The Mess that Nuland Made -- Robert Parry

[seafan]

47. Victoria Nuland needs to be unceremoniously removed from her position.

Thanks for this information on Victoria Nuland, DUer FlatBaroque. She has operated under the mainstream radar for far too long.


NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine, by Robert Parry, January 6, 2015

Exclusive: The New York Times keeps insisting that last year’s Ukrainian coup wasn’t a coup and anyone who thinks so lives inside “the Russian propaganda bubble.” But a slanted Times “investigation” shows that the newspaper remains lost inside the U.S. government’s “propaganda bubble,” writes Robert Parry.

Yanukovych wanted more time for the EU negotiations, but his decision angered many western Ukrainians who saw their future more attached to Europe than Russia. Tens of thousands of protesters began camping out at Maidan Square in Kiev, with Yanukovych ordering the police to show restraint.

Meanwhile, with Yanukovych shifting back toward Russia, which was offering a more generous $15 billion loan and discounted natural gas, he soon became the target of American neocons and the U.S. media, which portrayed Ukraine’s political unrest as a black-and-white case of a brutal and corrupt Yanukovych opposed by a saintly “pro-democracy” movement.

The Maidan uprising was urged on by American neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who passed out cookies at the Maidan and told Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.”

In the weeks before the coup, according to an intercepted phone call, Nuland discussed with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt who should lead the future regime. Nuland said her choice was Arseniy Yatsenyuk. “Yats is the guy,” she told Pyatt as he pondered how to “midwife this thing.”

Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call, BBC, 7 February 2014

Very interesting.


Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt together toured the opposition camp in Kiev in December


With much attention upon Greece right now, this piece over at Naked Capitalism caught my attention, for its similarities with what went down in the Ukraine last year:


Nuland’s Nemesis: Will Greece Be Destroyed to Save Her From Russia, Like Ukraine?

Yves Smith sets up a piece by John Helmer, who is

..... the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

Helmer:

....A putsch in Athens to save allied Greece from enemy Russia is in preparation by the US and Germany, with backing from the non-taxpayers of Greece – the Greek oligarchs, Anglo-Greek shipowners, and the Greek Church. At the highest and lowest level of Greek government, and from Thessaloniki to Milvorni, all Greeks understand what is happening. Yesterday they voted overwhelmingly to resist. According to a high political figure in Athens, a 40-year veteran, “what is actually happening is a slow process of regime change.”

Until Sunday afternoon it was a close-run thing. The Yes and No votes were equally balanced, and the margin between them razor thin. At the start of the morning, Rupert Murdoch’s London Times claimed “Greek security forces have drawn up a secret plan to deploy the army alongside special riot police to contain possible civil unrest after today’s referendum on the country’s future in Europe. Codenamed Nemesis, it makes provision for troops to patrol large cities if there is widespread and prolonged public disorder. Details of the plan emerged as polls showed the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps neck and neck.” Greek officers don’t speak to the Murdoch press; British and US government agents do.

“It was neck to neck until 3 pm,” reports the political veteran in Athens, “then the young started voting. “

The Kremlin understands too. So when the State Department’s Victoria Nuland (nee Nudelman; lead image, right) visited Athens to issue an ultimatum against breaking the anti-Russian sanctions regime, and the Anglo-American think-tanks followed with warnings the Russian Navy is about to sail into Piraeus, the object of the game has been clear. The line for Operation Nemesis has been that Greece must be saved, not from itself or from its creditors, but from the enemy in Moscow. The Russian line has been to do nothing to give credence to that propaganda; to wait and to watch.

As the head of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs, Nuland is the official in charge of warmaking in Europe. Her record in the Ukraine has been documented here. Almost unnoticed, she was in Athens on March 17 to deliver two ultimatums. The communique released by the US Embassy in Athens was headlined, “we want to see prosperity and growth in Greece.”

She told Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (right) not to break ranks with the NATO allies against Russia. “Because of the increasing rounds of aggression in eastern Ukraine” she reportedly said the US is “very gratified that we’ve had solidarity between the EU and the U.S., and that Greece has played its role in helping to build consensus.”

Nuland also warned Tsipras not to default on its debts to Germany, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Tsipras was told “to make a good deal with the institutions”. The referendum Tsipras called on June 27 was a surprise for Nuland. The nemesis in Operation Nemesis is the retribution planned for that display of Greek hubris.

Having thundered for a year on the illegitimacy of the March 2014 referendum in Crimea, saying yes to accession to Russia, the State Department ignored the Greek referendum for forty-eight hours. On June 29, asked what the US government was thinking of doing if the outcome “is a no vote”, Nuland’s spokesman, Mark Toner, said the US would ignore it. “We’re focused on, frankly, the opposite, which is finding a path forward that allows Greece to continue to make reforms, return to growth, and remain in the Eurozone.”

Nuland is probably baking up some more of her cookies.


Parry had another piece on Nuland from several months back, that is quite illuminating:

Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan: A Family Business of Perpetual War, March 20, 2015

Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and – from op-ed pages – he demands Congress buy more weapons. There’s a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.

.....

Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia – and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats.

This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks.

Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of War.

Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (which doesn’t disclose details on its funders), used his prized perch on the Washington Post’s op-ed page on Friday to bait Republicans into abandoning the sequester caps limiting the Pentagon’s budget, which he calculated at about $523 billion (apparently not counting extra war spending). Kagan called on the GOP legislators to add at least $38 billion and preferably more like $54 billion to $117 billion:

This nest of operatives should have been cleaned out from the administration long ago. As long as this group of people makes it their unyielding mission to perpetuate war throughout the world, there will be neither peace nor justice.