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I have to say, it's amusing to me the way pro-Russian/anti-American people online have turned Victoria Nuland into the modern-day Bismarck, able to take down governments and change the political winds with a single visit.
This is a pretty obvious weakman. The steelman is that Nuland being involved in an region is indictative of larger US interest and involvement in the region, of which Nuland herself is just one part of the effort. It's not like Nuland is acting by herself, a one woman agency - there are powerful USA agencies and actors as part of the foreign policy apparatus.
Nuland's current job is Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, which is the highest-ranking member of the US Foreign Service and fourth-highest person in the state department. 'There are powerful USA agencies involved wherever she goes' is tautological, but also not the actual argument, because most people raising Nuland don't actually know her current job or its roles, and only know her from Ukraine during Maidan due to the effort of the Russians to paint her involvement as part of a coup.
In practice, her current job is to be the eye of Sauron and go look at whatever the biggest flashy thing is, only instead of the Sauron it's the US State Department, and instead of ringwraiths it's still the State Department, and in terms of powerful USA agencies in wartorn countries, the State Department, isn't.
Nuland going to a country is generally to endorse what lower functionaries have already done, in which she has no generative role in change, or in a contingency going to represent the Secretary of State and the POTUS, in which case she's also not the generator of change. Nuland doesn't set policy, she executes it, which is different from the power Bismarck had in his heyday.
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Nominative determinism. What foreign policy goals couldn't she accomplish with a name like Victory New Land?
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Yeah its pretty dumb once you look into it, as she visits a lot of places
It is pretty interesting but i guess she was pretty prominent leading up to the ukraine war
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Well, it's a lot easier to accept your identified rival is amazing than to admit your repeated incompetence. Better an adversary Bismarck to your own Wilhelm.
Nuland is a meme at this point. Most of the people who know of her leaked call don't even understand that the context of the discussion was Yanukovych's own offer to bring the opposition politicians she's referring to into his own government as a compromise. It was a manning discussion on the viability of Yanukovych's own future government, which only became his future replacement due to him buckling down to Putin's pressure to begin shooting the opposition, which is another point most people don't care to remember.
Yeah, like, it's totally shocking the ambassador there when talking about a political change in the country to mention...prominent opposition politicians? If there was a tape of a Russian diplomat talking about Trump winning and then mentioning a bunch of likely Cabinet nominees, I wouldn't think that was proof of some weird underhanded plan for a coup.
Like, am I sure she was happy about ole' Yanukovych imploding? Sure.
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