Tag Archives: political appointees

Fixing Diplomacy

William J. Burns is one of the most respected retired American diplomats. As a career diplomat, he served in many diplomatic posts, including Moscow. He capped his service by serving as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush.

In an interview with World Politics Review (June 10, 2020), he acknowledged the damage done to American diplomacy under President Donald Trump but said diplomacy had been adrift “for decades before that.”

Ambassadorial and department administrative posts given to political supporters has grown for several decades, but has increased under Trump.

As the investigation in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine has shown, inexperienced political appointees can cause serious damage to America’s reputation for leadership.

Unfortunately, Burns said, “It’s going to take a lot longer to fix the institutions of American diplomacy than it’s taken to break them.”

What’s been wrong with Trump’s diplomacy is not so much the direction it has taken with, say China. A push back against that country for certain predatory trade practices was justified, Burns said.

Instead of working with allies in that pursuit and in others, however, Trump attempted to go it alone. The president appears disdainful of such alliances and of the diplomatic efforts it takes to maintain those alliances.

Especially because the U.S. is no longer the only dominant player on the world scene, shoring up alliances is more important than ever.

Also, Burns said, the U.S. needs to look at the global problems, like climate change, that don’t relate to a specific country.

Summing up, Burns said, “The essence of employing enlightened self-interest is to see that our interests are going to be best served if we’re disciplined about our engagement overseas; that we can’t retrench entirely, but nor can we restore the role that we held uniquely in that first quarter-century after the end of the Cold War; that we’re going to need, in our own self-interest, to work with allies and partners, and reshape institutions. And that we still, at least as I look at it in the next couple of decades, have a better hand to play than any of our major rivals.”

Embassies Without Ambassadors: Who’s In Charge?

About a third of U.S. ambassadors are political appointees under any given president, Democratic or Republican. Massive campaign contributions often count in such appointments.

These appointments are normally to European countries or perhaps to Caribbean island nations. Political ambassadors are rarely appointed to what are known as danger or hardship posts, like Pakistan or Sierra Leone. Those are for the career diplomats.

Unlike most developed nations, we think nothing of sending a diplomatic neophyte to serve in the capitals of our important allies.

Nevertheless, even political appointments have been slow for our current presidential administration. Take Switzerland. The country has been without a U.S. ambassador for seven months, since the ambassador, a political ambassador, resigned, as is customary for political appointees when a new president takes office.

Who’s directing the embassy in Switzerland? As in all of these ambassador-less posts, the second in command oversees operations, almost always a career diplomat, a U.S. Foreign Service professional. In this case, Tara Feret Erath, serves as temporary overseer.

Ms. Erath has served at U.S. posts in Afghanistan, Belgium, Brazil, France, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She speaks German, French, and Portuguese.

One wonders why they don’t just appoint Ms. Erath to be the ambassador.

Hiring Bank Presidents to Perform Appendectomies

When we need surgery, we don’t ask a bank president to perform the operation. To lead soldiers into battle, we don’t assign data engineers.

Yet, in assigning leaders for our foreign policy teams in U.S. embassies, we sometimes appoint those with no experience in foreign affairs. Instead, the criteria used for ambassadors to some of our embassies, is how much the candidate has contributed to the election of the president.

Both political parties have used the appointment of ambassadors to reward political donors and party apparatchiks. Around thirty percent of our ambassadors have been political appointees. Some talented and conscientious appointees use their career staff and function well. Others are more interested in refurbishing the ambassador’s residence than in meaningful work.

American men and women enter the U.S. Foreign Service, our diplomatic corps, after rigorous exams and vetting. Once appointed, they study foreign languages, statecraft, relevant computer applications, leadership training, and the regions where they will be assigned. They advance through the diplomatic ranks according to an up or out system like the military, gaining experience in the foreign countries where they begin at the lowest levels.

Yet when ambassadors are assigned to our largest embassies, career Foreign Service officers often are ignored for the positions.

My first assignment as a new Foreign Service officer was to Saudi Arabia, shortly before the first Gulf War began in 1991. As the war progressed to victory for the American led alliance against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, we worked under a competent team. Charles Freeman was the U.S. career ambassador working with the Saudi government, as General “Stormin” Norman Schwarzkopf directed the military operation.

Since then, although U.S. military leadership in the Middle East is still entrusted to career soldiers, all ambassadorial appointments to Saudi Arabia have been political appointees. Perhaps that’s one reason we so often seem to win the war but lose the peace.