
Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland with Cote D'Ivoire's President and Foreign Minister, August 3, 2023. Photo: The Grayzone/File photo.
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Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland with Cote D'Ivoire's President and Foreign Minister, August 3, 2023. Photo: The Grayzone/File photo.
By Anya Parampil ¡ Aug 29, 2023
A veteran South African official detailed meeting with an unprepared and âdesperateâ Acting Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, begging for local help rolling back the popular coup in Niger. The recent BRICS conference might give Nuland even more to fret about.
When US Acting Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, traveled to South Africa on July 29, her reputation as a blunt instrument of Washingtonâs hegemonic interests preceded her.
According to a veteran South African official who attended meetings with the senior US diplomat in Pretoria, however, Nuland and her team were demonstrably unprepared to grapple with recent developments on the African continent â particularly the military coup that removed Nigerâs pro-Western government hours before she launched her multi-stop tour of the region.
âIn over 20 years working with the Americans, I have never seen them so desperate,â the official told The Grayzone, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Pretoria was well aware of Nulandâs hawkish reputation, but when she arrived in Pretoria, the official described her as âtotally caught off guardâ by winds of change engulfing the region. The July putsch that saw a popular military junta come to power in Niger followed military coups in Mali and Burkina Faso that were similarly inspired by mass anti-colonial sentiment.
Though Washington has so far refused to characterize developments in the Nigerien capital of Niamey as a coup, the South African source confirmed that Nuland sought South Africaâs assistance in responding to regional conflicts, including in Niger, where she emphasized that Washington not only held significant financial investments, but also maintained 1,000 of its own troops. For Nuland, the realization that she was negotiating from a position of weakness was likely a rude awakening.
Serving both parties and advancing empire, one regime change op at a time
Throughout the past decade and a half, Victoria Nuland has established herself as one of the most heavy-handed â and effective â agents of Western-directed regime change ops within the State Department. As the wife of the arch-neoconservative strategist, Robert Kagan, who advised both Republican presidential contender, Mitt Romney, and Democrat, Hillary Clinton, Nuland embodied the interventionist consensus that prevailed across both parties in the pre-Trump era. In fact, her first high-level job came under the watch of Vice President Dick Cheney, when he appointed her to serve as his deputy chief of staff.
Bidenâs point person on Russia-Ukraine is a hardcore neocon
Victoria Nuland is ex-deputy policy advisor to Dick Cheney, wife of PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan, who called for the US to act as a âbenevolentâ world dictator, and architect of the Maidan coup that destabilized Ukraine pic.twitter.com/gYMOrl5Jtc
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 3, 2022
When Nuland returned to government as a Russia specialist in Obamaâs State Department, she spearheaded the covert campaign to destabilize Ukraine, driving the 2014 Maidan Coup that sparked the countryâs ensuing civil conflict and, ultimately, a Western proxy war with Russia that rages to this day.
âSince Ukraineâs independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions,â Nuland, then Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, boasted during a December 2013 talk before the US-Ukraine Foundation in Kiev, flanked by a promotional panel for the Chevron corporation.
France Reportedly Thinks US Backstabbed It During Nulandâs Trip to Niger
âWeâve invested over five billion dollars to assist Ukraine in these and other goals,â she continued, articulating Washingtonâs support for what she described as Ukraineâs âEuropean aspirations.â
Nuland repeated the unintentionally revealing boast during a 2014 interview with CNNâs Christiane Amanpour.
Who really started the war in Ukraine?
April 2014
Victoria Nuland: "US has invested some $5 billion in Ukraine, since 1991… That money has been spent on supporting the aspirations of the Ukrainian people to have a strong, democratic government that represents their interests." pic.twitter.com/D6FnC8i786— the Lemniscat (@theLemniscat) July 15, 2023
Days before her address, she and then US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, distributed âfreedom cookiesâ to Ukrainians occupying Kievâs Maidan Square in protest of President Viktor Yanukovychâs decision to, in Nulandâs words, âpause on the route to Europe.â
Roughly three months later, the prolonged campaign of riots in the Maidan successfully dislodged Yanukovychâs elected government, resulting in the installation of a decidedly pro-EU (and openly pro-Nazi) regime in Kiev that would promptly win the title of âmost corrupt nation in Europe.â Days before Yanukovychâs ouster, leaked audio revealed that Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt were actively selecting the opposition figures that would assume power in Kiev in the event of Maidanâs success.
âFuck the EU,â she infamously remarked during the February 7 phone call, an apparent response to European leaders opposed to her governmentâs destabilization effort in Ukraine.
Nearly a decade since Nulandâs Kiev campaign, however, Washingtonâs ability to dictate the sovereign policy of foreign states is increasingly limitedâparticularly in South Africa and the surrounding region.
In Africa, the sun sets on the unipolar world order
The emergence of a new global order was on bold display when heads of state from Brazil, India, China, and South Africa convened for the 15th annual BRICS Presidential Summit in Johannesburg throughout the week of August 21. While Western media highlighted Russian President Vladimir Putinâs absence from the summit as evidence of deep divides within BRICS (Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov attended the summit in Putinâs place), the bloc ultimately issued a unanimous August 24 declaration that it would extend full membership to Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
âBRICS is a diverse group of nations,â South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who chaired the summit, tweeted after announcing the results of BRICSâ landmark Johannesburg 2 Declaration before a room packed with international press. âIt is an equal partnership of countries that have differing views but a shared vision for a better world.â
BRICS is a diverse group of nations.
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It is an equal partnership of countries that have differing views but a shared vision for a better world.
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As the five #BRICS members, we have reached agreement on the guiding principles, standards, criteria and procedures of the #BRICS⌗ Cyril Ramaphosa đżđŚ (@CyrilRamaphosa) August 24, 2023
Indeed, BRICS leaders stressed the importance of the groupâs function as a âconsensus-basedâ organization built on the foundation of multilateralism and a commitment to principles enshrined in the UN Charter. This stands in stark contrast with alliances like the G20, which, while ostensibly committed to multilateral exchange, are viewed by Washington and its allies as a forum through which to impose their own worldview. Western hubris was particularly palpable upon Indiaâs assumption of the G20 presidency in 2023, when US and European officials waged a futile campaign to pressure New Delhi into excluding Russia from group meetings despite Moscowâs permanent member status.
âWe should not go back to a Cold War with two polarizing blocsâ
On the sidelines of the BRICS summit, I spoke with South Africaâs Minister for Trade, Industry, and Competition, Ebrahim Patel, about BRICSâ purpose.
âBRICS want to stand for a world in which everybody benefits, this is not about trying to get into a new Cold War,â Patel commented.
âThe Cold War was not a good moment for humanity,â Patel, who chaired the BRICS Business Forum in Johannesburg, continued when asked whether the US and Europe could ever accept multilateral exchange as anything other than an attack on Western hegemonic interests. âWe should not go back to a Cold War with two polarizing blocs, but we do need the voices of the Global South to be out there helping to shape the architecture of governance and the way in which human beings interact.â
BRICS Summit Will Contribute to World Peace and Lay Foundation for New Globalization
So is BRICS an anti-Western alliance?
âThere will be many instances of misinterpretation, but we stand for a world that is united, recognizing that countries and firms will compete,â Patel explained. âThatâs healthy, and underpinning that competition must be a deep collaboration and cooperation between nations.â
Asked what makes BRICSâ commitment to multilateralism different from blocs such as the G20, Patel offered a window into how BRICS truly operates.
âWhen the heads of state sit together, they say, âokay, how can we move the dial forward?â Consensus building is a slow process. Itâs an uneven process. But it does mean that the decisions that are taken have solid support.â
After two days of deliberations in Johannesburg, during which delegates considered membership applications from roughly two dozen nations, BRICS reached the consensus to admit six states that will drastically expand its share of the international economy and resource market. Following the new membersâ formal induction into the bloc next February, BRICS will include 6 of the worldâs top 10 oil producers, 50 percent of the worldâs natural gas reserves, and 37 percent of global GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). The G20âs share of global GDP currently sits at 30 percent. With the addition of Argentina and Saudi Arabia, BRICS will also count six permanent G20 nations among its own membership bloc.
âIt is that slow, time consuming process of building consensus,â Minister Patel reflected on BRICS success. âBut itâs more solid. It lasts longer.â
Thanks to BRICS, Robert Kaganâs notorious blueprint for the US to serve as a âbenevolentâ global hegemon may be overtaken by the developing worldâs vision for a century that honors the political independence, self-determination, and territorial sovereignty of all states. Will the generation of US officials that comes after Nuland accept Washingtonâs place in this multipolar world, or will they insist on going down fighting?
Anya Parampil is a journalist based in Washington, DC. She previously hosted a daily progressive afternoon news program called In Question on RT America. She has produced and reported several documentaries, including on-the-ground reports from the Korean peninsula and Palestine.