Eurasia note #87: Nuland's Ghost At Biden's Shoulder

Those who instructed her continue, stern and impervious

• Victoria Nuland, architect of Maidan coup, will retire this month

• Bowing out or fired, she leaves as Ukraine’s defeat morphs into wider conflict

• President Biden’s state speech promises unrelenting pursuit of war

• Yet foreign policy focus has shifted to Israel, and China may be next

• If German Taurus missile ploy was leaked, is Washington to give up Ukraine

• in return for Germany submitting to Green dismantling - was that the aim?

See also:

Ukraine: Just Bizniz for Some (Jan 27, 2022)
Ukraine Labs Part Of Dark Network (Mar 14, 2022)
The Objectives Of 9/11 And The Covid Response (Sep 11, 2022)
Biden On Payroll Of Ukraine’s Oligarchs (Jun 13, 2023)
Kissinger Dies But His Plans Much Alive (Nov 30, 2023)

(About 3.000 words or a quarter hour of your company)

Mar 9, 2024

Nothing has changed publicly with the resignation of Victoria Nuland. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address underlined that the unrelenting pursuit of war remains the cornerstone of foreign policy.

The legacy media’s handling of the story typically avoids any questions of substance.

Her announcement coincided with the leak of German military officials discussing how to supply and fire long-range missiles at Russia. The media avoids whether this is a good idea, or its consequences, and nit picks with a fine tooth comb the hunt for the leaker. Nuland recently consulted on a change of personnel in Kyiv. Yet there is silence on what this may mean for president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s regime.

The media declared Tucker Carlson’s interview with president Vladimir Putin treasonous so that it did not have to contend with the contents. So it goes.

Biden’s State of the Union (SOTU) mentioned Ukraine, Israel and China. but as Politico wrote in advance, he "won't hit some broad overall theme between the issues."

Sure enough, he did not explain why Ukraine is a key issue for the U.S., or what it hopes to gain from Israel's action in Gaza, nor what's the end goal in China.

Foreign policy objectives are left unspoken, open ended. We do war, it seems, because it pays to do war, while forces shape greater goals behind the scenes.

Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate, has said the more than $100 billions sent to Ukraine are a loan, an investment, for the money returns to U.S. military contractors.

As to Nuland herself, no-one in the Washington commentariat asks why she is in such a hurry to leave, given that the 2024 election is an obvious time to change personnel. Perhaps it is the rockfall that is the resounding defeat of Nuland's own strategy in Ukraine.

You keep your job in the legacy media by not asking uncomfortable questions.

On one hand NATO is split by the war in Ukraine, and by the prospect of simultaneous conflict in SW Asia (Mid East) and China. On the other, Biden has just recommitted to war in Ukraine.

"Puhoot'n (thus spake, strewth, Biden) and Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Puhoot'n will stop at Ukraine, I assure you he will not."

"But Ukraine can stop Puhoot'n. if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. My message to Puhoot'n, who I've known for a long time is simple: We will not walk away; we will not bow down; I will not bow down."

Granted, Biden was on the election stump and he seems more engaged when he’s angry.

We should look to the man who does more of the presidential heavy lifting, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Despite Biden’s emphasis on Russia, has the focus of U.S. policy already switched to China?

Nuland had filled in as deputy secretary of state after the retirement of Wendy Sherman and had expected to take the role. However Blinken instead appointed Kurt Campbell, a China expert. This confirms the administration’s focus on confronting China. Campbell's appointment reflects the Biden administration's continued shift toward what he calls the "Indo-Pacific region."  [1]

Fatal fixer

In Jan 2024, Nuland flew from Washington to Kyiv to reinforce NATO's policy of fighting to the last Ukrainian.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quelling the latest rebellion, after his former adviser questioned the authoritarian direction in which he was taking the country. Nuland's visit put paid to rumours of a broad reshuffle of the leadership, at which Zelenskiy hinted on Italian television.

It quelled any realpolitik faction in Ukraine that may seek to revive a peace deal with Russia that was on the table in Istanbul in March of 2022, until Boris Johnson flew from London to quash it.

In the event the main change was the commander of the armed forces Valeri Zaluzhnyi’s dismissal.

Ukraine’s parliament has since doubled down on the draft, discussing a bill that would exclude “draft dodgers” from any state benefits. Sadly for Ukrainians the proxy war continues.

Russian thinking

Russians put their own interpretation on Nuland’s resignation. Kremlin foreign ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova blamed Nuland for "the fiasco of American foreign policy."

"They won't tell you the reason. But it is simple: the failure of the anti-Russian policies of the Biden administration. Russophobia, which was proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main US foreign policy concept, is making the Democrats sink like a stone. Well, with them already being at the bottom, it’s not letting them go up."

Not only Russians hold this view. As Mike Whitney writes in Unz Review, Nuland and her former colleagues John Bolton and Hillary Clinton “have had a poisonous effect on our politics, elevating Russophobia to a state religion while dragging the nation’s reputation (U.S.) through the mud at every turn.” [2]

Clash of origins

How does it happen that Nuland (b 1961) whose father, the surgeon Sherwin Nuland, was born to Jewish immigrants who left Bessarabia in 1907, centered on Romania (or modern day Moldova and Ukraine) should find herself alongside Chrystia Freeland (b 1968) whose grandfather was a top Ukrainian propagandist for the Nazis?