InterOuts

Chronicles of a Monster in Africa.

The arrival of the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States, Victoria Nuland in South Africa, the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is not an omen of American philantropy but instead one of concern for those nations. To fully understand the implications for those nations receiving her much vaunted arrival (according to MSM), we need to look at her from a historical perspective to gain insight into what follows her ‘visits’. She is the last resort of the American Administration, used to bring home the importance of the issue/s under duscussion as her methodology is to ‘persuade’ the nation on the receiving end of her ‘visit’ to comply with the USA’s demands. She uses intimidatory tactics (blackmails) by very overt and clear cut language. Does she refer to past ‘sucsesses’ she had a major part in as examples of what happens if you do not play ball, like sanctions, political instability, financial hitmen, disrupted supply lines, bottlenecks in production, major civil unrest, coup d’etat and obviously fully ‘justified’ war, is a question I cannot answer (but by nature I’m suspicious). Her ‘enviable’ list of triumphs gives very graphic examples of the methodology employed and the outcomes determined by very clear cut ‘meddling’ in the internal affairs of a Sovereign nation.

Let us start with a sourced historical background of Victoria Jane Nuland, born July the 1st, 1961 currently serving as Under Secretary of State for_Political Affairs. Her husband, Robert Kagan is a foreign policy wonk at the Brookings Institute and co-founded the neocon PNAC (Project for the New American Century whose title says it all). While a member of the Foreign Service, she was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs at the United States Department of State ( 2013-17) and also the US the USA’s permanent representative at NATO (2005-08). She was the former CEO At the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and is also the Brady-Johnson distinguished practitioner in ‘grand strategy’ at Yale. Additionally, a ‘productive’ member of the board of the National Endowment for Democracy, one of the USA’s mainstays for spreading its hegemony globally. She was a Fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institute. In 2017, she left the State Department under the Trump presidency. After Wendy Sherman retired in July 2023, she now serves as the acting Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden Adminisration. She has worked for the Clinton, Bush (she was influental in the Iraq War strategy and Afghanistan) and Obama ( she was the key player in Ukraine’s Maidan, a coup d’etat resulting in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Yanukovich) Administrations. She had instrumental policy and strategy meetings in April 2012 with Hilary Clinton, Sergey Kislyak and Jake Sullivan and followed up with December 2013’s meeting with the Defense Ministry Leaders in Georgia.

Along with John Kerry, she met Poroshenko, Yatsenuk and Klitschko of Ukraine in February 2014, just before the coup d’etat in the Maidan. During the Maidan Nuland appeared supporting the Maidan protesters and in 2013 in a speech to the US–Ukraine Foundation, she stated that the U.S. had spent $5 billion on democracy-building programs in Ukraine since 1991. On February 4, 2014, a recording of a phone call between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on January 28, 2014, was published on YouTube. Nuland and Pyatt discussed who should or be the next Ukrainian government and their opinions on various Ukrainian political figures. Nuland suggested the United Nations, not the European Union, should be in the political solution, adding "fuck the EU". Nuland was the lead person establishing loan guarantees to Ukraine, including a $1 billion loan guarantee in 2014 with provisions of non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military. Along with Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, she is seen as a leading supporter of ‘defensive’ weapons delivery to Ukraine. While serving as the Department of State's lead diplomat on the Ukraine crisis, Nuland pushed European allies to take a harder line on what the USA calls ‘Russian expansionism’. In July 2021, Nuland met with Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Washington. In March 2022, Nuland expressed concern that Russia would get control of Ukraine's biological research facilities during its invasion of Ukraine ( the fallout is ongoing ). Nuland visited Delhi in March 2022 and suggested that there was an "evolution of thinking in India" as she so blithely put it.

What does this presage for Africa in terms of geo-political arrangements between African nations and what economically can or will be the changes and overall fallout? There are many realms to examine but with the current economic changes being brought into play by nations transacting in their national currencies, doing business with China, Russia and other non western nations and the BRICs promising alternative financing, banking, and opening markets (some new), the effects of which are being felt in western economies. The use of the US Dollar is diminishing in the economic transactions quite rapidly . The United States owes the globe's largest national debt in terms of dollar amount which resolves to a debt-to GDP ratio of approximately 128.13% (currently around the 32 Trillion + mark). The offloading of US bonds and securities as a means of safe keeping assets is accelerating with gold and commodities being bought instead. Africa is a veritable cornucopia of raw materials, mineral deposits and resources that are underutilised if ‘exploited’ at all. To lose the centuries old control of all the wealth waiting to be obtained from African nations, many of whom are still in monumental debt to the mighty US and its allies (via the IMF, World Bank etc.), is not something that the US Administration will allow to happen unopposed. Added to this is the ongoing detachment by Africa’s nations from accepting the paternalistic attitude of the colonial powers (often covering the west’s unfair business practices) as seen by the removal from French speaking nations like Mali of the French quasi administration (military, economic, scientific, political) that was ‘helping’ the country to attain indipendence on all levels through ‘democracy’ a democracy that was installed by the west. As we now are aware, the Crisis in Niger has been graciously ‘visited by her and she openly spoke of ‘warning’ the ‘rebels’ of becoming allies of Russia and rejecting the USA. This has led the nations of Africa to reappraise their involvement with the USA and the West. Given the USA’s ‘divide and conquer’ strategy (taken from the British) which they implement everywhere globally so as to be able to control the situation by having irons in the fire in both camps, Africa is in for a hectic time. The situation in Niger has led to Nigeria and ECOWAS facing Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso (Algeria and others countries have joined Niger) thereby causing divisions between African nations where none existed before, certainly not on the level that is current, that of War. ECOWAS had to publicly exonerate Russia’s Wagner Group military of any involvement in the situation in Niger after the western press (mainly US) intimated and implied they were involved to discredit Russia politically. The USA’s propaganda machine is in full flow. As regards RSA, well the divisions which have been simmering beneath the radar (sometimes reported nationally but seem to lead nowhere) have started to ignite and the questions regarding both distrust and festering suspicion between the races often on ethnic/tribal lines are being brought into the political arena. News 24 asks the question of what is behind her visit beyond the obvious tactic of trying to ‘persuade’ South Africa to distance itself from Russia.It opines regarding the DA (South Africa’s main political opposition) and the BRICs (especially the proposed currency) and states that RSA’s populace are too smart to fall into civil unrest/war on a level where military intervention or martial law could be implemented. Will RSA be able to withstand the pressure given the intolerable levels of poverty, homelessness, youth unemployment (60%+), crime, underinvestment, corruption and on. It must be noted that like most African nations, South Africa has a long history of inter tribal violence and warfare and has a major issue with xenophobia let alone the classic racial divide. So a clear cut answer regarding this issue is not an easy one to obtain. The US’s modus operandi of divide and rule will prevail and if those fail, then economic misery will be the route taken to bring RSA to heel. Will it work? In the short term yes, medium a little, long no. That is an altogether different kettle of fish. The same problems RSA faces in its dealings with the USA and by definition, the UK and EU, are faced by the DRC but even more so. The DRC is well, rich in everything. Including violence, corruption and most of the country being ungovernable. The DRC supplies 70+% of the world’s cobalt among other materials so it’s relevance to the USA and EU as the supplier of a ‘crtical material’ must not be overlooked. The DRC is awash with multiple infrastructure problems and ethnic divisions with 250 tribes competing for survival and the genocide in Rwanda still fresh in the memory. The Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is little different having apparently similarily high levels of crime, violence and economic malaise with the addition of civil unrest and acts of terrorism.

The current state of all 3 nations that Victoria Nuland magnanimously visted as well as that of Niger (which she found time to ‘squeeze in), places them all in a very vulnerable position regarding the USA’s demands and conditions that require fullfilling if they are too have no interruptions in the status quo. All of them are not unstable in ‘African’ terms but they are not solid or based on foundations that can weather economic or political/social storms that can be imposed by the USA and its ‘friends’. All are facing economic and social problems which are mounting endlessly as neither the finances, the methodology or its implementation are accesible though often not for lack of trying but rather because of blocks being placed in their way through unilateral proclamations by differing Governments or the use of institutions ranging from the United Nations to the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organisation.

Africa is entering a period of interesting times ahead and though the extent to which the USA will determine the outcome of its involvement depends on the other global situations they are engaged in and trying to tame (Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Taiwan, Brazil etc.) or at least have some form of control over. Victoria Nuland is pilloried in the free or alternative media globally where she is seen as the portent of unabashed full on interference in the affairs of nation states (in the West she’s a saviour). Africa has been unfortunate to be on the receiving end of her unpalatable coarse ‘diplomacy’, the type the resides in the abbatoir and that no one should ever have to bear. The one positive effect of her ‘visit’ is the acceleration among the nations of the Global South especially African ones in their detaching themselves from the Western run economic system and their dependence on it.