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      Madeleine Albright hailed as a 'trailblazer' by colleagues – video

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      Madeleine Albright, who fled the Nazis as a child in her native Czechoslovakia and rose to become the first female US secretary of state and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon, died on Wednesday at the age of 84, her family said. Colleagues across the US state department and the UN have remembered Albright as a ‘trailblazer’ whose impact is felt ‘every single day’

      Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies aged 84
      Madeleine Albright obituary
      Madeleine Albright: ‘The things that are happening are genuinely, seriously bad’ More

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      Madeleine Albright obituary

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      Madeleine Albright obituaryDiplomat and scholar of international relations who served as the first female US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who has died of cancer aged 84, was the first woman to hold the office of secretary of state of the United States. It fell to her to cope with the painful dilemmas presented for the US by the breakup of Yugoslavia and the rise of Islamic opposition in the Middle East.While she fulfilled the role in the administration of President Bill Clinton, she could not take the place that office usually confers as third in succession to the president because she was not a “natural born citizen” of the US. Like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, secretaries of state in the Nixon and Carter administrations, she had been a refugee from Europe. Like them also, Albright came to the job not via business or politics but through an academic background in the study of international relations.Like Brzezinski, her professor at Columbia University, she was the daughter of a diplomat. Her father, Josef Korbel, took refuge from the communist government of his native Czechoslovakia, becoming a professor at the University of Denver. She was brought up a Roman Catholic and became an Anglican after her marriage, but when Albright became secretary of state, she received letters telling her that her parents were Jewish, and a Washington Post journalist, Michael Dobbs, after painstaking research, convinced her that this might be true. This caused a good deal of comment, some of it critical of her having concealed her ancestry. The truth seems to be that she was genuinely ignorant of her Jewish heritage.She concluded that in the Czechoslovakia of the 1930s, where Jews were often seen by Czechs as part of the German minority, her parents, Josef and his wife, Anna (nee Spieglová), thought she would have a safer life if she were seen to be Czech. Three of her grandparents subsequently died in Nazi concentration camps.Eldest of three children, she was born Marie Jana Korbelová in Prague. Her family took refuge from the Nazis in Switzerland, where she was educated at the Préalpina Institut pour Jeunes Filles on Lake Geneva. Madeleine was a French version of her Czech name.During the second world war, her family moved to London, which became the headquarters of the Czech government in exile, and Madeleine was brought up first in Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill, then in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, and Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Later, the Korbels returned to Prague, but in 1948, when the communists took over there, they moved to the US.In 1957 she went to Wellesley College, near Boston, one of the elite women’s colleges. There she became an American citizen. When working a summer vacation shift at the Denver Post, she met a scion of one of the most powerful American newspaper dynasties of the time, Joseph Albright, descendant of the founder of the Chicago Tribune. They married in 1959.If Madeleine had been born with a silver spoon, Joe Albright’s spoons were of the rarest platinum. His family was at the heart of American business, political and social life. At different times his relatives owned the Tribune, the Washington Times-Herald, the New York Daily News and Long Island’s Newsday, and they traded properties with William Randolph Hearst. Madeleine Albright took a master’s degree, then a doctorate in international relations at Columbia University, New York, where Brzezinski was one of her teachers. From 1976 to 1978 she worked as a legislative assistant to Senator Ed Muskie, a Democrat, of Maine. In 1978 she was recruited by Brzezinski to do congressional liaison on the national security staff at the Carter White House. After Jimmy Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980, she went to the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, where she undertook a study of the new politics of eastern Europe.In 1981, when her husband left her, Albright threw herself into the academic, political, social and fundraising worlds in Washington. In 1982 she began to teach at Georgetown University, and she worked on the election campaign staffs of Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic candidate for vice-president in 1984, and of Michael Dukakis, presidential candidate in 1988.Albright, with her considerable expertise in both domestic and international politics, and her ability to speak several foreign languages, was a natural choice for Clinton, when he was elected president in 1992, to choose as US ambassador at the United Nations. There she soon demonstrated charm and competence, occasionally tarnished by a certain proneness to accident. She miscalculated badly when she advised that Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian nationalist leader, would cave in after brief bombing during the Kosovo crisis.More seriously for her reputation, when she was asked on NBC television by the journalist Lesley Stahl about the alleged death of half a million children as a result of sanctions imposed on Iraq, Albright responded that “we think the price is worth it”. The remark portrayed her as hardbitten, which was far from the case. The sanctions policy had been in place long before the Clinton administration, but the comment was not forgotten.By the time of the Clinton administration, a female secretary of state was, if not exactly an idea whose time had come, at least not unthinkable, if the woman were well known and well liked in the Washington Democratic establishment. It is said that Clinton asked Albright if she was happy as ambassador to the UN; she replied that she was, but that she would rather be secretary of state. Clinton appointed her in 1997, at the beginning of his second term.When George W Bush was elected president in 2000, Albright slipped back comfortably into her role as a popular member of the establishment, greatly in demand as a speaker at conferences. She founded the Albright Group, to give political advice to corporate giants such as Coca-Cola, Merck and the insurance behemoth Marsh and McLennan, as well as a private equity firm, Albright Capital Management. In 2003 she joined the board of the New York Stock Exchange, and twice in 2006 she was invited to the White House to advise Bush. In the 2008 election she was in the Democratic camp as an adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign for the presidency, and again in 2016 – she told the Guardian: “I think she would have been a remarkable president”.In 2012, when she published Prague Winter, partly an account of the politics of central Europe in the run-up to the second world war, partly an account of her discovery that she was Jewish, reviewers and readers seemed much more interested in how she could not have known that she was Jewish than in her political thought or career. She was awarded the presidential medal of freedom by Barack Obama later that year.She is survived by her three daughters, Anne, Alice and Katherine, and six grandchildren. Madeleine Albright, diplomat and political adviser, born 15 May 1937; died 23 March 2022 TopicsUS politicsUS foreign policyBill ClintonHillary ClintonobituariesReuse this content More

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      US not optimistic about Ukraine talks as Zelenskiy ups pressure on Biden

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      US not optimistic about Ukraine talks as Zelenskiy ups pressure on Biden
      Ukraine president raises specter of ‘third world war’
      Biden pressed to increase military aid ahead of Nato visit
      Ukraine – live coverage
      Joe Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations warned on Sunday there was little immediate hope of a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine, as pressure continued to build on the US president ahead of a crucial Nato summit in Europe this week.‘Tucker the Untouchable’ goes soft on Putin but remains Fox News’s biggest powerRead moreLinda Thomas-Greenfield was reacting on CNN’s State of the Union to an interview with Volodymr Zelenskiy in which the Ukrainian president told the same network only talks would end the war and its devastating toll on civilians.“We have to use any format, any chance, to have the possibility of negotiating, of talking to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin,” Zelenskiy told Fareed Zakaria, the host of GPS. “If these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third world war.”Thomas-Greenfield said she saw little chance of a breakthrough.“We have supported the negotiations that President Zelenskiy has attempted with the Russians, and I use the word attempted because the negotiations seem to be one-sided, and the Russians have not leaned in to any possibility for a negotiated and diplomatic solution,” she said.“We tried before Russia decided to move forward in this brutal attack on Ukraine and those diplomatic efforts were not responded to well by the Russians, and they’re not responding now. But we’re still hopeful that the Ukrainian effort will end this brutal war.”The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “Turkey is doing some real effort to try to facilitate, support talks between Russia and Ukraine. It’s far too early to say whether these talks can lead to any concrete outcome.”Biden, who faces growing dissatisfaction over his approach to the war, will travel to Brussels on Thursday. He will hear a proposal from Poland for Nato to send a peacekeeping force into Ukraine, something Thomas-Greenfield said was unlikely.“I can’t preview what decisions will be made and how Nato will respond to the Polish proposal,” she said. “What I can say is American troops will not be on the ground in Ukraine at this moment. The president has been clear on that.“Other Nato countries may decide that they want to put troops inside of Ukraine, that will be a decision that they have made. We don’t want to escalate this into a war with the United States but we will support our Nato allies.”Thomas-Greenfield was asked about reports that thousands of residents of the besieged city of Mariupol have been deported to Russia.“I’ve only heard it,” she said. “I can’t confirm it. But I can say it is disturbing. It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.”Republicans were critical of the pace and content of US support for Ukraine. Following Zelenskiy’s address to Congress on Wednesday, the White House announced $800m in military aid, following a $13.6bn package. But Biden has rejected a no-fly zone and the transfer of Polish Mig fighter jets.“The president has had to be pushed and pulled to where he is today,” the Wyoming Republican senator John Barasso told ABC’s This Week.“It was Congress that brought about sanctions, that brought about the ban on Russian oil, that brought about weapons and all of this big aid package. So far the administration has only released $1bn of that. We might not have been in this situation if they had done punishing sanctions before the tanks began to roll.”Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said he believed Biden “needs to step up his game”.The president, McConnell said: “has generally done the right thing but never soon enough. I am perplexed as to why we couldn’t get the Polish-Russian Migs into the country.”McConnell added that Biden should visit friendly countries close to the conflict zone, such as Romania, Poland, and the Baltic nations.“They’re right on the frontlines and need to know that we’re in this fight with them to win,” he said.McConnell also condemned Republican extremists who have opposed support for Ukraine, such as the North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorne, who has called Zelenskiy “a thug”.“There are some lonely voices out there who are in a different place,” McConnell said.Concern is rising among Biden’s allies. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic Senate whip, reiterated the call to approve air support for Ukraine.“We’re asking for one-third of the Polish air force to be sent into Ukraine,” he told ABC. The people of Poland, of course, want to make certain that they’re safe. They’re only a few miles away from the devastation that’s going on in Ukraine.“There are other ways for us to provide surface-to-air missiles and air defenses that will keep the Russians at bay in terms of their aerial attacks. There are ways to do that that are consistent with the Nato alliance and would not jeopardise expanding this into world war three or even worse.”Marek Magierowski, the Polish ambassador to the US, stressed that the proposal for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine was only “a preliminary concept”.“We can’t take any decisions unilaterally, they have to be taken by all Nato members,” he told CNN, adding: “If there is an incursion into Nato territory, I believe that Russia can expect a very harsh response on the part of our alliance.”Zelenskiy lamented the provision only of economic and limited military support.“If we were a Nato member, a war wouldn’t have started,” he said. “If Nato members are ready to see us in the alliance, do it immediately because people are dying on a daily basis.“But if you are not ready to preserve the lives of our people, if you just want to see us straddle two worlds, if you want to see us in this dubious position where we don’t understand whether you can accept us or not, you cannot place us in this situation, you cannot force us to be in this limbo.”Zelenskiy, however, appeared to acknowledge last week that Ukraine would not join Nato.Marina Ovsyannikova, Russian TV protester, decries Putin propagandaRead moreOn CBS’s Face the Nation, the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said the use of chemical weapons by Russia, which many analysts predict, would produce a “significant reaction” from the US and the international community.On NBC, Stoltenberg said the use of chemical weapons “would be a blatant and brutal violation of international law”. But he would not say such an outcome would change Nato policy towards intervention.Biden this week spoke to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, seeking to prevent support for Russia. The Chinese ambassador to the US, Qin Gang, spoke to CBS.He said: “What China is doing is sending food, medicine, sleeping bags and baby formula, not weapons and ammunition to any party.”Gang also said Chinese condemnation of the Russian invasion, for which some have called, would not “solve the problem”.“I would be surprised if Russia will back down by condemnation,” he said.In Ukraine, fighting continues. The retired US army general and former CIA director David Petraeus told CNN the conflict had reached “a bloody stalemate, with lots of continued damage on both sides, lots of destruction, especially from the Russians”.TopicsUkraineJoe BidenBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS national securityUS politicsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden’s ‘cursed presidency’: gas prices are latest headache as midterms loom

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      Biden’s ‘cursed presidency’: gas prices are latest headache as midterms loomIn his 14 months in office, the US president has grappled with Covid, inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war and energy prices – and seemingly can’t catch a break The left are urging a green energy revolution. The right are sounding a battle cry of “Drill, baby, drill”. And American voters, tired of political excuses, are feeling angry.Will Biden’s handling of the Ukraine crisis prove popular with US voters?Read moreRising gas prices pose a fresh election year headache for Joe Biden. Republicans accuse him of pushing “a radical anti-US energy agenda”. Democrats put the blame on greedy oil companies and the assault on Ukraine by the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.While some argue that crisis offers opportunity, consumers are feeling the pinch in the latest knotty problem for a US president who, after 14 months in office, seemingly cannot catch a break.“Biden has a cursed presidency,” observed Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “He’s gotten nailed by the continuation of Covid, by inflation being out of control, by a lunatic leader in Russia and now soaring energy prices that are hitting voters in the pocketbook. They want to be able to get gas for their cars and not spend a hundred bucks.”Prices at the pump, which hit a record high of $4.43 a gallon on average last weekend, were rising long before Russia invaded Ukraine as demand recovered from coronavirus lockdowns. But in announcing a ban on US imports of Russian oil, Biden sought to reframe it as “Putin’s price hike”.Republicans, however, saw a political cudgel with which to beat him. They argue that Biden campaigned on a promise to “wage war” on domestic energy production, signed an executive order to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and suspended or halted oil and gas leases on federal lands.Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, tweeted: “Nobody buys Democrats’ efforts to blame 14 months of failed policies on three weeks of crisis in Europe. Inflation and gas prices were skyrocketing and hurting families long before late last month. The White House needs to stop trying to deny their mistakes and start fixing them.”Republicans have also condemned the White House for reportedly considering deals with autocratic regimes for a back-up oil supply, undermining Biden’s moral authority at a critical moment on the world stage. Former president Donald Trump told supporters at a rally in South Carolina: “Now Biden is crawling around the globe on his knees begging and pleading for mercy from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela.”Their solution? Vastly increase domestic oil and gas production to end reliance on foreign countries. Introducing legislation to that end, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said: “To be strong and free as a nation, we must be energy independent. My bill will reverse Joe Biden’s disastrous energy surrender that has allowed Russian energy dominance and instead open up American production full-throttle.”But critics say that, while “energy independence” appears a resonant campaign slogan, it is based on false premise. The price of oil is set on the global market, not by domestic producers. The US exported more petroleum than it imported in 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration, while also increasing overall crude oil production.Nikos Tsafos, an energy and geopolitics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank in Washington, said: “We are energy independent by the definition that people use. We are a net exporter of energy and it doesn’t do anything to protect us, which is not a surprise to anyone who has ever thought about energy markets.”There is a different potential culprit. Consumer gas prices usually move in tandem with oil prices but this week, when oil prices fell below $100 a barrel as China’s Covid-19 outbreak threatened demand, there was little relief for at the pump. Democrats accuse giant oil corporations, already raking in billions of dollars, of profiteering.Biden wrote in a tweet: “Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too. Last time oil was $96 a barrel, gas was $3.62 a gallon. Now it’s $4.31. Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans.”Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Frank Pallone, chair of the House of Representatives’ energy and commerce committee, requested that oil company chief executives testify before Congress on 6 April. Schumer said on the Senate floor: “The bewildering incongruity between falling oil prices and rising gas prices smacks of price gouging.”In an interview with the Guardian, Ed Markey, a Democratic senator for Massachusetts, pointed out that oil companies already have all the land they need to heed Republicans’ plea to “drill, baby, drill” – but will not do it because it is contrary to their business model.“Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell – they made a combined $75bn in net profits last year and, despite all their crocodile tears right now about this crisis, they’ve already announced that they’re going to return $38bn to their shareholders instead of taking the $38bn and beginning to drill on the 12,000 leases that they have on federal land in the United States for oil and gas,” Markey said.“The reason they’re not going to do it is that they are hypocrites, they are liars. They don’t want to drill because if we produce more oil, that would lower prices for consumers. So it’s all one big lie.”Markey, who helped devise the Green New Deal platform to wean America off fossil fuels at home or abroad, welcomed Biden’s move to tap into the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which contains 600m barrels. But he added: “In the long term, we need a technology revolution. If we do it, we’re going to be looking at all these companies and countries in a rear-view mirror historically.“We need to go to ‘plug in, baby, plug in’. We need wind, solar, battery storage technologies, all-electric vehicles, all the other innovation technologies that reduce greenhouse gases, but also back out the need for oil and gas in our economy, the European economy, the economy of Japan and all of our allies.”Does Biden, juggling so many crises, still get that?Markey replied: “I was part of a meeting with the president last Wednesday night and he once again made a commitment to his effort to achieve that energy technology revolution in our country.”There is also grassroots pressure on Biden. More than 200 environmental and indigenous organizations signed a letter demanding that he use the Defense Production Act, normally deployed by presidents in wartime to force companies to make weapons, to compel businesses to produce solar panels, wind turbines and other clean energy sources.John Paul Mejia, national spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, a youth movement to stop climate change, said: “The playbook of fossil fuel executives is clearer now than ever. They have used the crisis of war to surge prices at the expense of working people and the takeaway from this is that it is incredibly dangerous and anti-democratic to have an economy dependent on fossil fuels.“We need Biden to use the Defence Production Act to take decisive measures on the urgency, scope and scale of this crisis and transition to clean, renewable, reliable energy.”Biden has given little hint of such a move as he relies on Congress to take action. But his signature Build Back Better plan, which would have poured about $550bn into the clean energy and climate business, appears to be going nowhere fast. One of the chief obstacles is the Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who recently told an energy conference that he was “very reluctant” to see the development of electric vehicles. A key vote in the evenly divided chamber, Manchin has taken more money in political donations from fossil fuel interests than any other senator.Mejia added: “One of the things to view that’s specific to the United States right now is that the crook executives in the fossil fuel industry have a strong hold over American politics in the sense that they have incredibly powerful politicians bought out like Joe Manchin.“At this moment what we’re seeing, especially ahead of elections too, are the so-called conservative Democrats suddenly overnight flipping and pretending to be working-class champions as they morph themselves into caring about what working people are feeling at the gas pump right now. But they’re really just fulfilling their allegiances to their big oil donors.”Opinion polls suggest Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine has broad public approval but, with hints of a fresh coronavirus wave, his list of problems never seems to shorten. Whatever the causes of inflation, history suggests that voters may punish him at the ballot box.The president’s legislative ambitions for the climate crisis and other priorities are about to collide with midterm elections in which all signs point to Republicans winning the House and possibly the Senate. Biden could find himself spending the second half of his presidency vetoing laws rather than signing them.Jamal Raad, co-founder and executive director of the campaign group Evergreen Action, said: “If there was ever a moment of need for moving to a 100% clean energy economy was more clear that now, I don’t know when would be with a fossil fueled enabled leader attacking another country and throwing the whole fossil fuel global market into chaos. I do believe this is a make-or-break moment.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsOilUS foreign policyCommoditiesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Lessons from the Edge review: Marie Yovanovitch roasts Trump on Putin and Ukraine

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      Lessons from the Edge review: Marie Yovanovitch roasts Trump on Putin and Ukraine The former US ambassador’s memoir is timely and telling, as well as a fine story of a life in national serviceFor nearly a month, Vladimir Putin has delivered a daily masterclass in incompetence and brutality. The ex-KGB spymaster and world-class kleptocrat was the guy Donald Trump wanted to be. Just weeks ago, the former president lavished praise on his idol and derided Nato as “not so smart”.Trump thought US troops were in Ukraine in 2017, ex-ambassador says in bookRead moreHow’s that working out, Donald?The world cheers for Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ukraine, his besieged country. Russia’s economy is on its knees, its stock market shuttered, its shelves bare. The rouble is worth less than a penny. The west is not as decadent or as flaccid as the tyrant-in-the-Kremlin and President Bone-Spurs bet.With impeccable timing, Marie Yovanovitch delivers Lessons from the Edge, her memoir. The author is the former US ambassador to Ukraine who Trump fired during his attempt to withhold aid to Kyiv in return for political dirt, an effort that got him impeached. For the first time.Yovanovitch tells a story of an immigrant’s success. But, of course, her short but momentous stint in the last administration receives particular attention.On the page, Yovanovitch berates Trump for “his obsequiousness to Putin”, which she says was a “frequent and continuing cause for concern” among the diplomatic corps. Trump, she writes, saw “Ukraine as a ‘loser’ country, smaller and weaker than Russia”. If only thousands of dead Russian troops could talk.Trump was commander-in-chief but according to Yovanovitch, he didn’t exactly have the best handle on where his soldiers were deployed.At an Oval Office meeting in 2017 with Petro Poroshenko, then president of Ukraine, Trump asked HR McMaster, his national security adviser, if US troops were deployed in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, territory now invoked by Putin as grounds for his invasion.“An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia,” Yovanovitch writes.In the moment, she says, she also pondered if it was “better to interpret Trump’s question as suggesting that the commander-in-chief thought it possible that US troops were fighting Russia-led forces, or instead as an indicator that the president wasn’t clear which country was on the other side of the war against Ukraine”.Let that sink in. And remember this. According to Mary Trump, the former president’s niece, Trump mocked his father as he succumbed to Alzheimer’s.Yovanovitch’s parents fled the Nazis, then the Soviets. She was born in Canada and her family moved to the US when she was three. Later she received an offer from Smith, an all-women’s school in Massachusetts, but opted for Princeton. It had gone co-ed less than a decade earlier but Yovanovitch counted on it being more fun.In her memoir, she devotes particular attention to snubs and put-downs endured on account of gender. One of her professors, a European history specialist, announced that he opposed women being admitted. After that, Yovanovitch stayed silent during discussion. It was only after she received an A, she writes, that the professor noticed her and made sure to include her. She really had something to say.Lessons from the Edge also recalls a sex discrimination lawsuit brought in 1976 by Alison Palmer, a retired foreign service officer, against the US Department of State. The case was settled, but only in 1989 and with an acknowledgment of past wrongs by the department.State had “disproportionately given men the good assignments”, Palmer said. Yovanovitch writes: “I felt – and still feel – tremendous gratitude to [her] for fighting for me and so many other women.”Yovanovitch would serve in Moscow and as US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Ukraine. She worked with political appointees and careerists. She offers particular praise for Republicans of an earlier, saner era.She lauds George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, for professionalism and commitment to country. Shultz reminded new ambassadors that “my” country meant the US, not their place of posting. He also viewed diplomacy as a constant effort, as opposed to a spasmodic intervention.Yovanovitch also singles out James Baker, secretary of state to George HW Bush, for helping the president forge a coalition to win the Gulf war.“Department folks found him cold and aloof,” Yovanovitch recalls. “But it was clear immediately that he was a master of diplomacy.”Baker showed flashes of idealism. The US stood for something. As younger men, both Shultz and Baker were marines.In marked contrast, Yovanovitch gives the Trump administration a thumping. She brands Rex Tillerson’s 14-month tenure as secretary of state as “near-disastrous”. As for Tillerson’s successor, Mike Pompeo, Yovanovitch lambasts his “faux swagger” and his refusal to defend her when she came under attack from Trump and his minions.Amid Trump’s first impeachment, over Ukraine, Yovanovitch testified: “The policy process is visibly unravelling … the state department is being hollowed out.”Loyalty to subordinates was not Pompeo’s thing – or Trump’s. “Lick what’s above you, kick what’s below you” – that was more their mantra. True to form, in 2020 Pompeo screamed at a reporter: “Do you think Americans give a fuck about Ukraine?”Two years later, they do. At the same time, Pompeo nurses presidential ambitions. Good luck with that.Yovanovitch rightly places part of the blame for Putin’s invasion on Trump.“He saw Ukraine as a pawn that could be bullied into doing his bidding,” she said in a recent interview. “I think that made a huge impact on Zelenskiy and I think that Putin and other bad actors around the world saw that our president was acting in his own personal interests.”What comes next for the US, Ukraine and Russia? Pressure mounts on the Biden administration to do more for Ukraine – at the risk of nuclear conflict. Congressional Republicans vote against aid to Zelenskiy but demand a more robust US response.Recently, Trump admitted that he was “surprised” by Putin’s “special military operation”. He “thought he was negotiating”, he said. A very stable genius, indeed.
      Lessons from the Edge is published in the US by Mariner Books
      TopicsBooksUS foreign policyUS national securityDonald TrumpTrump impeachment (2019)UkraineEuropereviewsReuse this content More

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      Zelenskiy wants to shame the west into action. Will it work? | Moira Donegan

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      Zelenskiy wants to shame the west into action. Will it work?Moira DoneganThe contrast between what the Ukrainian president has been willing to do, and what western leaders have been willing to do to help, is the source of his moral power In a way, the Ukranian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, ruined the Americans’ plans. Early this year, when American intelligence concluded that Vladimir Putin would indeed invade Ukraine, no one expected it to be a long war. The conventional wisdom, shared by western analysts and Putin himself, was that Ukraine would rapidly fall to Russia’s military, and that after some strong words and a tepid round of sanctions, the US and Nato would cut a deal with Russia. They would give Putin hegemony over much of Ukraine – the eastern part, if not the whole thing – and what was left over would get an aspirationally democratic government with a European orientation. This detente would last until Putin got greedy again, at which point the cycle of Russian expansion and western accommodation would resume, this time a little further to the west. At some point in that version of events, Zelenskiy himself would have been arrested by the Russians. And then he’d be gone.Toxic Putin is going for bust. The west must stop him before this contagion spreads | Simon TisdallRead moreInstead, the man who addressed Congress on Wednesday morning did so from a besieged and defiant Kyiv, shelled and bombed nightly by the encircling Russian forces but still in Ukrainian hands. Zelenskiy appeared via video on a large screen at the front of a room full of senators and congresspeople in blue velvet chairs. He was unshaven. He looked unslept. By remaining in Kyiv, even as Russian troops encircle it and Russian bombs fall from the sky, Zelenskiy has made himself into a symbol of the Ukrainian people, whose surprising courage, determination, and defiance in the face of the Russian aggression have called the west’s moral bluff. Their stand, and Zelenskiy’s stand, have transformed what could have been a cynical calculation about how to manage Russia’s renewed imperial ambitions into a more meaningful – and more challenging – test of the west’s pro-democracy values. Days ago, when Americans offered Zelenskiy a discreet and secure exit from Kyiv, he reportedly told them: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”This sounds like action movie dialogue, and at times Zelenskiy’s skillful public rhetoric has evoked his past life as a comedian and entertainer. He has come a long way from the days when his jokes included pretending to play a piano with his dick. But it is difficult to dismiss Zelenskiy’s words as mere macho posturing when one considers that the stakes are his own life. Russia’s lethal power is superior, and though the Ukrainians have mounted an impressive military and guerrilla resistance, it is unlikely that they will be able to permanently hold Kyiv unless something drastic changes in the war. Zelenskiy’s wife and two small children, who fled at the beginning of the invasion, will probably never see him again. His presidency has taken on the tenor of a suicide mission; he broadcast to Congress from the location in Kyiv where he is waiting to die. The contrast between what Zelenskiy has been willing to do for his country’s sovereignty, and what the western leaders on whom he is calling for help have been willing to do for their own professed values, is the source of Zelenskiy’s tremendous moral power. In his addresses to western leaders – he has also spoken to the Canadian and UK parliaments over the past days – Zelenskiy speaks in inspirational tones. But he is looking to evoke the west’s shame. On Wednesday, he spoke to Congress wearing a T-shirt in the dusty green of a military uniform. The American lawmakers who watched him wore suits.In his address, Zelenskiy asked the Americans for the same things he has been asking for since the beginning of the Russian invasion: first, he wants a no-fly zone over Ukraine to stop the incessant and devastating bombing that has killed thousands of Ukrainians, including many civilians. Second, he wants the US to re-enter a deal that it backed out of this past week, in which America and Nato would facilitate the transfer to Ukraine from Poland of Soviet-made MiG military jets – planes that Ukrainian fighters know how to fly, and which could help make Russia’s air war over their country at least a little less asymmetrical. Third, he wants the west, and particularly the US, to continuously strengthen its sanctions on Russia. He called for individual restrictions to be placed on members of Putin’s government and their assets, and he called for American companies to cease operations in Russia. “Their market is flooded with our blood,” he said. He asked, too, for American ports to be closed to Russian-made goods. “Peace is more important than income.”It is one of the most persistent and embarrassing themes of America’s status as a superpower that the US’s values frequently do not align with its interests – or, for that matter, with its capacities. Zelenskiy is likely to get little of what he asked for. A no-fly zone could only be enforced by shooting down Russian planes and taking out Russian air defense operations that are located not only in Ukraine, but also in Belarus and Russia. Putin would see this as an act of war, and the US and Nato would be pulled into a potentially world-ending global conflict. The transfer of planes also seems unlikely: the Pentagon recently rejected American participation in the scheme, fearing that it, too, would be interpreted as an unacceptable escalation by the Russians.Harsher sanctions meant to cripple the Russian economy seem more likely, and like a less dangerous way to channel the considerable political and public support for the Ukrainian cause. The aim of such sanctions is not only punitive, but tactical. Despite the visibility of Russian dissidents in American media, the truth is that a large majority of Russians support Vladimir Putin, and support the war. Putin has the devoted support of the Russian people in no small part because they feel that their autocratic leader has secured Russia’s domestic stability and material prosperity. Sanctions could eventually change this calculation among ordinary Russians, potentially destabilizing Putin’s regime.It will be tempting for many in America to justify their aversion to further military escalation in eastern Europe by denying the moral authority of the Ukrainian cause. Those on the Republican right, confused about their party’s relationship to the Putin regime, will try to paint Ukraine as a corrupt denizen of decadence. Those on the far left will point to the mujahideen in Afghanistan as an example of the dangers of American support for anti-Russian militias. But this rhetoric will largely function as a distraction from what is really happening in Ukraine. Zelenskiy is right that his people have a moral claim, as he said to Congress, to “Live in their own country and choose their own future.” He is right, too, that watching Putin deny Ukraine this right should make us all ashamed. But he is wrong to think that America has the power, really, to stop him.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsVolodymyr ZelenskiyOpinionUS foreign policyUkraineUS politicscommentReuse this content More