The Global POLITICO Podcast: CNAS CEO Victoria Nuland

CNAS CEO Victoria Nuland, a former top State Department official, sits down with Susan Glasser to discuss what it was like to spend months in the middle of the U.S. government’s frustrating attempts to understand the Russian attack on the U.S. electoral system -- and then try to figure out how to respond to it. 

Susan B. Glasser: Well, welcome back to The Global POLITICO. This is Susan Glasser, and once again, I’m delighted to have as our guest, my friend, the new boss lady of the Center for a New American Security, Victoria Nuland. We’re sitting right now in your new empire, and we were just debating whether the right term was to say she’s had an amazing, Zelig-like career in all the hot spots of American diplomacy and America’s position in the world, both in Washington and overseas, over the last few decades, or whether it’s better to say it’s a Forrest Gump-like career.

So, Toria, thank you so much for joining us this week on The Global POLITICO. I’m really delighted to have you as our guest.

Victoria Nuland: Well, thank you, Susan, for the opportunity to be with you. I love your podcast, so I’m pleased that I’m doing this with you in my first month at the Center for a New American Security.

Nuland: All the juicy ones I couldn’t tell at the time.

Glasser: Yes, exactly. All the ones you weren’t able to tell us. Russia is a theme that runs through your career. You studied Russian in college, and really, you saw the arc from the final confrontation of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this very optimistic time. And now, here we are, a generation later, and a sense that not all of our assumptions about what the end of the Cold War would look like have borne fruit. We’re back to talking about confrontation with Russia. You were—in your final role at the State Department, the assistant secretary for Europe, watching the unraveling in some ways of that relationship. Where are we now? Are we in a new Cold War?

Listen to the podcast or read the full transcript here.