The majority of readers usually do not read the rest of a document when they see an expletive. This happened on Feb. 6, 2014, when an apparently bugged phone conversation between Victoria Nuland, then-U.S. assistant secretary of state, and Geoffrey Pyatt, then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was leaked.
At one point in the conversation, Nuland tells the ambassador that Dutch diplomat Robert Serry was to be sent to Crimea to mediate the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and that then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would bring Serry to her before going to Crimea, adding “so that would be great to help glue this thing and to have the U.N. help glue it; and, you know, f*** the EU.”
Once we saw the f-word, we totally ignored what Nuland said before it or after it. The wife of mister neocon par excellence Robert Kagan was explaining to the ambassador the scenario she was cooking for Crimea. She was clearly describing how (in her own words) “to glue this thing and to have the U.N. help to glue it.”
“This thing” was apparently the fomenting situation in Crimea, and the thing it was going to be glued to (with the help of the United Nations) was what had been happening in Ukraine since 2004 under the name of the “color revolutions.” The armed uprising that had toppled Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych, killing hundreds of innocent people, police, soldiers and even the revolution’s own heroes, had severed Russian-Ukrainian ties in three short years. Those developments scared the Russians regarding its historical naval base in Crimea and the Russian-speaking majority of the region in a referendum decided to cut its ties with the mainland, declaring independence from Ukraine.
The “glue” Nuland was talking about was supposed to keep Crimea attached to Ukraine. The U.S. government did not deny the veracity of the leaked phone conversation; they only quickly pointed a finger at the Russian authorities for being behind its interception and leak. Yes, probably they were. But that was not the point. The point was not even the fact that what was happening in Crimea was part of the neocon’s general design ideas of the geopolitical map of the world. The point was: “Awww, a lady’s using the f-word?”
Yes, at that time, as it is today, the EU was divided and France and Germany were unwilling to enter into a fight with Russia. It was content with the fact that Ukraine was Russia’s backyard, and NATO had already ruffled Russia’s feathers enough by expanding its borders to Ukraine’s borders. The EU would like to bring former Soviet countries into its folds simply by creating an economically attractive region.
That was not acceptable for the neocons who had been itching to dismember the Russian Federation and China. They had grandiose plans to start regime changes in those countries and any others that they thought would go along with them. We remember U.S. President Joe Biden’s regime change plan for Turkey. He bragged about it without any scruples in his New York Times interview.
If we’d not stopped at the f-word, we would have continued reading Nuland’s directives to reach Pyatt’s reminder that Russia would not make the gluing easy. Nuland agrees and reminds him that she had then-Vice President Biden’s support for their Crimea plan and probably the next day she would get an “an atta-boy and details to stick.” Meanwhile, the ambassador should work on opposition leader Wladimir Klitschko (a Ukrainian former professional boxer and a Ukrainian radical nationalist group leader) to move their uprising from Kyiv to Crimea and Odessa. He had successfully done that: Hundreds of civilians and security members died, and the Russian army began occupying the peninsula. Before the “gluing” work, the Russian army had not entered Crimea. But somehow those months of peaceful political activities to secede from Ukraine and declare independence have been deleted from the collective memory of the Western world and Wikipedia articles. Now, the world seems to believe that Russia had invaded Crimea as soon as Yanukovych fled from Ukraine to Russia.
Now, Nuland is the undersecretary and she is running the day-to-day activities of the U.S. State Department. The person who used to pen articles with her husband Kagan about what the U.S. should do after the unwanted chilling out period during the Donald Trump presidency in order to really make “The America First,” is her boss. But it is OK. Because the boss Tony Blinken shares the idea that the “world looks more like the 1930s.” If you remember, the 1930s in the neocon parlance refers to the period that the Soviet leader Josef Stalin was busy building his empire. If today looks like the 1930s, then who is in the empire-building business?
Russian President Vladimir Putin, that is who. Because of his uncanny amorous relationship with Putin, the neocons believe, Trump helped him to stiffen his clasp over Ukraine and Georgia; so, the Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris (read Nuland-Blinken) administration should start from the already-wrought-on Ukraine. From neo-Nazis to ultra-populists, from comedians to social media influencers, the country had everything ready to start popular warfare. The only missing ingredient was a Russian invasion army. Should a cautious and cool Russian leader be tossed around enough to repeat what he did during the Crimean crisis, and instead of two provinces in the Donbass region he begins to invade the whole country, then the neocons could successfully complete their unfinished business this time.
The idea was then to isolate Russia from its traditional allies, conscripting them all in NATO and the EU. Now, perhaps the basic talk about Ukraine’s NATO membership, renewing its EU application and an artillery fine on the pro-Russia separatists in the Donbass region could do the job. By golly, it did!
Today, the Russian Federation has been cut off from the international financial system; billions of dollars it had in Western banks have been confiscated. The West will fry the fat out of Russia even more. Even if Putin regretfully leaves Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass region, he is not going to be accepted into the international financial system. He should be grateful if the exclusion stays limited to the financial system and the neocons don't take heart and go after the international political system, like the U.N.’s already defunct veto system at the U.N. Security Council.
Blinken has already started saying that the United States is not seeking a regime change in Russia.
