The conference on Libya, held in Berlin, was a small step towards removing this country from the state of civil war. And a big step for Russia, as well as for all world diplomacy, which got a chance to withdraw international relations from the state of permanent conflict.

On January 19, a grand international conference on Libyan affairs was held in Berlin. It was attended by more than a dozen heads of state (including Russian President Vladimir Putin), as well as the main Libyan conflicting parties - the head of the Libyan National Army Khalifa Haftar and the Chairman of the Libyan Government of National Accord Faiz Sarraj. As a result of negotiations of respected leaders, the most general final document was adopted, consisting of more than fifty points.

In them, participants spoke out for a ceasefire (not a ceasefire, namely a ceasefire - different things) and created a special monitoring mission from representatives of the parties to the conflict, which will monitor compliance with this regime. In addition, they called on the parties to deploy troops to their original locations (which the parties, of course, will not do).

Conference participants also agreed not to supply weapons to the warring parties. It is a logical decision, given that (despite the enormous stockpiles of weapons under Gaddafi), Sarraj and Haftar are fighting largely thanks to funds received from external sponsors.

In the understanding of the authors of the resolution, the successful implementation of arms points will help the parties to the conflict turn from a military path to a political one - with the help of external mediators begin a dialogue and move on to creating all-Libyan security structures. Which, in turn, will allow us to begin a dialogue on the economic reconstruction of the country (where civil war has been raging for almost ten years) and the improvement of the humanitarian situation.

A significant part of the experts was not inspired by this final document: in their opinion, the Berlin meeting, as earlier as the Moscow one, ended in failure. But this is not so. The failure of the conference will be called only those who expected great success from her and the kisses of Sarraj and Haftar (who before that, in fact, refused to even sit at the same table).

There couldn’t be success, nor could there be any quick solutions. Libya is still not Syria. There is no one force whose international legitimacy is orders of magnitude greater than the other. The principles of statehood are much less developed there: the population acts not even from ethnic or confessional, but from banal tribal logic. Logic, which after the overthrow of Gaddafi not only became dominant in the country, but, in fact, turned into a serious obstacle to the restoration of statehood.

Therefore, those who wish to restore order in Libya had two options. The first is to bring an autocrat to power there. As the president of the Institute of the Middle East Evgeny Satanovsky absolutely rightly notes, “a truce is impossible until someone in Libya becomes the new Gaddafi.” A man who by force suppresses all tribal Wishlist will stop centrifugal tendencies in the country (generated primarily by these Wishlist) and restore order in Libya. It is clear that if one chooses between sitting on tribal / religious bayonets Sarraj and army commander Haftar, the latter has more chances for “Gaddafization”. However, a number of countries (Turkey, Algeria, Italy) are against the candidacy of the commander.

Therefore, the second option remains - to negotiate and bring the parties to the Libyan conflict together at such conferences. Counting on, in the words of Sergey Lavrov, "small steps forward." And in Berlin, this step was taken.

Sarraja and Haftara were brought together and obtained their consent to a ceasefire. Under the general principles of the settlement signed all the more or less serious players involved in the Libyan process.

However, the fact that Libya was a step forward for Russia was a very serious success. Indeed, for Moscow, the Libyan case is both a map and a small and large training ground.

The Libyan card (that is, Russia's active participation in Libyan affairs, based on the unique diplomatic position of Moscow and its authority in the Middle East) will be actively laid out by the Kremlin in diplomatic solitaire or poker with Western and Eastern partners.

All these partners are interested in Russia being on their side.

Turkey, which (if the peace talks fail) is doomed to a very risky intervention in Libya and which is ready to make concessions on the Syrian Idlib issue in exchange for Russian help.

Europe, for which the exacerbation of the Libyan civil war threatens to reduce the influx of Libyan oil while increasing refugees, and which in exchange for Russian help will be ready to move in matters of sanctions and Ukraine.

Egypt and the Gulf countries that stand behind it, who do not want Libya to come under the control of pro-Turkish forces and, accordingly, are ready to compensate Russia for its efforts in supporting Khalifa Haftar, as well as maximizing the powers of Haftar in the framework of the future coalition government.

At the same time, Libyan tactical exchanges are a kind of minimum program. It would be optimal for Russia to use Libya as a sort of training ground for solving local and global problems.

The local task is to develop cooperation with an important Russian travel companion - Turkey. Erdogan's Turkey is a very promising partner for Russia - both economic and political. But there are also issues on which Russian and Turkish interests diverge, what external (including overseas) players are actively trying to take advantage of. And in Libya, Moscow and Ankara (putting forward a joint ceasefire initiative, sharing responsibilities to convince the warring parties to reconcile) are actually working in the second experimental link after Syria. They learn to trust each other, circumvent and / or solve complex issues in a discussion rather than confrontational manner.

The global function of the Libyan landfill is to work out the life and interaction of countries in a multipolar world. The empty replicas of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who arrived at the conference, from the series “Libyans must decide their own future,” ridiculed by Maria Zakharova, are indicative: they demonstrate that the United States is self-alleviating from managing global processes. At the same time, in Libya (unlike the “chamber” Syria) the interests of a significant number of respected powers intersect: Russia, the USA, Germany, Italy, France, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and partly China. Therefore, the country is, in fact, a place where participants learn to negotiate independently with each other. Moreover, they study relatively safely - failure to negotiate, of course, will be painful, but not so critical (unlike, for example, the situation surrounding the Iranian nuclear deal or the reduction of strategic offensive weapons). And if they do learn, the world will become much more stable and tragedies such as the destruction of Libyan statehood in 2011 (the negative consequences of which were felt not only by the Libyan people, but also by external destroyers) can be avoided.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.