The big news in diplomacy recently is the leaking of a conversation between Victoria Nuland,the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and Geoff Pyatt, the Ambassador to the Ukraine, regarding the recent political upheavals in that former Soviet republic.

Diplomatic heads have been exploding over Neuland telling Pyatt, “F%$# the EU.

America’s new top diplomat for Europe seems to have been caught being decidedly undiplomatic about her EU allies in a phone call apparently intercepted and leaked by Russia.

“F%$# the EU,” Victoria Nuland apparently says in a recent phone call with the US ambassador to Kiev, Geoff Pyatt, as they discuss the next moves to try to resolve the crisis in Ukraine amid weeks of pro-democracy protests which have rocked the country. The call appears to have been intercepted and released on YouTube, accompanied by Russian captions of the private and candid conversation.

Although the US state department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, White House spokesman Jay Carney alleged that because it had been “tweeted out by the Russian government, it says something about Russia’s role”.

………

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Nuland “has been in contact with her EU counterparts and of course has apologized for these reported comments”.

She said that if the Russians were responsible for listening to, recording and posting a private diplomatic telephone conversation, it would be “a new low in Russian tradecraft.”

Well, first, I would argue that if a diplomat decides conduct a conversation over unsecured cell phones, they pretty much had it coming, and second, given the very recent history of the NSA targeting the sex lives of domestic political opponents of the Bush administration.

If intercepting an unencrypted call between two people discussing how to intervene in political instability on a nation state bordering your own is “a new low in Russian tradecraft,” then there are simply no words to describe what the NSA has been doing against domestic critics of our government.

Neither the EU’s outrage over the comments about the EU, which is a participant in the conflict, and therefore cannot be a good faith interlocutor on this issue, nor the US’s crocodile tears over being spied upon are justified.

They are simply exercises in self serving hypocrisy.