The Editor’s Page
The Trump administration’s assault on our nation’s professional diplomatic service continues. As of mid-July, of 195 ambassadorial positions in the State Department, 107 are currently vacant. The administration has still not nominated ambassadors to India, Indonesia, or Brazil—three of the five most populous countries in the world–to Germany, Russia, or Ukraine. Fifty-nine nominations have been sent to the Senate, of which all but three have been for political appointees. The post-WWII percentage split between career professionals and political appointees as ambassadors has averaged about 70/30. It is currently 5/95. If this continues, our country’s top representatives abroad will eventually include only ten professional diplomats.
On July 14, the administration fired 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service State Department employees. Those remaining will be expected to demonstrate fidelity to the president’s policies as a criterion for promotion, even if those promotions rarely lead to ambassadorships. It should go without saying, although I have nevertheless said it before, that it is the responsibility of diplomats to carry out the foreign policy of their country’s political leaders. If that were all that was meant by fidelity, one could hardly object to it. But it is not fidelity that this administration really wants. It is fealty. And that is dangerous. Diplomats are a country’s eyes and ears on the ground, but the eyes might as well be blind and the ears deaf if the country is represented by a raft of political appointees who are not politically, culturally, or linguistically competent to understand what is going on around them. This is all the worse if political leaders do not want to know what their remaining professional diplomats see and hear, or worse yet punish them for it. The real world exists out there. A country whose leaders make policies in ignorance of it will at best miss opportunities and at worst blunder into crises.
This month’s issue includes a distinguished ambassador’s analysis of what has been lost with the destruction of USAID and an experienced public affairs officer’s account of what it takes to do public diplomacy in an authoritarian society. We also say farewell in this issue to a long-time member of our Board, and one of the premier diplomats of his generation, Ambassador William C. Harrop.