Rescuing a country is a different game than threatening "no rescue until you revert the cancellation of arms contracts", or to make 1.3B € profit off, essentially, loan sharking. If Schäuble had intended a real rescue, he would have passed on the (at some times negative!) interest rates to Greece.

> Germany is also not responsible for destabilizing the middle east and north africa

Germany is a HUGE provider of weapons of all sorts, right into the middle of conflicts. Many dictators use German (and Swiss)-owned banks to launder their illegitimate assets. Also, Germany as the leading nation in the EU has failed multiple times living up to that role. Merkel's policy has long been "don't do anything until the situation gets out of control".

Let's come back to the specific situation I mentioned: Libya. The largest weapon seller to Libya were Russia (by far) and Italy.

Not Germany. German weapon exports to Libya were minor.

The situation in Libya was neither caused nor fueled by Germany. It was Berlusconi (prime minister of Italy) who was a big friend of Gaddafi, not Merkel.

That there is chaos in Libya and that people are fleeing to Europe is nothing where Merkel or Germany in general has contributed much, compared to many other countries who were directly involved in Libya. That was contributing in a big way to the chaos there and the refugee crisis, not German policies.

Here is a nice articcle about Italy's involvement in Libya before the civil war and before the military inntervention...

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053363,00...

Italians have been close to Gaddafi since the '80s - the alternative at the time was actual war, which the country did not want and could never win. The Italian plan was basically to wait for Gaddafi to die and then take that chance to promote an ordinary transition to a more presentable form of government, which would have safeguarded Italian interests and security for everyone. It's what worked for Spain, after all.

The governments who really fouled things up were France and UK, with US support behind the scene, who first recklessly promoted the "arab spring" and then attacked almost unilaterally, dragging NATO into it. Italy was involved as a token gesture; the Italian government at the time was extremely weak and nearing the end (which happened 6 months later) as Berlusconi was engulfed in more and more scandals. They had no interest whatsoever in making waves - whereas Sarkozy thought it would have ensured his re-election the following year and earned a new country for the French "sphere of influence".

Everyone in Italy knew that nothing good would come from the war, because Gaddafi was the only barrier between the country and waves of sub-saharan migrants. For years, we literally looked the other way as Gaddafi disposed of migrants in brutal concentration camps (or worse); as long as we kept paying "development aid" funds, he'd keep illegal boats to a minimum. Like Erdogan is now doing in Turkey, there is profit to be made by being the buffer zone between prosperous "cities on the hill" and starving people. And before that, Gaddafi was one of our "ins" in the world of Arab "movements", which helped mediation efforts in scenarios like Lebanon and ensured Italy was spared the worst waves of Palestinian terrorism, for example. (These policies predate Berlusconi, by the way, even though he brought them to a farcical pinnacle when he let Gaddafi camp out in Rome.) We had absolutely no upside in trying to get rid of Gaddafi, let alone doing it as rashly as the French did.

Responsibility for the Libyan clusterfuck sits squarely with Sarkozy and Cameron, with Obama right behind.

The relationship with Gaddafi was providing lots of strenge encounters. Here he was preaching Islam to Italian 'glamour girls':

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianoce...

Generally I agree that the role of the US, UK in the whole destabilization effort was way worse. Can't say much of the French role. Didn't read much about it.

Because there was no plan to replace him in the short term. He was in good health, had a relatively solid grip on power structures, and was busy realigning with NATO on the common ground of fighting Saudi-financed extremists and the Muslim Brotherhood - as exemplified by the agreement Blair struck only a few years earlier. The plan was to have the country in a better position some time down the line, letting him establish better trading links and so on. The acceleration from Sarkozy was not expected and very unwelcome.