March 4, 2025 (EIRNS)—Michael McFaul’s March 3 call for Americans to block President Donald Trump’s intention to establish normal relations with Russia is just the tip of a bigger scramble by the ancien régime to head off peace. McFaul, the British-trained regime-change expert sent by President Obama as U.S. Ambassador to Russia (2012-2014), today co-chairs with the head of Volodymyr Zelenskyy presidential office Andriy Yermak, the team which has prepared the sanctions against Russia since 2022.
McFaul’s first response to the Friday, Feb. 28 White House showdown with Zelenskyy was to call for Vice President J.D. Vance to be removed from any role in Russia/Ukraine discussions, so that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would take charge; Rubio, he was sure, would stick to the narrative. With the announcement on Monday, March 3 that U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been suspended, McFaul retracted that plan. “I sued to think that Rubio and Walz [sic] were just getting their sea legs and managing a difficult boss. After today’s decision to cut aid to Ukraine, I can longer be that generous. They are enabling a strategic shift to embrace Putin and throw the Ukrainians under the boss” (errors and misspellings in the original).
So he published a call in U.S. News and World Report for Americans to “stop Trump’s reckless foreign policy,” citing previous times in “which American citizens, their organizations and representatives in Congress constrained or reversed ill-conceived foreign policies of the White House,” ranging from protesters against the Vietnam War to Congressional overrides of Presidential vetoes.
At the same time, operations to split up Trump’s team are popping up. One example: ABC News’ local TV Channel 10 in Miami played up how Rubio is “facing a backlash” in his hometown in a section of its March 3 evening news program, for sitting by silently while President Trump sided with a “dictator” against ally Ukraine, “an about-face on his own views.” Trotted out as the local attacking him was… the ridiculous John Bolton!
