric practice of declaring people outlaws, is yet another sign of the United Nation's continuing moral degradation. In antiquity (and in the Bolshevik era) citizens officially declared outlaws lost all legal protection, became easy targets for murder and robbery, and anyone offering them food or shelter would themselves face punishment.
But the main problem lies elsewhere. Recent history has seen quite a few cases of foreign troops overthrowing a dictator for the benefit of humankind. For instance, Tanzania's operation in Uganda to bring down the dictatorship of Idi Amin was hailed across the world as just such a venture. In 1994, Ugandan troops crossed into neighboring Rwanda to stop the state-sponsored genocide of the Tutsis, about a million of whom were killed in a single week. Incidentally, the United States long disregarded those mass killings of the Tutsis, refusing to recognize the massacre as genocide. Vietnam's operation to overthrow Pol Pot's brutal regime in Cambodia is another example of benevolent intervention.
None of these operations caused any serious controversy in the international community because it would be ridiculous to suggest that Tanzania, Uganda or Vietnam had been motivated by their desire for global hegemony or regional domination.
By contrast, Russia's recent operation against Georgia sparked a strong reaction in the West despite Tbilisi's long-running discrimination against the Ossetian population and the briefness of the Russian campaign. The West must have sensed that along with its no doubt noble intentions, Moscow's actions were also spurred by the desire to preserve its influence in this post-Soviet region.
Likewise, it would be hard to find anyone in today's Russia who sincerely believes in Washington's altruism. Also the memories of the humiliation and helplessness they felt over NATO's bombing of former Yugoslavia are still fresh in many Russians' minds.
What makes the current Libyan operation so controversial is not so much the figure of Gaddafi as the divide between those who accept the U.S. bid for global hegemony and those who oppose it.
Despite the fact that the first airstrikes in this campaign against Libya were carried out by France, not the United States, and that the French president's remarks concerning Gaddafi have been much more belligerent than Obama's, Russian reporters covering the operation present it as largely U.S.-led.
Small wonder, then, that the Libyan campaign should cause resentment here, in Russia. The U.S. army's striking technological supremacy makes its attacks on this North African country resemble a slaughter of non-combatants. It is like sending in a modern tank unit in to do battle with tribes-people armed solely with spears.
Equally unsavory is the fact that Allied jets are sent in to bomb Libyan territory under cover of darkness, and that the option of a ground operation has been ruled out altogether as too dangerous.
All this means that Mr. Gates' mission to Moscow to change its mind over the operation in Libya is an unenviable one, to say the least. Obama will no longer be viewed in Russia as a new kind of president, who has broken away from the militaristic legacy of his predecessors in the White House. The sides can still reach consensus on some individual issues of mutual concern. But the bitterness over Washington's decision to go to war with Libya makes any fundamental changes in U.S.-Russian relations highly unlikely for the time being.
For a real reset, we will probably have to wait for the next generation to take over - a generation free from the war legacy of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Provided, of course, that the U.S. launches no new military campaign in the meantime. And that is hard to believe.
The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
