The U.S. State Department has announced the imminent retirement of Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, a controversial foreign policy hawk frequently targeted for criticism by some prominent America First conservatives as a “globalist” and “warmonger.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on March 5 that Ms. Nuland intends to step down “in the coming weeks” and that John Bass, Under Secretary for Management, will temporarily fulfill her duties until a permanent replacement is found.
Ms. Nuland’s departure caps over 30 years as a career foreign service officer under six Presidents and ten Secretaries of State, including as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe during the Obama administration, when the government in Kyiv was ousted in a U.S.-backed uprising in 2014.
Mr. Blinken praised her for having “personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy and revitalize America’s global leadership.”
Referring to Ms. Nuland by her nickname “Toria,” the secretary of state singled out her work in the Ukraine theater as key to Kyiv’s ability to push back against the Russian invasion.
“But it’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come,” he said. “Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.”
Criticism
Various prominent figures have taken aim at Ms. Nuland for her hawkish U.S. foreign policy positions, including Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump.“World War Three has never been closer than it is right now. We need to clean house of all of the warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists and the Deep State, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Industrial Complex,” President Trump said in a video on the Trump War Room account on social media platform X.
President Trump said that one reason he didn’t start any wars while in office is because he rejected the “catastrophic” advice of many Washington insiders while insisting that Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine under his watch and that, with the “right leadership,” the Ukraine conflict could be ended in 24 hours.
He also singled out Ms. Nuland in his remarks.
“For decades, we’ve had the very same people, such as Victoria Nuland and many others just like her obsessed with pushing Ukraine toward NATO, not to mention the State Department support for uprisings in Ukraine,” President Trump said in the video.
“These people have been seeking confrontation for a long time, much like the case in Iraq and other parts of the world. And now, we’re teetering on the brink of World War Three,” he continued, adding, “at the end of my next four years, the warmongers and frauds and failures at the senior ranks of our government will all be gone.”
On the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Musk alleged in a post on X that “nobody is pushing this war more than Nuland.”
Mr. Musk’s criticism was a reaction to remarks Ms. Nuland made in a Feb. 16, 2023 interview with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In it she called for the removal of Russian military installations from Crimea, saying that “Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum, at a minimum, demilitarized.”
Ms. Nuland was asked to respond to Mr. Musk’s criticism in a Feb. 23, 2023 interview with the Washington Post, in which she said that if the United States were to stand on the sidelines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it would embolden wars of conquest around the world.
“If this war is to end, it could end tomorrow if Vladimir Putin chose to end it and to withdraw his troops. So this is not about us, this is about choices that Vladimir Putin has made to try to bite off pieces of his neighbor. And if we allow this, as the United States, if we don’t support the victim in this aggression, then this aggression will be replicated all over the planet,” Ms. Nuland said at the time.
Conservative podcast host Jack Posobiec took to X to suggest that Ms. Nuland’s decision to leave her position may have something to do with President Trump’s 2024 comeback bid.
