“Nikki Haley, ambassador to the United Nations, has resigned, leaving the administration with one less moderate Republican voice,” tweeted the New York Times, without defining what specifically is “moderate” about relentlessly pushing for war and starvation sanctions at every opportunity and adamantly defending the slaughter of unarmed Palestinian protesters with sniper fire.

“Too bad Nikki Haley has resigned,” tweeted law professor turned deranged Russia conspiracy theorist Laurence Tribe. “She was one of the last members of Trumplandia with even a smidgen of decency.”

Well I’ve got some good news for those who lamented the loss of a virulent psychopathic war whore as UN ambassador, and bad news for any anti-interventionist Trump voters who’ve been secretly hoping this administration would use Haley’s vacancy to move in a less hawkish direction: you’re getting another one just like her. According to multiple sources, Trump has confirmed early rumors and selected State Department Spokeswoman and former Fox News pundit Heather Nauert as Haley’s replacement.

Ever since rumors emerged of Nauert’s selection for the job last month, the dominant criticisms have been that she lacks “experience” and “qualifications” for the job of US Ambassador to the United Nations. These criticisms have picked up ever since these early rumors were confirmed, and they are illegitimate for two reasons. The first is that a position as Fox News propagandist is very much the sort of experience an American needs to be a UN Ambassador, especially for this administration. The second is that all the job requires is a willingness to sell one’s soul for the promotion of US war agendas, and to occasionally help kick Palestinian human rights further into the gutter than they already are. No experience is required for this, and these are things we already know Nauert could do in her sleep.

As State Department Spokeswoman, Nauert’s messaging has already been moving in lockstep with that of Haley anyway. She speaks about Syria as though it is the property of the United States, routinely warning the Syrian government not to re-take its own land from the western-backed terrorist factions that nearly overran the nation. She regularly promotes the unrest in Iran that the Trump administration has been deliberately attempting to foment with starvation sanctions and CIA covert ops, and helps sell the absolute lie that Iran is “the leading state sponsor of terrorism”. She promotes anti-Venezuela narratives, anti-Russia narratives, anti-North Korea narratives, anti-Houthi narratives, and anti-Palestinian narratives. She’s been at this job since April of last year, and her talking points have consistently mirrored Haley’s.

Nauert is perfectly qualified for the job of UN Ambassador, because all that job requires is being a sociopathic war pig. She’s already been doing that.

All this fuss about Nauert’s “experience” highlights perfectly why Trump’s ostensible opposition has been almost entirely worthless: they don’t focus on any of the evil foreign policy decisions that this administration is actually advancing, because they don’t actually oppose those decisions. They aren’t concerned that Nauert will promote senseless, psychotic acts of military mass murder, they are concerned that she lacks the necessary qualifications to promote it skillfully and professionally. On this matter, as with all matters, Trump’s self-proclaimed “resistance” is perfectly comfortable with the blood-spattered face of world-dominating imperialism. They just want it to go back to smiling and saying things politely.

The problem with most of the opposition to Trump is that they’re not interested in waking up, they’re interested in removing an annoying wrinkle in their bedsheets so that they can go back to sleep. They don’t care about the monstrous acts of violence that are inflicted upon human beings on the other side of the globe in their name, so they focus on irrelevant nonsense like whether or not Heather Nauert is qualified to read from the same imperialist script that was read by Haley, Samantha Power and Susan Rice.

Those who care about reality don’t care about who’s reading from that script. It is the script itself they seek to burn.

caitlinjohnstone.com

When compared to the leading hardcore Russophobes, Michael McFaul comes across more as being a diva, seeking to maintain a niche within the anti-Russian leaning US establishment. McFaul is on record for saying that he doesn't accept the notion that Russia is inherently prone to negative attributes and bad relations with the West. Given that view and the existing status quo of folks out there, he's arguably not a top ten Russophobe.

Bill Browder is considered a Russophobe by a twist of fate. Prior to his falling out of favor with the Russian authorities, Browder was characterized by some anti-Russian leaning elements as a Kremlin shill. Browder's main focus of criticism is the Russian president and government at large. As is true of McFaul, the available choices indicate that Browder is arguably not a top ten Russophobe.

Several names come to mind that IMO should make a top ten Russophobe list for 2018. Granted, the difficulty in choosing people for such, as there're numerous individuals worthy of consideration.

Whether in 2017 or this year, it's surprising that the outgoing Trump administration UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, didn't get a top Russophobe ranking by RT. During her time as UN ambassador, Haley has spoken about the need to slap Russia, adding that the US and Russia can never be friends.  

An acquaintance describes the Washington Examiner's Tom Rogan, as exhibiting the worst Anglo-American ignorance and arrogance against Russia. Rogan's often enough, unchallenged, Russia related commentary at some leading American media venues, is a tell all sign of US mass media shortcomings – when it comes to having a reasonably balanced presentation of views.

Rogan called for the Kiev regime to bomb the bridge linking Crimea with the rest of Russia. That advocacy of his received attention in Russia.

Rogan recently wrote a very inept piece on the situation with Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine. Whether he likes it or not, a noticeable number of people in the former Ukrainian SSR, don't oppose the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is loosely affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC-MP). That established Ukrainian Orthodox Church (also known as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, UOC-MP) didn't ask for the Kiev regime and/or the Constantinople (in Istanbul) Patriarchate to get involved with its matters. Note that the Washington Examiner appears to be otherwise prone to support the desire for a separation between church and state.

In conjunction with the Kiev regime, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (formed in 1992) that sought autocephaly approval from the Constantinople Patriarchate, is headed by Filaret Denisenko, who for decades supported the Moscow Patriarchate's ties with the Orthodox churches in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. He changed course after not getting a promotion within the Moscow Patriarchate. A noticeable number of individuals in Kiev regime controlled Ukraine support Denisenko's changed position. That aspect doesn't deny the noticeable existence of those in that territory who support the UOC-MP.

The Constantinople Patriarchate doesn't have the same centralized authority as the Vatican. There's good reason to believe that some form of payola might be at play between the corrupt nationalist Kiev regime and the Constantinople Patriarchate. One is hard pressed to find any of the national Orthodox churches (recognized by the Constantinople Patriarchate) supporting the Constantinople Patriarchate's decision to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. If anything, there's a near unanimous to complete agreement of these national Orthodox churches, favoring the position of the UOC-MP and ROC-MP, to not have the Constantinople Patriarchate grant an autocephaly status to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Among the UOC-MP and ROC-MP faithful (as well as some others), there's a reasonable concern that the Kiev regime and Denisenko's church will use the Constantinople Patriarchate's decision as a basis to seize UOC-MP property. Further complicating matters is the existence of a third and smaller Ukrainian Orthodox Church, known as the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

Contrary to Rogan, the ROC-MP and Russian government aren't nationalistically interwoven with each other, in the way that he so very inaccurately suggests. Despite the Kremlin's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, the ROC-MP recognizes Orthodox Christian property in these areas as being with the Georgian Orthodox Church. Likewise, the UOC-MP continues to maintain jurisdiction over Orthodox Christian property in Crimea, which is now part of Russia.

As I noted, the sports world has experienced a good deal of overtly anti-Russian advocacy. This situation leads to three individuals with top ten anti-Russian credentials.

Travis Tygart is a US legal sports politico, who has repeatedly sought a collective ban on all Russian athletes – something he has never collectively advocated against any other national group of athletes.

Sebastian Coe heads the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), that still has a ban on Russia, unlike the International Olympic Committee. In 2016, Coe actively sought to have Russian drug cheat turned "whistleblower", Yulia Stepanova compete in the Rio Summer Olympics, unlike the clean medal contending Russian track and field athletes, who were unfairly banned from that competition. Coe apparently approves of Stepanova uncritically participating in a German aired propaganda film, that made a broad unproven claim against Russia's top track and field athletes.

Rune Andersen serves under Coe at the IAAF. Andersen suggested the possibility of banning clean Russian track and field athletes from competing as neutrals, if the Russian sports authorities don't acknowledge all of the core claims made in the quite faulty McLaren report.

Photo: flickr

UN Ambassador and Clairvoyant Prognosticator of the Transmundane Nikki Haley has foreseen that, if there are any future chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian province of Idlib, it will most definitely be the Syrian government that is responsible and not the multiple terrorist factions in the area.

“If they want to continue to go the route of taking over Syria, they can do that,” said Nikki Haley at a UN press conference today, without explaining how a nation’s only recognized government can ‘take over’ the country it governs. “But they cannot do it with chemical weapons. They can’t do it assaulting their people. And we’re not gonna fall for it. If there are chemical weapons that are used, we know exactly who’s gonna use them.”

Haley was referring to the Syrian government’s impending push to complete its military campaign of recapturing its land from the terrorist factions and militias who, with extensive help from the US and its allies, have been holding communities hostage in a failed attempt to take over Syria. Her supernatural prophecy is just the latest in an increasingly bizarre string of claims being advanced by political figures and establishment media that the Assad government is planning to use chemical weapons to complete that campaign in Idlib.

Their narrative is that the Russian government’s warnings of a plot by the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist factions occupying the region to stage a chemical weapons attack and frame the Syrian government for it are actually just a preemptive “smoke screen” to allow them to get away with committing war crimes. When Haley said “we’re not gonna fall for it,” this is the ‘it’ she was referring to.

So let’s unpack that a bit. I’m going to propose two different possibilities to you, and you decide for yourself which one is the more likely event to occur in the future:

Possibility 1: The actual, literal terrorist factions occupying Idlib are on the cusp of defeat with nowhere to escape to. They know for a fact that the US and its allies have launched repeated attacks on the Syrian government following chemical weapons allegations without first waiting for an investigation into those allegations. They also know for a fact that multiple high level officials in the western alliance have stated they will carry out aggressive attacks against the Syrian government in retaliation for any perceived chemical weapons attacks, and, thanks to the public prognostications from Madame Haley’s crystal ball, they also know that the Syrian government has already been assigned blame for any such attack in advance. Knowing all of these things, with their backs against the wall with the absolute certainty that getting the western military alliance on their side is their last and only chance, they get their hands on some chemical weapons and kill some of the civilians they’ve captured.

Possibility 2: On the cusp of victory, the Assad government decides to do the one thing that risks a US-led regime change military intervention in order to accomplish the crucial strategic masterstroke of killing a few kids with chlorine or sarin in front of a bunch of White Helmets cameras.

While you are weighing those two options, consider for a moment the fact that the US and its allies have an extensive history of attempting to control who governs Syria, and indeed plotted to create a violent uprising exactly as it occurred in 2011. Not after the violence had already started, but years in advance.

This is not my opinion, and it is not a conspiracy theory. It is a known fact that you can verify for yourself:

• Here is a 2006 WikiLeaks cable in which the US government is seen exploring possible factions which could be incentivized to rise up against Assad, and ways in which psyops could be used to ensure widespread violence.

• Here is a declassified CIA memo from 1986 in which the Central Intelligence Agency is seen exploring ways in which sectarian tensions can be inflamed to provoke a violent uprising in Syria. Here is a useful articlefeaturing excerpts from the memo showing some jarring parallels between what was being planned and what happened a quarter century later.

• Here is a video clip of General Wesley Clark naming Syria among the countries scheduled by the Pentagon for regime change in the wake of 9/11.

• Here is a video clip of the former Foreign Minister of France stating in plain language that he was informed by British government insiders in 2009 that a violent Syrian uprising was being planned, two years before the violence erupted.

• Here is an article featuring a video of the former Qatari Prime Minister stating that the US and its allies were involved in the violence from the very beginning.

• Here is an article from May of 2011 reporting on some of the extremely suspicious provocations that led to the outbreak of widespread violence. Here’s another from March 2011. Here’s another from December 2011.

You get the picture. If a man had documented his plans to murder his wife with an axe, and those plans were found after his wife turned up dead of axe wounds exactly as he’d planned them, and multiple people in the area said they’d heard him murdering her with an axe, the primary suspect in that case would not be the neighbor’s cat.

The violence in Syria was planned and orchestrated years in advance, and now hundreds of thousands of human beings are dead as a direct result. And these monsters are now pretending to be concerned about human rights?

No. Get out of Syria, you absolute ghouls. Everyone responsible for perpetrating and sustaining these horrors should spend the rest of their lives in a Hague cell. If there is a chemical weapons attack as the Syrian government moves to recapture Idlib, the last people anyone should believe is the psychopathic governments who are responsible for this catastrophe in the first place.

medium.com

Haley has also made a number of other comments relating to the United Nations and Israel. Immediately upon taking office she complained that “nowhere has the U.N.’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel” and vowed that the “days of Israel bashing are over.” In February 2017, she blocked the appointment of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to a diplomatic position at the United Nations because he is a Palestinian. In a congressional hearing she was asked about the decision: “Is it this administration’s position that support for Israel and support for the appointment of a well-qualified individual of Palestinian nationality to an appointment at the U.N. are mutually exclusive?” Haley responded yes, that the administration is “supporting Israel” by blocking every Palestinian.

There is clearly a disinclination on the part of the Trump Administration to support multinational bodies, evident in the rejection of climate, trade and non-proliferation agreements. Complete withdrawal from the United Nations is not unthinkable in the current climate, though the Democrats and some moderate Republicans would no doubt strongly resist such a move. In my opinion, the United Nations is a dystopian mess but it is better to have it than not as it provides a forum where nations that otherwise cannot meet are able too do so and discuss transnational issues. And it should be conceded that the U.N.’s inability to actually function is largely both structural and bureaucratic due to the veto power given to the Security Council’s five permanent members, a function that Nikki Haley has repeatedly used to stop resolutions that might be offensive to the United States or Israel.

Beyond that, Haley’s constant citation of concern for Israel gives strength to the suggestion that there is something unnatural about its bilateral “special” relationship with the United States. In the Middle East in particular, Israel would seem to be driving U.S. policy, particularly vis-à-vis Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Israel is intent on continuing political chaos in Syria lest there be a threat to its continued occupation of the Golan Heights and has warned about possible preemptive action in Lebanon to punish Hezbollah. It also wants the United States to deal decisively with Iran. By all accounts, those agendas are proceeding very well as Washington has been regularly threatening Iran and last week vowed to take military action if Damascus seeks to recover territory in the Syrian southwest that until recently was held by terrorists.

It is difficult to discern what the joint United States-Israeli strategy might be towards the United Nations and other international bodies. Neither has recognized the authority of the International Criminal Court in The Hague for fear that its own senior officials might be arrested and tried for war crimes. To be sure, both countries are protected against any serious challenges in the U.N. itself by the American veto power over the Security Council, which alone has the authority to mandate sanctions or peacekeeping operations.

But the U.S. withdrawal from U.N. agencies is, if anything, a sign of weakness rather than strength. If Washington were indeed confident in its own brand of international leadership it would welcome the opportunity to sit on panels and help shape the views of other countries with which it has a politically neutral or adversarial relationships. That it does not choose to do so suggests that there is an understanding that what Washington is selling no one is buying. The complete isolation of the United States at the United Nations and also elsewhere, to include G-7, was exhibited recently during June 1^st votes at the U.N. Security Council. A resolution sponsored by Kuwait seeking an inquiry into the Israeli killing of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza and a motion by Haley seeking to blame Hamas for the deaths both were voted on. Haley’s was the only vote against the former and the only vote in favor of the latter. She predictably commented afterwards that “Further proof was not needed, but it is now completely clear that the U.N. is hopelessly biased against Israel.”

When Nikki Haley was tapped by President Donald Trump to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, most who were in the know scratched their heads. The governor of South Carolina seemed like a strange pick for this very important job—and not only because Haley had sparred with Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Unlike Richard Holbrooke and John Negroponte, Haley wasn’t plucked from the State Department’s diplomatic corps. And unlike Madeleine Albright and Susan Rice, she had very little—if any—foreign policy experience.

Haley, however, has proven herself to be a survivor, hitting the U.N. every chance she gets while ingratiating herself to Trump, who bemoans multilateral institutions in general and the United Nations in particular. From her very first speech in which she told U.N. members states (allies and adversaries alike) that “for those who don’t have our backs, we’re taking names,” Ambassador Haley has been the chief enforcer of the president’s America First foreign policy vision. Anyone can wail about the U.N. in the State Department briefing room, but Haley is in the eye of the storm, poking the international body—and doing it proudly—from within.

Haley’s latest broadside occurred this week when she announced the withdrawal of the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Council, a collection of 47 nations that focus on—you guessed it—human rights violations around the world. The U.N. as a whole is often depicted as a bunch of incompetents who suck the American taxpayer dry, and the Human Rights Council, which has featured some of the world’s worst abusers of human rights, is a standout example of why that image persists. The words and phrases Haley used to describe the Council during her briefing this week—“a protector of human rights abusers“ and a “cesspool of political bias”—are quintessential Trump and a reflection of the widespread conservative opposition to the Council ever since it was established 12 years ago.

America’s departure from the Council, of course, didn’t come out of nowhere. It was only a matter of time before Washington withdrew. Ambassador Haley has used the body as her proverbial punching bag from the beginning. And the Council’s intense focus—some would call it an unhealthy obsession—on Israel’s actions in the Palestinian Territories grates on Republicans and Democrats alike. Nations widely regarded as major human rights abusers (Egypt, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and Pakistan) have either served or are serving as members. Even the U.N.’s greatest admirers would admit that the Council has problems, the least of which is its pathetic criteria for membership.

Haley wanted those problems addressed. She hoped to work with European allies to introduce more stringent vetting so countries with industrial-scale torture regimes weren’t able to be elected. She wanted Israel off the permanent agenda. When it became obvious that other members were not willing to cooperate, she chose the nuclear option.

It’s still far too early to tell whether the administration’s decision will pay off. The benefits of withdrawal are clear enough: the American delegation will no longer have to sit in the room and listen to lectures about human rights coming from countries that are, strangely enough, human rights violators.

The costs, however, outweigh whatever symbolic and moral benefits Washington has accrued. Absent from the table, the United States is no longer a player. Crimes that America wishes to bring to the Council’s attention may now be ignored altogether. Israel will be even more exposed to censure. The Trump administration is forfeiting its right to influence whatever debates are on the Council’s docket, a sophomoric move that will impact the U.N. human rights agenda. Yet again, the U.S. is isolating itself from the rest of the global community. First it was the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Then it was the Paris climate change and Iran nuclear agreements. Now it’s the Human Rights Council.

For Nikki Haley, this is a personal win and a nice notch on her belt as she thinks about her political future. For the United States, it’s something altogether less encouraging.

theamericanconservative.com

Long ago, Washington had respectable UN ambassadors, including Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Adlai Stevenson, Arthur Goldberg, and Andrew Young.

Few Americans likely remember GHW Bush’s tenure in the post – from March 1, 1971 – January 18, 1973.

Earlier days are long gone, notably post-9/11 with neocons John Negroponte, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and likeminded others serving as UN envoys.

Current incumbent Nikki Haley is the worst of the lot, an embarrassment to the office she holds, an over-the-top loose cannon, an imperial lunatic, a geopolitical know-nothing, a Russophobic extremist – representing America’s ugly face, its ruthless agenda, its imperial madness.

Addressing the Security Council on Friday, she dispensed with diplomatic niceties and hard truths, devoting her remarks entirely to an anti-Russia tirade in response to its veto of Washington’s unacceptable resolution on extending the OPCW/UN Joint Investigation Mechanism (JIM).

Its text included a provision for invoking the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, authorizing “action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

It ignored the JIM’s biased, one-sided conclusions, lacking credibility, what Russia called sloppy and “amateurish,” failing to conform to international standards.

Washington vetoed Russia’s responsible resolution to continue JIM work the way it should have been done the first time, including on-site inspections, instead of accepting so-called evidence from anti-government sources, entirely lacking credibility.

Haley went wild, saying “Russia is wasting our time. Conflicts are raging. Outlaw states are acquiring nuclear weapons. The human dignity of millions is violated every day. Brutal regimes are using chemical weapons on their own people.”

All of the above applies to America and its rogue allies. North Korea has nuclear weapons as a deterrent against genuinely feared US aggression. Haley didn’t explain.

Instead she roared “(a)s we have long suspected, Russia does not now and has never had any intention of making this time productive for this Council and the international community.”

Russia’s veto…shows us that Russia has no interest in finding common ground with the rest of this council to save the JIM.”

“Russia will not agree to any mechanism that might shine a spotlight on the use of chemical weapons by its ally, the Syrian regime.”

Fact: No evidence proves Syrian use of CWs any time throughout years of US-launched aggression.

Fact: Plenty of evidence shows ISIS, al-Nusra and other US-supported terrorist groups used them numerous times, Syria falsely blamed.

Fact: Pentagon contractors trained terrorists in Jordan on CW use.

Haley: “Russia’s actions – today and in recent weeks – have been designed to delay, to distract, and ultimately to defeat the effort to secure accountability for chemical weapons attacks in Syria.”

FALSE!

Haley: “Russia never invited Council members to provide input on its own draft resolution…”

FALSE!

Haley: “Russia declined to propose any textual edits to the US draft. We even incorporated elements of the Russian draft into our own in the hope that they would engage with us.”

FALSE!

Haley: “Indeed, from the very beginning, Russia has not negotiated with any of us. Russia has just dictated and demanded. That’s not how the Security Council is supposed to work. That’s not how the Security Council can work.”

FALSE along with shamefully accusing Russia of “obstructionism.”

Haley’s entire rant was a disgraceful perversion of truth, an exercise of deception.

Britain and France go along with whatever Washington proposes or opposes, voting the same way.

So do most other Security Council members under duress. Defying Washington means facing its wrath, including destabilizing their countries or more sinister tactics.

America wants all independent leaders replaced by pro-Western puppets, serving its interests.

Its imperial wars, color revolutions and political assassinations have a common objective – why Washington and its rogue allies are humanity’s greatest threat.

stephenlendman.org

When Nikki Haley, now the United States ambassador to the United Nations, was questioned by senators at her confirmation hearing in January about how she would deal with Donald Trump’s dismissive view of internationalism, she said confidently, “I will show him that the UN matters.”

She also said that she would show the world that “when we say something, we’re going to follow through and do that.” And UN reform? She dipped into folksiness, saying, “I love to fix things, and I see a UN that can absolutely be fixed.” She vowed, however, to stay true to her principles, occasionally tempering or breaking with pronouncements by Trump, whom she had freely criticized during the 2016 presidential campaign.

On September 19, Donald Trump is due to make his first speech to the UN General Assembly as president of the United States. It appears that he and Haley are now a seamless team of modern-day America-firsters, haranguing allies and enemies alike. At the UN, this kind of American policy is neither popular nor always productive. Haley’s actions and attitudes in the UN begin to seem more and more like efforts to undermine the organization and its credibility rather than reform it.

A little-noticed factor in the Trump-Haley relationship may be her ability at the UN to conduct diplomatic negotiations, which may be turn out to be her greatest strength in the job. The Security Council discussions over the last week on increasing sanctions on North Korea, after a powerful nuclear-weapons test and continuing missile launches, demonstrated how well she, as a former state governor, understands “the art of the deal,” with all the give and take involved. The United States came into the debate with a much stronger proposed resolution than the one that was ultimately adopted on September 11, after China succeeded in getting it watered down because of its own concerns about the potential reactions of Kim Jong-un. But that made it possible for both China and Russia to join the consensus, and Haley got a unanimous 15-0 “yes” vote against North Korea, an outcome that sent a message of unity to Kim.

The ambassador of France, François Delattre, while saying he supported the United States in its determination to add punishment to existing sanctions on the North Korean leader, also remarked, when questioned by a reporter about the role of China (and to some extent Russia) in the final outcome: “By definition this is a compromise, in order to get everybody on board.”

Stephen Schlesinger, a leading historian and analyst of the UN from its creation, differentiates Haley’s approach to negotiating from her underlying attitudes toward the UN.

“My understanding is that she is considered to be personally a pleasant, friendly sort of person with a politician’s keen ability at diplomatic socializing to achieve her goals,” Schlesinger wrote in an e-mail. “But on substantive issues, she is a Trumpster, one who cloaks herself in diplomatic disguise…[as] one who seemingly provides a coherent foreign policy vision. But all of this disguises her deeply conservative, even reactionary views on US policy abroad. Whether she actually believes in Trump’s policies may be another matter. She seems to be hinting at times that she may be endorsing Trump’s UN budget cuts with some reluctance and thus she may be a more moderate person. But that may also be part of her shrewd political positioning.”

By late June, five months after her Senate confirmation testimony, Haley appeared again before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for two days of much sharper questioning, and it was clear then that she had fallen in line with the Trump White House. “I don’t go rogue on the president,” she told senators. She spoke as an unquestioning defender of what Democrats in particular were calling an “incoherent” American foreign policy run on tweets, outbursts, and flip-flops.

Haley’s work at the UN increasingly looks like her strategy for moving into higher political office or other government roles—as secretary of state, perhaps, if Rex Tillerson’s apparent growing dissent with the White House leads to his resignation or dismissal. The UN is becoming her platform. Like Trump, she is playing to the conservative base, where fans of the UN are few and far between.

At the UN, Haley threw herself into budget slashing, mostly to save money that could be diverted into US defense spending, as she freely admitted in her Senate testimony. The same motivation applied to her support of the Trump budget proposals that called for an end to US funding for UN agencies that had long enjoyed American support, among them UNICEF and the World Food Program, a move that provoked disbelief and outrage among senators of both parties during questioning in June.

Haley had no problem with the total cut-off of financial support for the UN Population Fund, UNFPA, which was one of Trump’s first executive orders. She joined Republican conservatives in declaring herself “pro-life” and bought into the fiction that the Population Fund, the world’s largest provider of family-planning and maternal-health care, was actively supporting abortion in China.

She told senators that Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change “was in the best interest of business and the best interest of our country.” Trained as an accountant, she appeared to judge UN programs by two yardsticks: cost-effectiveness and relevance to American national security.

In recent months, Haley as taken several quick trips to visit UN outposts to question the value of important areas of the UN’s work.

In June, she made a bizarre cameo appearance of about three minutes at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva just to announce that it was a flawed body that had to change. Later that day, she laid out before a bemused audience of international-affairs experts at the Graduate Institute of Geneva a list of demands that she said the council had to meet or the United States would “go outside” to promote human rights. The threat of a US withdrawal hangs over the council, with no further action or hint of a decision coming from Washington.

The demands she made in Geneva are largely impossible to meet, at least in the near term. Haley called for a complete revamping of the elections process for members of the council and the deletion of a provision that allows for singling out Israel for criticism.

Haley has taken credit, a good part of it deserved, for engineering a $500 million cut in the peacekeeping budget. In her congressional appearances, however, she was challenged by senators about how this could be justified at a time when the UN was fielding a record number of peacekeeping missions in a tumultuous world.

After her Geneva visit, Haley moved on to Israel to talk with Israeli and Palestinian leaders about the UN’s work in the region. A stalwart supporter of Israeli policies, Haley had questioned the value of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked her to disband after the UN agency found a Hamas tunnel running under two of its schools in Gaza. The United States has been a leading supporter of the agency, created by the UN General Assembly in 1949 to assist Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Turning to Lebanon, where she did not go on her Middle Eastern trip, Haley worked in the UN Security Council to strengthen the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), where she charged that the militant organization Hezbollah, backed by Iran, has been amassing weapons and fighters on the border near Israel. UNIFIL was tasked with keeping weapons not under Lebanese government control out of that sensitive region.

“It is a difficult task, but for too long, the peacekeeping force has been utterly failing to achieve this fundamental part of its mandate,” Haley said in a statement on September 5, after the council extended the force mandate. In its official statement UNIFIL, made no mention of upgrading or strengthening its 10,500-member force drawn from 41 countries.

Hezbollah is seen by Washington and others as an arm of Iranian policy and an agent of interference and destabilization across the Middle East. For the Trump administration, influenced by both Israel and Saudi Arabia, two countries visited by the president on his first trip to the region since he took office, Iran has become a major issue. It is also in the spotlight because of Trump’s threat to deny certification in October of Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement it signed in 2015 with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The Trump administration leaves open the possibility of withdrawing from the deal.

Speaking at the conservative American Enterprise Institute on September 5, Haley backed Trump’s right to declare Iran as not in compliance with the agreement the president has called “the worst deal ever negotiated,” ignoring the advice of nonpartisan experts and every other nuclear power on the Security Council. Responding to a question after her speech, she said that trying to fix the deal was “like putting lipstick on a pig.”

On a quick visit to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on August 23, Haley pressed Director General Yukiya Amano and the agency’s inspectors to be tougher on the Iranians and force access to missile sites and military installations. Haley said American allies were just as concerned as the United States, though all the countries that signed the Iran nuclear deal have said they will stick to it even if Washington pulls out. She came back to New York critical of how the IAEA seemed to be doing its job. She was not worried about breaking with other countries that are party to the deal.

“So our allies very much know that we should be concerned,” she said. “No, they don’t want us to get out of the deal, but this is the thing: Are we going to take care of our allies in making sure they are comfortable or are we going to look out for our US security interests?”

Pressed by questioners at the American Enterprise Institute to explain how abrogating the landmark Iran agreement could play in the minds of the North Koreans, who might question whether making a deal with Americans meant anything, Haley resorted to what has become her leitmotif these days, saying she saw nothing wrong with putting America first. She frequently tells Security Council members that if they fail to meet American expectations on UN resolutions, the United States will “go it alone.”

“We should always let every country know,” she said at AEI, “whether it’s North Korea or Iran or anyone else, that we will always look out for our interests, our security, and make sure that it’s working for us—not making sure that it works for anyone else.”

That was not what the United States saw as a founding principle of the United Nations in 1945.

thenation.com

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program, is for Donald Trump one more of the Obama administration’s achievements to be trashed.  It goes alongside the Affordable Care Act, the Paris climate change agreement, and other measures (most recently the “dreamers” program involving children of illegal immigrants) as targets for trashing because fulfilling campaign rhetoric is given higher priority in the current administration than whether a program is achieving its purpose, whether there are any realistic alternatives available, or what the effects of the trashing will be on the well-being of Americans and the interests and credibility of the United States.

Nikki Haley, whose foreign policy experience has consisted of these past few months as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, has assumed the role of chief public trasher of the JCPOA for the administration.  Evidently no demands on the time of the U.S. ambassador in New York, from the issue of North Korea (which has real, not imagined, nuclear weapons) to the war in Syria were too important to keep her from giving a speech at the American Enterprise Institute that represented the administration’s most concerted and contrived public effort so far to lay groundwork for withdrawing from the JCPOA.  Haley has warmed to this cause both because of her own previous parochial interests, including those associated with financial contributions she has received, and because it is a convenient vehicle for playing to Trump’s urges.  Haley evidently feels no obligation to perform as one of the “adults” in the administration to whom the country looks to contain those urges.

Once familiar Trumpian tactic is blatant lying.  Haley lied when she said that the JCPOA “gave Iran what it wanted up-front, in exchange for temporary promises to deliver what we want.”  The truth is that Iran had to fulfill most of its obligations first—including disposing of excess enriched uranium, disassembling enrichment cascades, gutting its heavy water reactor, and much else—before the agreement was fully implemented and Iran got even a whiff of additional sanctions relief.  There is no correspondence between reality and Haley’s assertion that the agreement was a great deal for Iran but “what we get from the deal is much less clear.”  What we get is a cementing closed (even literally, in the case of the disabling of a reactor that otherwise could have produced plutonium) of all possible pathways to an Iranian nuclear weapon.  This isn’t just a promise; this is major, material, already implemented change.

A rhetorical challenge that Trump, Haley, and the drafters of her speech have faced is how to justify reneging on an agreement that, as the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have confirmed, Iran is observing.  One of the techniques used in the speech was to sow confusion about exactly what Iranian compliance entails.  Haley tried to make the subject sound like it is more complicated than looking at the terms of the detailed and laboriously drafted JCPOA and having IAEA inspectors, through continuous and highly intrusive monitoring, determine whether Iran is complying with the terms.  This subject is more of a “jigsaw puzzle,” said Haley.  “Iranian compliance involves three different pillars,” which are the JCPOA, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 (which was the international community’s formal endorsement of the JCPOA) and the Corker-Cardin legislation that governs the relationship of Congress to the president on Iran policy.

Haley tried to blur together the subject of missiles with nuclear activities by saying that “missile technology cannot be separated from pursuit of a nuclear weapon.”  Yes it can, and it has, not just by Iran but by other nations.  Haley’s assertion disregards how, given Iran’s experience in the war launched against it by Iraq, and its situation in facing neighbors today with superior air forces, it is unrealistic that Iran ever would accept curbs on its development and possession of missiles without similar restrictions on others in the region.

Most importantly, Haley’s assertion disregards how, in the absence of nuclear weapons, Iran’s missile activity would barely merit an asterisk on any list of U.S. national security concerns.  She apparently missed the irony, or the actual lesson that should be drawn, when she followed her comment about missiles and nuclear matters by saying, “North Korea is showing the world that right now.”  If a JCPOA-type agreement for North Korea were in force right now, precluding the development or possession of any North Korean nuclear weapon, Pyongyang’s missile tests would receive a small fraction of the market-shaking attention they receive.

Another technique in the speech was innuendo, in generating suspicion that there are Iranian violations that somehow, despite the intrusive inspections, we don’t know about.  One version of the innuendo was the notion that supporters of the JCPOA are so anxious to preserve the agreement that “the international community has powerful incentives to go out of its way to assert that the Iranian regime is in ‘compliance’ on the nuclear side.”  But Haley—who presumably has access to all the classified information on the subject—gave no evidence of any violations, or even any hint of what such an Iranian violation would look like.

Further innuendo about unseen violations involved a topic Haley has talked up on earlier occasions, which is inspection of sites not declared as nuclear sites.  She quoted an ill-considered Iranian remark about not giving foreigners the run of Iranian military installations, and strove to create the impression that Iran is denying access to suspect facilities.  It is not.  She said nothing about the carefully-defined procedure that the JCPOA lays out for inspection of non-declared sites.  If the IAEA is given reason to suspect prohibited activity at any such site, it can request a visit.  If the IAEA and Iran cannot agree on such a visit, the matter is ultimately decided in the Joint Commission—where Iran can be outvoted, and the inspection authorized.  There has been no Iranian denial of access, and again Haley provided no reason for suspecting any violations.

The speech offered the usual litany of bad things Iran has done through the years, as part of the usual effort by opponents of the agreement to make people feel as hostile to Iran as possible.  Never mind that, also as usual, Haley provided no context for any of this bill of particulars or any of the reasons Iran has done what it has done. The most pertinent lesson that should be drawn from this, and that Haley failed to draw, is that the more concern one has about Iranian activity in the Middle East, the more important it is to keep closed all of its possible avenues to an Iranian nuclear weapon.  That’s exactly what the JCPOA does.

Haley talked about past Iranian deception and concealment on nuclear matters.  Again, she failed to draw the obvious and important conclusion: that this is all the more reason to have the unprecedently intrusive inspection arrangement that the JCPOA created.  In fact, it is the inspection arrangement, and the assurance it provides, that is probably the most important feature of the agreement, more so even than the specific limits placed on elements of the Iranian program.

The speech used other hoary techniques to confuse and deceive—the use of straw men, for example, to make it seem that supporters of the agreement had misled people.  “We were promised an ‘end’ to the Iranian nuclear program,” Haley said, but all we got was “a pause.”  She never identified who supposedly made such “promises,” and never provided any evidence of them having been made.  It always was quite clear from the beginning of the negotiations that produced the JCPOA that zero enrichment of uranium was not a feasible goal and that the agreement would be a limitation on a peaceful nuclear program and not the elimination of it.

Haley’s speech strongly suggests that at the next due date for certification in October, the administration will, even if it still has no evidence of Iranian violations, withhold certification by taking advantage of a vague clause in the Corker-Cardin legislation that refers to whether continued sanctions relief is appropriate, proportionate, and in U.S. national security interests.  The administration will assert, as Haley did in the speech, that this will “not mean the United States is withdrawing from the JCPOA.”  The speech also had a bizarre passage that tries to blame the terms of the agreement itself for death of the agreement, the idea being that re-imposition of sanctions is the only way of penalizing Iranian non-compliance. But if the Republican-controlled Congress re-imposes nuclear-related sanctions, which noncertification would be an invitation for Congress to do, make no mistake: it would be the United States that will have reneged on its commitments and violated the agreement.  If the JCPOA dies, it will be the Trump administration that killed it.

Haley claimed to welcome debate about whether the JCPOA is in U.S. national security interests.  She asserted that “the previous administration set up the deal in a way that denied us that honest and serious debate.”  No it didn’t: there was plenty of debate, including during the enactment of the very legislation to which she referred.  If her speech at AEI is an indication, she is not really interested in the part about honesty and sincerity.

Despite all the obfuscation and innuendo and distortions in Haley’s speech, the most important facts about the JCPOA are clear. The agreement is working.  Iran is complying with it.  The agreement prevents any Iranian nuclear weapon—which, before the JCPOA, those who are declaiming most loudly against the agreement today were saying was their biggest concern.  As for all those other things that Iran does and that people don’t like, killing the JCPOA will do nothing to attenuate or prevent them.  Killing the agreement will only empower elements in Iran that most favor the sorts of behavior we don’t like.

And reneging on the agreement will deal another blow to U.S. credibility, which Trump already has badly battered. 

nationalinterest.org

The White House supported Haley’s statement on the need for Crimea to be returned to Ukraine, and the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, stated during a briefing that: «With respect to the sanctions, I think Ambassador Haley made it very clear of our concern with Russia’s occupation of Crimea. I think she spoke very forcefully and clearly on that».

It is interesting that Mrs Haley was speaking about the territory of Crimea rather than the people. I wonder how this American imagines the «return» of the Crimean Peninsula to Ukraine – with the people or without them? It’s a pity that this question has remained unanswered.

Do the Crimean people regard themselves as Ukrainian? And does Nikki Haley know the answer to this most important question? It is unlikely that the US ambassador to the UN wants to move the people out of Crimea so that she can give the peninsula back to Ukraine. Especially as she would have to move not only the living, but also the dead, since the ‘Ukrainian’ history of Crimea is very short, around a quarter of a century. It is surprising that the citizen of a country whose constitution begins with the words «We the people of the United States…» is doing everything to avoid a conversation at the level of «We the people of Crimea…» But everything really does look different from that position.

From the point of view of the people who live on the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine annexed Crimea in 1991, grossly violating the rules of international law. Crimea became part of independent Ukraine illegally, and repeated attempts by the Crimean people to redress this injustice met with opposition from Kiev.

In order to see this, Nikki Haley just needs to be made aware of a few facts.

In 1990, the Parliament of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, which hid behind the words «Expressing the will of the people of Ukraine…» and spoke of a new state being established within the existing boundaries of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic based on the Ukrainian nation’s right to self-determination. But did the Ukrainian nation have the right to self-determination in Crimea if the number of Ukrainians on the peninsula made up only 25.8 percent of the population?

The answer is obvious – no, it did not. This was the first step in the annexation of Crimea by the Ukrainian state, which, at that point, was the Ukrainian SSR separate from the Soviet Union.

On 20 January 1991, the first Crimean referendum was held on the restoration of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as a subject of the USSR and as a party to the Union Treaty. (Between 1921 and 1945, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was part of the RSFSR.) With a high turnout of 81.37 percent, 93.26 percent of the Crimean population voted in favour of restoring autonomy. On 12 February 1991, the restoration of the Crimean ASSR was confirmed by law: the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR accepted the results of the referendum. The Crimean people were clearly self-determining, and this self-determination differed hugely from the self-determination of the Ukrainian nation.

So what did the Ukrainian state do next? On 24 August 1991, the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR, again on the basis of self-determination, declared the independence of Ukraine, arbitrarily identifying the Crimean ASSR as a territory of the newly established state. By doing so, the founders of Ukraine ignored a law requiring a separate referendum to be held in Crimea on the Crimean ASSR’s status within Ukraine. This was done deliberately, since Kiev knew perfectly well that the people of Crimea would never vote in favour of becoming part of Ukraine. At the same time, a huge scam to manipulate history was being prepared: on 1 December 1991, a referendum was held illegally in the Crimean ASSR that did not deal with the issue of Crimea’s status, but retroactively confirmed the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence in the autonomous republic. Moreover, anyone who had ever stepped foot on the peninsula was allowed to vote. This was to make it seem as if the Crimean people supported Ukrainian independence when, for the most part, they actually boycotted the referendum. In this underhand way, Ukraine took its second step towards the annexation of Crimea.

The Crimean ASSR did not agree with the Ukrainian con artists, however. From the start of 1992, the number of protests began to increase – the Crimean people were outraged at the deception and demanded secession from Ukraine. Under pressure from the people, the Supreme Soviet of Crimea adopted the Act of State Independence of the Republic of Crimea, approved its own constitution, and passed a resolution to hold a referendum on 2 August 1992. It was another step towards the self-determination that those Crimeans who felt no connection to the Ukrainian nation were perfectly lawfully and legitimately pushing for. The Constitution of Crimea began with the words: «We the people, who make up the multi-ethnic nation of Crimea and are united by centuries-old ties of a common historical fate, are free and equal in dignity and rights…»

By this time, however, Kiev had already gotten a taste for it. No one was willing to let go of the idea of Ukraine annexing Crimea. The referendum was postponed to a later date (it was held in 1994 in the form of a public opinion poll) and the Constitution of Crimea, under pressure from Kiev, was rewritten dozens of times until the peninsula was tied to Ukraine for good. The first presidential elections took place in Crimea in 1994, but by 1995, both the position of president and the Constitution of Crimea had been abolished. In late 1998, the Ukrainian authorities brought the legislation of the Autonomous Republic of Ukraine completely in line with the legislation of Ukraine. This was the penultimate step in the annexation of Crimea, the final step being to deprive Crimea of its autonomous status by establishing the Crimean Oblast as part of Ukraine.

Over the next decade, Kiev did not dare do this, since any attempt to raise the issue of abolishing Crimean autonomy led to large-scale protests and demands to restore the 1992 Constitution and the statehood of the Republic of Crimea. Creeping Ukrainization was also unsuccessful – moulding Crimea to be more like Ukraine did not work even in light of the 2001 census, which showed that the Russian population on the peninsula had fallen by 512,000. The disappearance of Russian Crimeans cannot be explained by a natural decline in the population, by migration processes or by a shift in identification. The figures indicate something else: Ukraine had simply expunged half a million Russians from the annexed territory in order to build a ‘Ukrainian Crimea’. In 2012, the Svoboda Party, made up of radical Ukrainian nationalists, included the abolition of Crimean autonomy as part of its party policy.

The February (2014) uprising in Kiev was not supported by Crimea, but attempts by Crimeans to oppose it led to tragedy: on the night of 20 and 21 February, buses taking protesting Crimeans home from a chaotic Kiev were stopped by armed nationalists in the small city of Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi. The Crimeans were beaten, tortured, forced to sing the Ukrainian national anthem under threat of death, and made to pick up broken glass from the buses’ windows, which had been smashed with sticks, with their bare hands.

In a referendum on 16 March 2014, the Crimean people once again confirmed their historical choice, just as the United States once did when they broke away from the British Crown. In the US Declaration of Independence, it says that the Creator endowed people with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Just like Americans, Crimeans also want to live, be free and be happy. That is precisely why they spent decades trying to break away from the Ukrainian trident, something they finally managed in 2014 when they returned to Russia.

It seems that Nikki Haley, like millions of her fellow Americans, does not know the history of the Crimean people’s struggle against its illegal annexation by Ukraine, which began in 1990 and ended in 2014. Questioning the choice of the Crimean people in 2014 seems to be the reason why the US permanent representative to the UN Security Council is keeping quiet about the Ukrainian annexation of Crimea in the 1990s. After all, no one in the world could doubt the results of the Crimean referendum held on 20 January 1991. If it is a case of the deliberate distortion of facts, however, then the situation looks a lot worse.

Only an ignorant or a dishonest person could deny the fact that there has never been and never could be any kind of «self-determination of the Ukrainian nation» in Crimea, owing to the fact that Ukrainians living on the peninsula are very much in the minority.

If you were to side with the Crimean people, then the history of Crimea’s reunification with Russia becomes simple and understandable. It is enough to know that for each territory, whether that is the US or Crimea, exactly the same words are key: «We the people…» Because don’t you think that when she says the word «Crimea», Nikki Haley is only talking about the territory without the people?