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More important, recall her amateurish, boorish use of an open telephone to plot regime change in Ukraine with a fellow neocon, U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. Crass U.S. interference in Ukrainian affairs can be seen (actually, better, heard) in an intercepted conversation posted on YouTube on Feb. 4.
Yikes! It's Yats!
Nuland was recorded as saying: "Yats is the guy. He's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the guy you know. ... Yats will need all the help he can get to stave off collapse in the ex-Soviet state. He has warned there is an urgent need for unpopular cutting of subsidies and social payments before Ukraine can improve."
And guess what. The stopgap government formed after the coup designated Nuland's guy Yats, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, prime minister! What luck! Yats is 39 and has served as head of the central bank, foreign minister and economic minister. And, as designated pinch-hitter-prime-minister, he has already talked about the overriding need for "responsible government," one willing to commit "political suicide," as he put it, by taking unpopular social measures.
U.S. meddling has been so obvious that at President Barack Obama's hastily scheduled Friday press conference on Ukraine, Yats's name seemed to get stuck in Obama's throat. Toward the end of his scripted remarks, which he read verbatim, the President said: "Vice President Biden just spoke with Prime Minister [pause] -- the prime minister of Ukraine to assure him that in this difficult moment the United States supports his government's efforts and stands for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and democratic future of Ukraine."
Obama doesn't usually stumble like that -- especially when reading a text, and is normally quite good at pronouncing foreign names. Perhaps he worried that one of the White House stenographic corps might shout out, "You mean our man, Yats?" Obama departed right after reading his prepared remarks, leaving no opportunity for such an outburst.
Western media was abuzz with the big question: Will the Russians apply military force? The answer came quickly, though President Obama chose the subjunctive mood in addressing the question on Friday.
Throwing Down a Hanky
There was a surreal quality to President Obama's remarks, several hours after Russian (or pro-Russian) troops took control of key airports and other key installations in the Crimea, which is part of Ukraine, and home to a large Russian naval base and other key Russian military installations.
Obama referred merely to "reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine" and warned piously that "any violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilizing."
That Obama chose the subjunctive mood -- when the indicative was, well, indicated -- will not be lost on the Russians. Here was Obama, in his typically lawyerly way, trying to square the circle, giving a sop to his administration's neocon holdovers and R2P courtiers, with a Milquetoasty expression of support for the new-Nuland-approved government (citing Biden's assurances to old whatshisname/yatshisname).
While Obama stuck to the subjunctive tense, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk appealed to Russia to recall its forces and "stop provoking civil and military resistance in Ukraine."
Obama's comments seemed almost designed to sound condescending -- paternalistic, even -- to the Russians. Already into his second paragraph of his scripted remarks, the President took a line larded with words likely to be regarded as a gratuitous insult by Moscow, post-putsch...
"We've made clear that they [Russian officials] can be part of an international community's effort to support the stability of a united Ukraine going forward, which is not only in the interest of the people of Ukraine and the international community, but also in Russia's interest."
By now, Russian President Vladimir Putin is accustomed to Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, et al., telling the Kremlin where its interests lie, and I am sure he is appropriately grateful. Putin is likely to read more significance into these words of Obama:
"The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine " and we will continue to coordinate closely with our European allies."
Fissures in Atlantic Alliance
There are bound to be fissures in the international community and in the Western alliance on whether further provocation in Ukraine is advisable. Many countries have much to lose if Moscow uses its considerable economic leverage over natural gas supplies, for example.
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