Has anyone, just for fun, computed the totals of those who have died in the wars of choice this person and her extended family have instigated and supported? We should perhaps give awards; for example the Madeleine Albright prize for the highest annual child mortality in an avoidable conflict. It is not hard to be creative: The Stalin Award, The Eichmann medal. etc.
I dedicate these songs to Victoria:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY
“But it’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come.”
Oh boy is Blinken right about that, only not in the way he thinks. Historians of the future will study Nuland’s leadership on Ukraine alright. The 2014 coup is the climax of that catastrophic series of self-defeating policies the Neocons have left as their legacy. I fully expect this seminal event to be recognized as the tipping point that brought about nothing less than the end of an empire. The Nuland/Kagan Award for Hubris. It’ll be a long time before anyone else comes close to this supreme achievement in the field.
And what are we to make of Nuland’s replacement?
https://apnews.com/article/state-department-victoria-nuland-retiring-russia-ukraine-b06cfb9ca517f1a7f2e10ee7520e3086
With great thinkers like Toria/Bass what more can we ask for?
Did you catch Blinken’s kind words about her success with Haiti? Now here I thought Hilary(!), her hubby and their ‘global initiative’, and the UN, managed to fix that place all those years and billions of dollars ago…..
Fred,
Haiti is an absolute mess and getting worse every day. Everyone associated with that, Nuland, the Clintons and others, should feel nothing but shame and embarrassment.
TTG,
They should be bankrupt and in jail for what they have done.
Sorry, but Rule 5.56 should be applied.
Hah, good catch, thx. It’s hard not to read that sentence as an indictment rather than a compliment:
“Over the past three years, Toria has led this Department on everything from addressing complex crises in the Sahel, Haiti, and the Middle East, to broadening and strengthening America’s alliances and partnerships across Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”
I can see some evidence for “strengthening America’s alliances and partnerships across Europe”, but the rest of that is laughable. We’re losing the Sahel to Wagner/Russia; Haiti is so screwed up that we refuse to send troops there; the Middle East is now a multi-megaton albatross around our neck; and the phrase “Indo-Pac” is silly code for “trying to use India to counteract China’s rise”. And sadly, most of our European allies are being weakened – economically, at least – by joining our proxy war on Russia.
As an optimist by nature and by choice, I like to think that Blinken’s “thank you” to Nuland is actually a belated “FU”.
Best case scenario: Biden, Blinken, and crew have recognized that sucking up to NeoCons may be necessary for getting enough campaign funds to win elections, but their policies are destroying the USA faster than we can build new infrastructure to fix it.
Worst case scenario: just the first half of that last sentence…
The witch is dead!
I don’t think there is going to be anyone showing up in 20 years like Udam Singh did to Sir Michael O’Dwyer to get vengeance for all her bloodletting. Lord knows there are a lot of other neocons who could share the same fate.
Does Mrs Nuland’s departure indicate a change of Washington policy or is it merely corruption allegations or Washington infighting? And does it matter?
She gets a leaving present from Admiral Radakin of a brand new Russian ship and presents a leaving present to the Ukrainians of 1400 casualties a day, presumably Russian casualties also. The Hexentanz of the neocon ghouls will continue without Mrs Nuland as Syrski dutifully feeds elite units and cannon fodder alike into the meatgrinder.
Or it continues our side of the Atlantic. The American side not so much. The American press, more sober than ours, states that Kiev is running out of soldiers and Western industry cannot produce arms at the Russian level.
The American Air Force, the largest in the world, is out of the game unless they are prepared to accept attacks on European air bases. That’d be too close to home for the valiant armchair warriors of Europe. The deal is that the Ukrainians get to do the dying bit and we Europeans get the fun of watching the videos. I doubt the terms of that deal will change. So no USAF riding to the rescue. Nor for that matter the US Navy and sub fleet.
The amateur night generals of the Pentagon and Brussels are finding out the hard way that though providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability, any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages:-
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
Pistorius and Shapps have yet to read that bit, Shapps retreating to fantasy world –
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-boost-ukraines-artillery-reserves-with-245-million-munitions-package
– and Pistorius, as is only proper, following Shapps’ lead. Not much point the world looking to Great Britain for leadership in these difficult time unless we in Great Britain do the leading, is there?
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-munich-security-conference
Macron trailing vacuously behind the pair of them still daydreaming of Napoleonic glory. Honestly, Walrus, the whole freak show since 2022 would be high comedy, fire breathing politicians valiant armchair warriors amateur night Generals and all. Were it not for the corpses littering the fields and settlements of the Donbass. Seems Mrs Nuland’s exit will make no difference to that.
EO,
Do forget to thank Boris for his contributions to not-peace half a million casualties ago.
Johnson’s impulsive. As Zelensky and his fellows discovered, impulsive people often promise more than they can perform.
https://youtu.be/nj-YK3JJCIU?t=14
but why is Victoria Nuland retiring so out of the blue?
are the dems – obama – do planing a move with her? maybe vice pres. at michelle’s side ?
for me – this is a black swan event…
gpc,
Nuland’s been in government for well over 30 years. She’s retiring. It’s what people do.
I dunno. One of the NeoCons’ greatest organizational strengths is that they play the “personnel is policy” game *really* well, slowly building up trusted cadre in various Depts of the US Government since the Reagan years (State, Defense, Treasury, No Such Agency, etc). Nuland had power to continue that process; why give that up?
If this isn’t just a simple retirement, I see two very different scenarios:
Best Case: Biden is tired of being bullied by Bibi & AIPAC, and this is a message that he’s breaking the Clintons’ alliance with them.
Worst Case: End times are near, NeoCons see that they’ve gotten all they can from using USA as their Golem, and they are abandoning the sinking ship.
There’s definitely some merit in your conclusions. Unfortunately, it’s a case of wait and see.
The context definitively suggests she is miffed. No one but her would have deserved to be affirmed/confirmed as Deputy Secretary of State:
AP She had been a candidate to succeed Wendy Sherman as deputy Secretary of State and had served as acting deputy since Sherman’s retirement seven months ago but lost an internal administration personnel battle when President Joe Biden nominated Kurt Campbell to the no. 2 spot. Campbell took office last month.
She’s 62 and as I recall that was one of the canonical ages at which people retired for certain Social Security benefits to be collectible without waiting. I don’t know if those rules still apply, they mattered in my day and my parent’s. However you’d think she’s far too wealthy for SS to be a factor. Another curious hiccup was the refusal of both Zelensky’s wife and Navalny’s wife to attend Biden’s upcoming state of the union speech – they were slated to sit side by side but they not only won’t be doing that, neither will attend at all.
Another blip – Kamala Harris’s very sharp words regarding the need for a Gaza ceasefire followed by her meeting with IDF General Benny Gantz, much to Bibi’s displeasure. It’s hard for me to comment other than to say all those things happened almost simultaneously and they each center around women. Zelenskyaya, Navalnaya, Nuland and Harris. The other dramas were the noise over Macron threatening Nato troops into Ukraine and the release of the transcripts of the Kraut Air Force Generals planning to salvo the Kerch bridge into oblivion with Taurus missiles.
Nuland going is almost like Beria being shot on Krushchev’s orders soon after Stalin’s death. If so, who is Stalin in this case – Biden, Zelensky?
Hard to tell if the US military (National Guard actually) patrolling the NY City subways is a major event. They’ve been called in for civil disturbances before but not for these reasons.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/06/us-news/gov-hochul-to-deploy-1000-national-guardsman-state-cops-to-carry-out-bag-checks-in-nyc-subways/
———
https://t.me/malekdudakov/6737
The Militarization of America . Amid the migrant and crime crisis, New York is already taking desperate measures . State Governor Kathy Hochul announced the deployment of the National Guard to the New York subway . The military will help the police, who are no longer coping with the homeless and criminals.
New York has been flooded with 200 thousand illegal immigrants in recent months . They are being deported en masse from Republican states. The number of crimes committed in the New York subway has jumped by as much as 50%. These include attacks on passers-by, robberies and hooliganism, and murders .
There is an acute shortage of police officers – thousands of them are resigning due to disagreement with the policies of the liberal authorities. Recently, the New York subway triedto launch an experiment with robot police officers. But it ended in a complete fiasco – the robots did not scare off any of the criminals .
Now the New York subway will be patrolled by the military. However, they will have little effect on the criminal environment. After all, after arrest, many criminals are simply released without bail. Recently, a gang of illegal immigrants who beat police officers in Times Square in a crowd was released this way .
But if suddenly those dissatisfied with the Democratic Party take to the streets, then the National Guard can be immediately unleashed on them. This is how the Democrats plan to maintain power in their states – on the one hand, controlled chaos with rampant crime. And on the other hand, there is already a state of emergency with the National Guard. Until it all gets out of control and explodes, then no one in New York will find it enough .
———
While on the topic of dysfunctional policing – someone sent me this today. I recall horrors of Gates’ LAPD but most of this at the link was new to me.
The Spectacle of Policing:
‘Swatting’ innocent people is the latest incarnation of the decades-long gestation of an infrastructure of fear.
On February 25, an active-duty airman named Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., while yelling, “Free Palestine.” I’ll leave it to others to analyze the politics. I want to focus on something else that emerged from that most harrowing event: what first responders did on the scene before anyone even knew what was going on.
The first first responder, according to a witness, either a security guard or a cop, asked the man before him who was on fire, “May I help you, sir?” Then he ordered him to the ground.
The second first responder—a Secret Service agent, it turns out—then approached “with a gun drawn on the man after he collapses, still consumed by flames.” A picture of that moment emerged. It looks like he thought he was keeping a murderer from fleeing the scene of the crime. (Continued at link).
https://americanprospect.bluelena.io/index.php
F&L,
Hochul, Cuomo protege and replacement, sent the guard because the mayor hasn’t had enough time to fill the NYPD ranks with the ideologically correct. Once done they’ll keep everyone in line.
According to Badrakumar:
“Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s effusive praise for 62-year-old Nuland’s premature retirement from foreign service is usually reserved for funerals.”
That’s a good point.
Failures have been piling up under her leadership. Let’s forget for the moment the death and destruction caused by her warlike activism. From the outset, “spreading democracy and liberating women” meant “death and destruction”. His technique is the usual “fuck it up and deny it before you leave the country”. The overall strategic balance sheet does not allow one to claim victory anywhere, except perhaps in Pakistan.
She’s leaving, or has been asked to leave, because she’s a blot on the landscape. Her record is negative.
In his defense, anyone else might not have done any better. For at least 20 years, the United States has been powerless in foreign policy. Too big, when it should act with flexibility, and too powerful for smartness to pay off.
Is this a sign of a new policy emerging? The missile hit 150 meters from where Zelensky was meeting with the Greek minister. A message that Z is no longer off limits? I doubt it. I’ll paste Sergei Markov’s puzzled musings directly below.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/volodymyr-zelensky-s-convoy-narrowly-avoids-russian-missile-in-odesa-20240307-p5fagp.html
———–
https://t.me/logikamarkova/10694
Odessa. A missile strike on a hangar with weapons of the Ukrainian Armed Forces occurred in the port at a time when Zelensky was 150 meters from the hangar. The blow did not hit Zelensky. The Prime Minister of Greece was also there. This one definitely has nothing to do with it.
But this blow is a sign, a warning to Zelensky. About what ? Unknown. But Zelensky probably knows. Perhaps this is a warning that he could be hit by a missile attack by accident. But experience suggests that there is probably something there that is difficult for us to even imagine.
F&L,
the false flag elite must be truly desperate if they are willing to kill off the Greek PM just to get more ‘aid’ to Ukraine. On a related note the European council is desperate to get some war bonds out there, especially as they have no taxing authority within the EU. The last time they issued bonds, under ‘covid’, they tanked about 60%.
The signs were there back in 1982.
https://tvzvezda-ru.translate.goog/news/201504192022-fsko.htm?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Wow. Just wow.
James/Barbara Ann –
I’m not a fan of Nuland. But she has been quoted as saying that she loved her time in Odessa in that Young Guard youth camp (Molodaya Gvardiya) and that the “people there were fantastic”. She was there as an exchange student from Brown University. If such a thing as Inna Metelskaya-Sheremetyeva claims truly happened, then someone else there would surely know about it and Brown faculty advisors would have been informed. No such allegations were ever brought forward until now, just a few days after her speech on Putin’s lies and war crimes in Ukraine.
So I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt until proven or dis-proven. But even if Inna Metelskaya-Sheremetyeva turns out to be a member of Putin’s dezinformatsiya circle, debunking it won’t make difference to the rest of the world. Because as someone said long ago: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
leith
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
That’s nicely sums up the business model of the US MSM.
leith, I am with you, curiously enough. 😉 Rather tall tale.
She will be replaced with a new face with the same agenda.
The US gov is full of people like Nuland, Albright, Bolton…
Here’s Biden in 1997 making fun of Russia and their worries about NATO expansion.
This was before Putin. Arrogance and short sightedness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6MTvhH8eEA
She didn’t retire willingly to get her “benefits”. Somebody like her is intoxicated with that kind of power of couping countries and opening the gates of hell on regimes she hates.
babelthuap,
As someone mentioned earlier, she was passed over for appointment to the next higher position in the DOS. I’m sure that had something to do with the timing of her retirement. She’s still young enough and well placed enough to go far in the think tank world. Seems like an ideal time for a career transition. Military officers do this all the time.
I wonder how many of you would be able to do the work on the high level foreign policy scene. I know I don’t and never did. I also see a lot of speculations around here. I would suggest that if you want to find out how good you are at it, try the futures markets and you will soon find out.
You can agree or disagree over policy, but that requires certain insight or knowledge. A very long time ago, I was a computer programmer and systems analyst. The most important thing to know at the time was GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Regarding what I refer to as Event Calculus, I find the idea of taking a small event and trying to infer something mush bigger from it to be rather flawed. It works in Math, but seldom anywhere else.
It’s not hard work being the sole super power with the baddest military of all time most of her career. The only policy was free reign to do whatever you want. Unfortunately for her she finally met her match. She had a unremarkable career of couping rump states. Most people didn’t even know who she was until Russia gut punched her.
Lars
I couldn’t do Blinken’s job, my view of reality is not shaped by Exceptionalist Mindset Disorder.
Lars, I know a few diplomats and occasionally rub shoulders with the same. I also know a few foreign service public servants who have some interesting tales about Ambassadors and the like.
I am afraid you are talking without nay knowledge of the subject. Firstly; the overriding rule of diplomacy is “no surprises”. That also encompasses good manners.
The key diplomatic rule is not to ask for what you cannot have, that way working relationships are built. For example, treaties, agreements and diplomatic problem solving are mostly completed by public servants a few levels down. By the time the likes of an Ambassador sees it, the work is 90% done. By the time a President sees it, its 99% complete.
By diplomatic and foreign policy standards, Nuland is a pig. The story about her behaviour as a student is also consistent with Narcissistic personality disorder. That diagnosis makes sense because NPD people dont do empathy and neither does Nuland.
To put that another way, people with NPD often look like great leaders because they appear to make difficult and often cruel decisions without emotion. That’s not because they are in any way gifted but because they don’t do empathy. They can send tens of thousands to their deaths and still sleep well at night.
Oh, and they fail to achieve anything good for their country, like Nuland.
walrus, that is a bold statement!
>By diplomatic and foreign policy standards,
>Nuland is a pig. The story about her behaviour
>as a student is also consistent with
>Narcissistic personality disorder.
>That diagnosis makes sense because NPD
>people dont do empathy and neither does Nuland.
due to NPD – IMO – she didn’t like to be on the front line – exceptionally, few weeks ago alone in the dark at a table in kiev…what was this about?
is a comparison with VP cheney fitting?
thx for your thoughts