Putin’s Spies and Their Discord

A “bleep” drowns out every four-letter word on American TV. However, in the Scorsese film, “Wolf of Wall Street,” Leonardo Di Caprio & Co. utter the word “fuck” 522 times — which highlights a certain schizophrenia in American society.

In “Foggy Bottom,” the U.S. State Department, as well as the Pentagon or the White House, is not much tamer than the testosterone-driven business on New York’s Wall Street. The down-to-earth diplomat Richard Holbrooke was equally legendary for his rude curses, like Obama’s former consultant Rahm Emanuel, or security consultant Susan Rice. Victoria Nuland thus falls into a tradition of warhorses.

Her “fuck” gaffe, revealed by WikiLeaks cables from the State Department, shows that behind closed doors, diplomacy is sometimes indelicate. And it says something about the contempt for the EU in the U.S. capital, where the quiet player badmouthed the “sissies” in Brussels. However, it’s surprising that Nuland brings the U.N. as a mediator in Kiev into play; its image in Washington is even more tarnished than that of the EU.

However, the Ukraine conflict between the old rivals — the United States and Russia — is more politically significant than questions of style or good tone. The fact that agents in Moscow also know the art of espionage has been completely forgotten in the NSA affair. Edward Snowden, as an asylum seeker of Putin’s mercy, shouldn’t forget that. All the more, Putin’s spies play a transparent game: They want drive a wedge between the U.S. and EU. A Cold War déjà-vu.