{"id":153135,"date":"2015-05-21T12:44:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T12:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=153135"},"modified":"2015-05-21T12:44:11","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T12:44:11","slug":"secretary-of-state-john-kerry-v-his-subordinate-victoria-nuland-regarding-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/secretary-of-state-john-kerry-v-his-subordinate-victoria-nuland-regarding-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Secretary of State John Kerry v. His Subordinate Victoria Nuland, Regarding Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of State\u00a0John Kerry, on May 12th,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0responding to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko\u2019s\u00a0assertions that Ukraine will retake Crimea and will conquer Donbass:<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have not had a chance \u2014 I have not read the\u00a0speech. I haven\u2019t seen any context. I have\u00a0simply heard about it in the course of today. But if indeed\u00a0President Poroshenko is advocating an\u00a0engagement in a forceful effort at this time, we\u00a0would strongly urge him to think twice not to\u00a0engage in that kind of activity, that that would\u00a0put Minsk in serious jeopardy. And we would\u00a0be very, very concerned about what the\u00a0consequences of that kind of action at this time\u00a0may be.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European & Eurasian Affairs,\u00a0Victoria Nuland, as communicated by the U.S. State Department\u2019s Press Office on May 15th,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0reiterating Poroshenko\u2019s view:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Assistant Secretary Nuland’s ongoing visit to Kyiv and her\u00a0discussions\u00a0with Prime Minister [Arseniy] Yatseniuk and\u00a0President [Petro] Poroshenko\u00a0reaffirm the United States’ full\u00a0and unbreakable support for Ukraine’s\u00a0government,\u00a0sovereignty, and territorial integrity. We continue to stand\u00a0shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate\u00a0our deep\u00a0commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including\u00a0Crimea, and all the\u00a0other regions of Ukraine.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Will John Kerry reprimand his subordinate for her contradicting what he, her boss, had said three days earlier? If not, then will President Barack Obama fire his Secretary of State John Kerry? If not, then will Victoria Nuland be fired? If not, then who is to trust anything that comes from the U.S. State Department, when the Secretary of State can be contradicted three days later by his subordinate, and both remain in their respective jobs?<\/span><\/p>\n

Republicans are already preparing to weaken Kerry over this. The far-right news-site \u201cFrontpage Mag\u201d headlined on May 21st, \u201cJohn Kerry\u2019s Seven Hours of Weakness in Russia,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and condemned the \u201cattempt by Kerry to re-set the \u2018re-set\u2019 button [on U.S. policy toward Russia] first pushed by his predecessor, Hillary Clinton.\u201d The special subject of their ire: \u201cThe promise of \u2018rolling back\u2019 the mild sanctions regime the West imposed on Russia on account of Putin\u2019s annexation of Crimea and support of separatist rebels was bandied about,\u00a0if only Russia would behave in the future.\u201d But winning changes in behavior is what international diplomacy is supposed to be all about \u2013 otherwise the State Department wouldn\u2019t even be needed, and only the Pentagon would handle America\u2019s foreign relations.<\/span><\/p>\n

If Victoria Nuland stays in her job, then John Kerry will be neutered even if he\u2019s not fired.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only person with the power to fire Nuland is actually U.S. President Barack Obama. Perhaps the request for him to do that is already on his desk. If it\u2019s not, then Kerry\u2019s job is in jeopardy, because his diplomatic efforts can be obliterated by a subordinate and that subordinate will suffer no penalty for doing this. Nobody then would respect anything that the U.S. Secretary of State says, because it wouldn’t necessarily represent the President\u2019s policies. If the Secretary of State isn\u2019t backed up by the President, then the Secretary of State has no real power at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of \u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse U.S. Secretary of State\u00a0John Kerry, on May 12th,\u00a0responding to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko\u2019s\u00a0assertions that Ukraine will retake Crimea and will conquer Donbass: \u201cI have not had a chance \u2014 I have not read the\u00a0speech. I haven\u2019t seen any context. I have\u00a0simply heard about it in the course of today. But if indeed\u00a0President Poroshenko […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":151924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,59,889,524,523,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-153135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-military","15":"tag-nuland","16":"tag-russia","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-usa-news","19":"tag-warfare","20":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}