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| Air Castles in the Kaganate of Nuland |
| 2015-03-10 |
| by Spengler [PJMedia] There is land of wonder where magic princes and princesses rescue humble folk from the malignant spells of wicked sorcerers. Call it the Kaganate of Nuland: I refer of course to Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland and her spouse Robert Kagan, respectively the source of the silliest statement on record about U.S. foreign policy ("F-- the Europeans") and the worst book on foreign policy in a generally dismal decade. I reviewed Kagan's awful tome when it appeared three years ago, with its fairy-tale thesis about the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy. "It is possible that in the Arab Spring we are seeing a continuation of the Third Wave, or perhaps even a fourth. The explosion of democracy is about to enter a fifth straight decade, the longest and broadest such expansion in history," Kagan wrote. Nuland got her 15 minutes of fame when someone, presumably Russian intelligence, leaked her expletive-adorned 2013 conversation with America's ambassador to Ukraine to YouTube. Kagan and Nuland authentically believed that Ukraine's Maidan Square overthrow of the Yanukovich government would inspire a democracy movement in Russia that eventually would depose Vladimir Putin, just as they believed that the Arab Spring heralded a great wave of democracy in the Middle East. Instead, Putin rose to the highest popularity ranking (at 86%) of his long and checkered career, and Russian hostility to America surpassed the levels of the Soviet era. "More than 80 percent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States, according to the independent Levada Center, a number that has more than doubled over the past year and that is by far the highest negative rating since the center started tracking those views in 1988," the Washington Post reported March 9. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #1 Yeah, well.. Russians... |
| Posted by: Pappy 2015-03-10 11:10 |