Yves here. International Women’s Day was yesterday, but it’s never too late to shout out Victoria Nuland. I may be overly optimistic, but the fact that she has been more visible in congressional hearings and public events as Project Ukraine takes on a pear shape gives me hope that she has exceeded her apogee. Granted, Hillary Clinton has been able to run with branded vapers for quite a while, so Nuland could still be active on the speaking circuit even when her ability to shape policy has waned sharply.
By Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace and co-author, with Nicolas JS Davies, of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict; Marcy Winograd, who served as the 2020 DNC delegate for Bernie Sanders and co-founded the California Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus; and Melissa Garriga, Head of Communications and Media Analytics for CODEPINK. Originally posted on Common dreams
When President Biden appointed Victoria Nuland as Under Secretary of State, CODEPINK feminists opposed her appointment for fear that she would cause pain and heartbreak to mothers and daughters as she fomented war within them. Instead of promoting diplomacy, Nuland lights matches wherever she mingles, campaigning for war in Afghanistanand now Ukraine.
If feminists remain silent or support this Bush-era neoconservative simply because she is a woman, Victoria Nuland could well burn the world in a nuclear fire.
With drones already attacking the Crimean peninsula and long-range US rockets on the way, Nuland’s push to cross another of Putin’s red lines only guarantees more death, destruction and ecocide in Ukraine.
For the women of Ukraine, the illegal Russian invasion – which Nuland has provoked over the years with NATO enlargement – has led to an increase in sex trafficking and an increase in gender-based violence. According to the United Nations and humanitarian organizations, this includes not only rape as a weapon of war, but “Domestic Violence and Sexual Harassment. “While Ukraine is under martial law and men between the ages of 18 and 60 are forced to join the front lines, young refugee women, often unaccompanied, are vulnerable to abuse at border crossings.
That Nuland got a diplomatic job in the Biden administration in the first place never ceases to amaze, as his record reads like a war criminal’s rap sheet.
Nuland served as Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to 2005, during the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq, a painful chapter in the states history. United States that left more than a million Iraqis dead and thousands of American soldiers in body bags.
In 2005, Nuland became an ambassador to NATO, where she put pressure on Europe participate in the disastrous American occupation of Afghanistan. Persuading other governments that the United States could win this war, she sold a lie across Europe to prolong a nearly 20-year occupation that left Afghanistan bankrupt, with six million children and adults at risk of starvation.
In May 2013, Nuland was appointed to act as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairswhere she was supposed to employ diplomacy in relations with Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet states.
Instead, Nuland and the White House launched $5 billion from taxpayers to Ukraine to overthrow its democratically elected president and form a transitional government privatize Ukraine and prepare for war with Russia. After Nuland distributed pastries during the Maidan coup, before President Viktor Yanukovych fled in a hail of bullets, Nuland was caught up in a scandal involving a leaked phone call.
On the phone with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland was secretly recorded saying “F.. the EU” if the European Union did not approve of her choices to lead Ukraine’s transitional government. The West gasped at its use of profanity. The most blatant blasphemy, however, was his insistence on manipulating the political affairs of another country to provoke Russia.
Nuland has repeatedly stated that she wants destabilize other regions of Russia’s nuclear neighborhood: Belarus and Kazakhstan, because they are too friendly with Russia. What critics say she really wants is diet change in Russia, a country of 193 million people, 150 different ethnic minorities and 6,000 nuclear weapons.
What could go wrong?
Nuland’s mission to sacrifice Ukrainian lives to retake Crimea annexed by Russia after the 2014 coup could draw other European nations into the battlefield to start World War III.
On this International Women’s Day, President Biden would be well advised to fire Victoria Nuland and hire a diplomat who embraces a feminist peace-centered foreign policy.
