The abrupt retirement of Victoria Nuland caught everyone by surprise as she was just recently in Kiev promising to blow up the world. Naturally, everyone assumes there must be a clever reason for her sudden departure. The statement put out by Anthony Blinken reads like the statements that come from ball teams when they fire a manager, which has led to speculation that she was sacked. Alternatively, some suspect she is just the first rat off the sinking ship that is project Ukraine.

As is always the case with regime-ology, the answer is going to be a guess from a set of possibilities, rather than a clear answer. In this case, Nuland is a senior member of the Kagan cult, by virtue of her marriage to Robert Kagan. The entire foreign policy establishment is controlled by neocons. Her now former boss, Anthony Blinken, is a neocon, and her replacement is also a neocon. Whatever the reason for her departure, it is not because the administration has turned on the neocons.

The place to start is with the reality of American foreign policy, which is not controlled by the political class but by three distinct parts of permanent Washington. The most important part is the foreign policy establishment, centered around the State Department, which is where the Kagan cult is based. They control the foreign service and the thicket of think tanks and quasi-academic outposts that recruit and develop those who will serve in the foreign policy establishment.

Nuland’s career is a great example. She started out working for Strobe Talbott in the Clinton administration then worked in the Bush administration. She got bumped up in the Obama admi8nistration where she ran Ukraine policy. She took a holiday during the Trump years, but came back when Biden was installed. Notice that the changing of administrations had no impact on her career. Note also that her replacement is also a protege of Strobe Talbott.

Next you have the military industrial complex which is based in the Pentagon and represents the interests of the military and the vast array of companies that make weapons for and supply services to the military. Their primary concern is to keep the flow of money coming from the taxpayers. If war is good for business, they are in favor of war, but if war is bad for business, they oppose war. Unlike the foreign policy establishment, the MIC is mostly free of ideologues.

Finally, you have the intelligence community. Like all bureaucracies, they have succumbed to Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy. Their primary concern is with maintaining the flow of money and avoiding political oversight. They are happy to help the Pentagon and the State Department in their endeavors, but always do so in a way that serves the narrow interests of the intel community. Like all intelligence services, this is the most cynical and calculating of the three.

Project Ukraine has always been a State Department operation. The Pentagon has gone along with it as it meant more money, but the events of the last two years have strained this relationship. The flow of weapons to Ukraine has drained the armories but has not resulted in new cash for suppliers. Similarly, the spooks have supported the project because a return of the Cold War is good for business. No one writes novels about James Bond spying on MAGA people.

Until now, the three legs of the blob that controls American foreign policy have been working together on Project Ukraine. They were happy to tell the political class what they needed to hear, at home and abroad, in order to get the political cheerleading they wanted for the project. Six months ago, the Pentagon told the pols that the great counter-offensive would smash the Russian lines. A year ago, the spooks said the Russian were in political disarray.

The events of the last six months have put the lie to all of it. The Russians have broken through Ukrainian lines and have the initiative everywhere along the front. Ukrainian losses have spiked higher as Russia gains control of the air space. We are now hearing Ukrainian leaders talking about evacuation of major cities this summer, expecting a major Russian offensive. Two years of grinding away at the Ukraine army is showing results and the tide is now turning strongly in favor of Russia.

The first sign of trouble was the stalled package of aid which House Republicans refuse to pass that would hand sixty billion to the Pentagon. This money would be laundered through Ukraine back to the Pentagon and then the arms dealers, but the MIC’s favorite political party has been stalling. The reason is the cupboards are bare, so the MIC is not going to get much from this scheme. The only reason the Republicans are stalling is they have the full support of the MIC on this.

Last week, the CIA planted a long piece in their favorite regime outlet, the New York Times, in which they made clear that they have gone well beyond what should have been expected with Project Ukraine. The article detailed all of the great work they have done inside Ukraine going back to 2014. Not long after, we get the leak of the German military plotting a strike on Russia. The source of that leak is probably based in Asia and could very well have ties to American intel.

That leaves the foreign policy establishment, which remains committed to the project for ethnic and ideological reasons. The trouble is they are now left holding the bag for a project that could turn into a massive political crisis. For two years the politicians were told this will be a huge win for the good guys. Instead, the bad guys are about to win, and it is putting the political future of the collective West in jeopardy. Losing the first global conflict of the 21st century will not go unnoticed.

That brings us back to Nuland. Given that she is part of the Kagan cult, which is a subculture within the greater neocon subculture, it seems unlikely that she was fired for performance, even though her departure is out of the blue. Further, she is a fanatic and fanatics see only that which supports their fanaticism. It is unlikely that she looks at what is happening and sees failure. At every failure in the project, she and the rest of the neocons have found reasons to plow ahead.

Instead, what this suggests is that things are much worse for Project Ukraine than anyone is letting on in public. Anticipating political panic in Washington this summer, the neocons have decided to stash the architect of the disaster in retirement, thus making it hard for the Republicans to subpoena her. This makes it tough for the Republicans to lay the blame at the feet of the White House. The new guy will be given some latitude because the Republicans are this dumb.

On the other hand, there may be some unknown unknown at play. In politics, people who suddenly retire do so for a cash grab or to avoid scandal. The fact that someone was able to put that recording of German officials in the hands of the Russians suggest there could be other material of a similar nature. It is not as if Nuland has ever been careful about talking about her schemes. It may be that she was caught on surveillance again, perhaps when she was in Kiev last month.

There is always the possibility that she looked around at the politics in Washington and decided that there was nothing more to gain. The neocon war against their historic enemy is a long-term project. It is a forever project and Ukraine was always just one chapter in the long story of their struggle. They could have decided that all the juice was squeezed from this lemon, and it was time to move on. She will return to the hive and begin plotting the next project for a future administration.

What all of this suggests is that behind-the-scenes things are far bleaker for Project Ukraine than has been revealed to the public. The game now is what we always see in managerialism and that is blame shifting. The CIA fired the first shot with that Times article and now the neocons are scurrying for cover. As always, the goal of this blame game will be to leave the politicians holding the bag. Perhaps Biden’s usefulness all along was to be the fall guy.

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