“This is a dangerous step!!” CODEPINK’s Statement on the Appointment of Victoria Nuland to Acting Under Secretary of State

By CODEPINK staff

CODEPINK warns the appointment of neoconservative Victoria Nuland as Acting Under Secretary of State threatens to bring the world closer to World War III than ever before. During these urgent times, as the US and Russia escalate their proxy war in Ukraine, the last person we need leading the State Department is someone who keyed up for a confrontation with Russia. Victoria Nuland should be fired, not promoted to acting czar of global destabilization.

When President Biden nominated Victoria Nuland as Undersecretary of State, CODEPINK feminists exposed Nuland’s role in backing the 2014 coup in Ukraine and her subsequent  phone call with US Ambassador Jeffrey Pyatt, in which she said, “F*** the EU,” if the Europeans did not agree to her choices to run the post-coup government.

Instead of promoting diplomacy, Nuland lights matches wherever she meddles, agitating for endless war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine. If feminists remain silent or support this Bush-era neocon simply because she is a woman, Victoria Nuland might just burn down the world in a nuclear fire.

The fact that Nuland was given a diplomatic job in the Biden administration in the first place never ceases to amaze because her record reads like a war criminal’s rap sheet:

• Nuland served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s deputy national security adviser from 2003–2005, during the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq, a painful chapter in US history that left over a million Iraqis dead and thousands of US soldiers in body bags.

• In 2005, Nuland became ambassador to NATO, where she lobbied Europe to participate in the disastrous U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. In persuading other governments the US could win that war, she sold a lie across Europe to prolong a near 20-year occupation that left Afghanistan broke, with six million children and adults at risk of starvation.

• In May 2013, Nuland was nominated to act as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, where she was supposed to employ diplomacy in relations with Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet states. Instead, Nuland and the White House partnered with the Ukrainian far-right and hurled $5 billion taxpayer dollars at Ukraine to overthrow its democratically elected President and engineer a transition government to privatize Ukraine and prepare for war with Russia. After Nuland passed out pastries during the Maidan coup, before President Viktor Yanukovych fled under a hail of bullets, Nuland was caught in the scandal involving the leaked phone call.

Victoria Nuland is a dangerous war-hawk not a diplomat. She should be tried at the Hague not elevated to run the State Department.

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