An astute and succinct analysis by David Warsh:
Victoria Nuland is a character right out of House of Cards or The Honourable Schoolboy.
Two Views of Russia
It was Nuland who in February was secretly taped, probably by the Russians, saying “F— the EU” for dragging its feet in supporting Ukrainian demonstrators seeking to displace its democratically-elected pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, two months after he rejected a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of one with Russia. She made a well-publicized trip to pass out food in the rebels’ encampment on Kiev’s Maidan Square in the days before Yanukovych fled to Moscow.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin said the other day, “Our Western partners, with the support of fairly radically inclined and nationalist-leaning groups, carried out a coup d’état [in Ukraine]. No matter what anyone says, we all understand what happened. There are no fools among us. We all saw the symbolic pies handed out on the Maidan,” Nuland is the pie-giver he had in mind
She is also the wife of Robert Kagan, an advisor to GOP presidents and GOP presidential candidates.
Before she was nominated to her current job, Nuland was State Department spokesperson under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Congressional firestorm over the attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
So how did the Obama administration manage to get her confirmed – on a voice vote with no debate? The short answer is that she was stoutly defended by New York Times columnist David Brooks and warmly endorsed by two prominent Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona.
I really wonder what went though the mind of Mitt Romney and his closest advisors when they realized that the flack lying about Benghazi and leading the charge against Romney on that issue was married to one of their foreign policy advisors.
Like I said, Politico could not do that scene .justice; it requires the talents of a LeCarre or Evelyn Waugh.
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