Senate logjam of diplomatic and military appointments harms US
With a major crisis unfolding in the Middle East, President Biden — and the American people — deserve a fully staffed team of national security officials on the job. But too many sensitive positions remain vacant because of the slow pace of Senate confirmations and archaic rules that let a single senator hold up nominees. The Senate’s rules are a recipe for gridlock in normal times; at a moment of extraordinary international turmoil, they undermine America’s international standing.
That’s not to say the Senate should be a rubber stamp on any old nominee the president sends over. Senators can, and should, vote down nominees if a majority concludes they aren’t suitable for office. But to not even hold an up-or-down vote, or to hold the confirmation process hostage to policy disagreements with the administration that have nothing to do with individual nominees, is an abdication of the Senate’s constitutional responsibilities.
The longstanding problem came into focus after the Hamas attack on Israel over the weekend. As Israel switches to a wartime footing and gears up for a potential invasion of the Gaza Strip, the United States does not have a confirmed ambassador to Israel. It does not have a confirmed ambassador to two neighboring countries, Lebanon and Egypt, both of which are likely to figure in the crisis. It does not have an ambassador to Kuwait or Oman, two other nations in the region. The Senate has not confirmed the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator. And hundreds of nominations for uniformed and civilian military positions remain in limbo because Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama refuses to release a hold he placed on them to protest an unrelated policy about abortions for military service members.
Among nominations that have been held up are the heads of the US Fifth Fleet, the naval force in the Middle East, and for a number-two officer at Central Command, which has jurisdiction over US military operations in the area. The potential for a wider conflagration in the region is real and so is the possibility that American forces, whether in support of Israel or in actual defense of American troops or civilians, could be involved, making the failure to confirm leaders in those roles especially inexcusable.
In the past, Senators have often defended such institutional prerogatives, even if they might object to the way an individual colleague uses their power. But they’re increasingly finding practices like solo holds hard to defend. “I think this all argues for a pretty significant reform of the nominations process,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told Politico this week, referring to the pileup of nominees in the Senate.
American relations with countries like Israel and Egypt don’t grind to a halt when there’s no confirmed ambassador. And the Pentagon can still keep the lights on even with so many vacant positions. But vacancies do matter. In diplomacy, a confirmed ambassador speaks with the full authority of the United States in a way that an interim chargés d’affaires doesn’t. In the military, a reliance on acting civilian officials can have pernicious
Among nominations that have been held up are the heads of the US Fifth Fleet, the naval force in the Middle East, and for a numbertwo officer at Central Command, which has jurisdiction over US military operations in the area.
effects. As a recent article in Foreign Affairs put it: “Defense officials who lack the imprimatur of Senate confirmation find the legitimacy of their actions questioned by colleagues, lawmakers, and foreign counterparts. As temporary custodians of vacant offices, they may be reluctant to initiate the kinds of reform programs that would enhance US national security. And in the absence of firmly installed civilian leaders who can speak with authority on security policy, active generals may be pressured to wade more deeply into the realm of politics.”
Those should all be good enough reasons to remove obstacles to timely up-or-down votes on nominations in the Senate. But here’s one more: The current logjam is playing out against the backdrop of chaos and gridlock in the US government that has diminished American stature abroad. The most high-profile vacancy in Washington is in Congress itself: The House of Representatives deposed its speaker last week, an unprecedented event that put an entire branch of government at a standstill. “Can the world still rely on the United States of America?” read a strongly worded editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde, suggesting the speakership fiasco raises questions about whether the United States can still play an international leadership role. Likewise, the inability to perform so basic a task as naming ambassadors is bound to take a toll over time in other countries’ confidence in the United States.
A hearing for Jack Lew, Biden’s nominee to be US ambassador to Israel, has been scheduled for next week. If there were ever a time to put partisanship and languid senatorial traditions aside, it would be now. But even after the crisis in Israel subsides, the Senate needs to take a hard look at itself and figure out a better way to perform its constitutional duty to vet presidential nominations.