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Victoria Nuland’s “Secret” Coup d’etat in Georgia
by NEO.org:
, viaFormer Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been saying for six months that he will be back in six months! No elections are due to be held and he can’t run for president again. Now, unfortunately, we might know what he meant.
On February 17 Victoria Nuland, a US Assistant Secretary of State, visited Tbilisi. She is best known for being an outspoken supporter of the coup d’etat in Kiev a year ago, which led to the violent overthrow of then-president Viktor Yanukovich and the ongoing fighting over this now nearly failed state. She appeared in Tbilisi at the same time Saakashvili officially became an “advisor” to Ukraine’s new incumbent, Petro Poroshenko.
Nuland’s notoriety as a field-tested battleaxe precedes her. Both she and her husband, Robert Kagan, are products of the Bush-Cheney neo-con regime and are closely linked with its “1984” mindset of conducting continuous war, which was the basis of the defence strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration, the now-notorious “Project for a New American Century”.
Nuland and Kagan both subscribe to the old doctrine of “manifest destiny” which this document was based on. According to this, America must remain the undisputed leader of the world, because that is the reason for America’s existence. As a diplomat she has been employed to serve America’s interests, but, like many official US representatives, she has taken the view that the US interest is the only one, there is no such thing as a general or even broader interest, as her famous “Fuck the EU” remark last year testifies.
In late February Germany’s Der Spiegel described her as “America’s Riot Diplomat”— a sobriquet which can mean both that Nuland acts disruptively, and that she creates actual riots (as on the Maidan in Ukraine). Its “Politics” column stated that Nuland poses a threat to America’s allies (including Georgia and Azerbaijan, the countries she has just visited), and that while her current remit is to solve the crisis of Ukraine and its relations with Russia, “In the crisis, Nuland herself has become the problem.”
So why was such a person visiting Georgia and Azerbaijan at the same time former US favourite Saakashvili was taking up a new appointment in Ukraine to prevent him being extradited to face criminal charges in Georgia? As always, there is no coincidence about these things occurring at the same time.
Too many connections
Victoria Nuland is well aware of both Georgian and Ukrainian history, and knows the players or “patsies” now engaged in them. Indeed, she was in Kiev during the Orange Revolution when she was US Ambassador to NATO, banging the drum for regime change. Georgia had already had a similar US-inspired regime change, led by Saakashvili. Now another violent regime change has occurred, but has not gone to plan, Saakashvili is being brought in to advise these new “patsies”.
Nuland’s position on Ukraine is clear. Der Spiegel described a closed-door meeting she held at the Munich Security Conference a week before, involving “perhaps two dozen U.S. diplomats and Senators.” She told them to “fight against the Europeans” on the issue of arming Ukraine to fight Russia, referred to the meeting between the leaders of Germany, France and Russia as“Merkel’s Moscow junk,” and “Moscow bullshit,” and welcomed a Senator calling German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen the “Defeatism Minister.”
Nuland doesn’t want an agreement between the warring parties in Ukraine, or to prevent further loss of life. The more Ukraine is in crisis, the more the US, or rather she as its representative, can do what it likes in the name of “regulating” that crisis. That, apparently, includes rehabilitating Saakashvili by making him an “adviser”, and therefore a statesman, rather than the wanted criminal he is in the country he was president of.
It is hardly surprising therefore that this open support for a man forced out of Georgia for his many crimes aroused considerable disquiet in Tbilisi during her visit. When pressed about the alleged crimes of the former president she would only answer that Ukraine was in need of expertise and was seeking advice from those who have a proven track record in such situations. It was exactly that track record which got him kicked out of Tbilisi, so such a statement cannot be considered friendly.
The U.S. Department of State claimed her visit was dedicated to discussing “cooperation and regional issues” and “Georgia’s path toward European integration and Georgia’s efforts to defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty.” In English, this means ensuring that Georgia cooperates with the US on Ukraine by threatening it with being barred from entering the EU and losing Abkhazia and South Ossetia forever if it doesn’t. Open support for Saakashvili is all part of the same threat.