The second city of Libya fell under the control of anti-government forces as of Monday.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the LDPR and Deputy Speaker of the lower house of the Russian Parliament called for Gadhafi to stop the violence and move to Moscow.  The question here would be if Zhirinovsky extended this offer at the behest of the Russian government.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement: “We call on all sides in Libya to peacefully resolve existing problems, on the path to a responsible and broad national dialogue and the conduct of necessary reforms,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “In any case, the violence must be stopped.”

The United Nations and the Arab League called upon Libya to halt its armed aggression against the Libyan people who have been demonstrating.  Both organizations scheduled meetings on the situation in Libya for Tuesday, February 22.  The UN meeting would be a session of the UN Security Council.

It would appear that most governments in the region lack popular support as evidenced by the extent of the demonstrations.  The pace of events is truly breathtaking and CNSIS will continue to study events as they unfold.  It is important to compare and contrast events in each country to those of other states.  There are differences as well as similarities.  The Egyptian military is acting quite differently from that of Libya, though the Libyan Armed Forces are not uniform in their support for the regime and many have defected to the opposition and some to other countries.  Probably, if one had to point to a likely result of the political transformations underway, it would be that there will be governments that will have a different view of their national interest with respect to cooperation with the United States.  Islam will likely play a greater role in public life. These possible trends will be different in every country and some regimes that survive may be forced to bend to popular will by changing their foreign relations, with Jordan being one such example.  Some commentators view Islamic religious political programs as distinct from secular/nationalist ones.  Historically this has been largely accurate and definitely true in the case of Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate President Nasser thus unleashing decades of repression against the Brotherhood, which indeed modified its approach.  However, might we not see the development of political movements that combine features of nationalism and political Islam.  Certainly there is the possibility that even if parties/movements stay distinct, that the new age of new coalition politics might produce this result.  Perhaps Egypt is moving in this direction.  The new constitution will be crucial particularly in terms of the power that the new presidency will have and what will the role of the military be.  At the present moment, it would appear that in Egypt at least, the various groups want to share power, though the final alignment is yet to be determined.  The Armed Forces are not likely to cede all power and be at the mercy of a civilian government, and yet, they do not want to govern.