S8 Ep155: PREVIEW — Mary Kissel — Missing Diplomatic Memory and the Russian Challenge. Kissel argues that current U.S. diplomats possess insufficient institutional memory and negotiating experience to effectively engage a nuclear-armed peer competitor like the form

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 3 minutes

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Summary

PREVIEW — Mary Kissel — Missing Diplomatic Memory and the Russian Challenge. Kissel argues that current U.S.diplomats possess insufficient institutional memory and negotiating experience to effectively engage a nuclear-armed peer competitor like the former Soviet Union, now resurgent as Russia under Putin. Kissel emphasizes that the U.S. currently lacks a Senate-confirmed ambassador to Russia, critically limiting the American embassy's political influence and direct access to White House decision-making structures. Kissel documents that this ambassadorial vacancy reflects deeper institutional erosion of American diplomatic expertise and strategic communication capabilities regarding Russiannegotiations, creating dangerous capacity gaps precisely when Moscow possesses nuclear weapons and elevated geopolitical ambitions.
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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague Mary Kissel about the memory of dealing with the Soviet-slash-Russia Union once upon a time during the first Cold War.
0:13.4	And does it exist the memory of how you deal with a man such as Molotov, the Iron Pants, foreign minister who never cracked a smile,
0:24.0	never changed his face, blank face in negotiations, and always demanded everything consistent
0:32.5	with his first and maximalist demand.
0:35.3	That was dealing with the Soviet Union.
0:38.9	Do they remember that in the State Department? Do they remember that in Moscow? Mary gives a sophisticated answer of the levels
0:44.9	of politics and memory that are present right now in the Second Trump administration.
0:51.6	Here's Mary Kissel to describe the present state of affairs. Do we
0:56.0	remember the Soviet Union? More of this tonight? No, it isn't. It was a long time ago.
1:04.5	You know, 89 and 91, those seminal dates are now many decades past. Right. And even in Trump One, I brought in a gentleman who was a propaganda expert in the Soviet area,
1:16.6	worked at Reagan's National Security Council, and I brought him in to counsel us on, you know,
1:21.7	what were the most effective techniques that we could use vis-a-vis communist China that they
1:26.6	used against the communist Soviet Union.
1:29.5	The memory isn't there. In fact, many American diplomats have never really lived or remember a period
1:38.5	where the United States was truly threatened by what was considered a peer ally, namely the nuclear-armed Soviet Union,
1:46.6	which, by the way, is still the nuclear-armed Russia. And you don't have also political leadership
1:53.2	at the embassy in Moscow that has any poll with the president. There's no Senate-confirmed ambassador to Russia the last
2:03.0	time I checked, which means the deputy chief of mission, a foreign service officer, is in charge.
2:08.5	Now, foreign service officers are very capable people. They actually have usually studied
2:13.3	the regions that they are based in, but they won't have any sway at the White House.
2:18.9	I think they're there as sort of a placeholder
2:20.8	until a political appointee can get into the slot.
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