“OPERATION ODYSSEY DAWN” BREAKING FOR WASHINGTON

At the London summit of 2 November 2010, France decided to pool defense assets with the British, who depend on the United States.

by Thierry Meyssan, Voltairnet.org

It was France, the United Kingdom and the United States who submitted to the UN Security Council the text which was adopted as resolution 1793, establishing a no-fly zone over Libya.

This initiative must be understood in two ways:

First, vis-à-vis public opinion at home Barack Obama could not afford to take on a third war in the Muslim world after those in Afghanistan and Iraq, where his country is still mired. Washington thus preferred to delegate this operation to its allies.

Secondly, acting on behalf of U.S. interests favourable to the “special relationship” between London and Washington, Nicolas Sarkozy’s priority since the beginning of his mandate has been to bring French and British defenses closer together. He achieved this through the defense agreements of 2 November 2010 and found in the Libyan crisis an opportunity for joint action.

With France’s reinstatement in NATO’s integrated command, voted on 17 March 2009 and ratified at the Strasbourg-Kehl summit of 3-4 April 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy abandoned the principle of an independent French defense.

Through the Treaty of Lisbon, of which he claims to be one of the principal architects, Sarkozy had already forced the European Union to forego any form of independent defense and to rely permanently on NATO.

A half-century later, his policy consecrates the triumph of the European Defence Community (EDC) principle, historically opposed by the Gaullists and the Communists.

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