Marie Yovanovitch: former ambassador warns of ‘amoral’ US foreign policy
The former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, has warned that the US had adopted an “amoral” foreign policy that “substitutes threats, fear and confusion for trust”.
In her first public remarks since leaving the US foreign service two weeks ago, Yovanovitch said that the Trump administration’s handling of foreign policy risked alienating allies and driving them into the arms of other partners they find more reliable.
The veteran former ambassador was ousted from her post in Kyiv by Donald Trump last May, at the time the president and his associates were putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to launch investigations of Trump’s political opponents. Yovanovitch gave evidence about the pressure campaign at congressional impeachment hearings before retiring from the foreign service altogether.
“We need to be principled, consistent and trustworthy,” she said while accepting an award for diplomacy at Georgetown University. “To be blunt, an amoral, keep-them-guessing foreign policy that substitutes threats, fear and confusion for trust cannot work over the long haul.”
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“At some point, the once unthinkable will become the inevitable – that our allies who have as much right to act in their own self interest as we do, will seek out more reliable partners partners whose interests might not align well with ours.”
Yovanovitch was given a standing ovation by an audience of students and diplomats. She warned that the state department was “in trouble” adding that its leadership lacked “policy vision” and “moral clarity”.
The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, did not defend her when she was smeared by the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuiliani, and did not appear to try to stop her removal from her post. When asked about her last month, Pompeo launched an obscenity-laced tirade against the journalist who raised the question.
Yovanovitch described her months at the centre of the impeachment uproar as a “through-the-looking-glass experience”, and said she was forced to “dig deep a little bit” and rely on family, friends, faith, and in the wake of her retirement, fun.