41 countries lack a U.S. ambassador
Barbara Stephenson
Help wanted: ambassadors. Management position requires great people skills and public speaking, dinners and cocktails with dignitaries. Occasional hazards include geopolitical crises. Apply at the White House.
The job posting could be hung outside 41 of 188 U.S. Embassies and international organizations that still lack an ambassador since President Trump took office.
The vacancies mean dozens of U.S. missions rely on the State Department’s career foreign service officers, who may be less influential than ambassadors, to represent American interests.
At this point in his presidency, Barack Obama had 21 vacancies, or 11%, on his ambassadorial roster. Trump’s vacancy rate is 22%.
Trump does not have a handpicked representative in South Korea, which faces nuclear-armed North Korea. He has no envoy in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally that helps stabilize the Middle East and counterbalances Iran’s influence.
There’s no U.S. ambassador in Turkey, where President Recip Tayyip Erdogan blames the United States for an attempted coup in 2016. Trump has no personal envoy to the European Union as the continent struggles with far-right nationalist movements and Russian aggression.
Ambassadors are needed in Germany, Europe’s largest economy; Cuba as it forges a new relationship with the United States, and Egypt, an ally in the fight against the Islamic State.
Leaving those posts vacant is like sending a sports team to the championship game without the coach and captain, said Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, a professional organization and labor union.
“With all the threats facing our country, this is not the time to pull the foreign service team from the field and risk forfeiting the game to our adversaries,” she said.
The White House nominated four people for ambassadorial posts in February. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told CBS in an interview this month that some nominations await Senate confirmation. “Our foreign policy objectives continue to be met,” he said.
The State Department promotes its diplomats from within, like in the military. It pulls its top ranks — ambassador and the second-in-command deputy chief of mission — from veterans with years of experience.
The number of foreign service officers dropped nearly 3% from 8,176 in March 2017 to 7,940 at the end of December, State Department records show. Senior staff declined nearly 16% from 968 to 816. Among its most senior staff — the six career foreign service officers who rank as ambassadors,
American Foreign Service Association
four have left the State Department during Trump’s presidency. A fifth foreign service officer, Undersecretary for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, announced he’ll retire in March.
Trump filled some plum assignments with campaign donors, business leaders and personal friends.
In Italy, he tapped Lewis Eisenberg, a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, whose previous job was chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
In France, Trump appointed Jamie McCourt, a Boston real estate developer who co-owned the Los Angeles Dodgers until 2011. McCourt donated more than $400,000 to the Trump Victory fund, according to the
“With all the threats facing our country, this is not the time to pull the foreign service team from the field and risk forfeiting the game to our adversaries.”