New Delhi: More than half of all US ambassador positions around the world are vacant, including postings in countries such as Germany and Saudi Arabia.
According to the American Foreign Service Association, as of 26 June, 107 out of 195 ambassador positions are vacant. Many of these were in key countries such as Ukraine, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he has openly criticised what he calls the “foreign policy establishment,” saying it has made poor decisions. The future for career diplomats has become more uncertain.
Breaking away from a practice followed for the past 60 years, Trump has mostly chosen political appointees instead of experienced career diplomats to lead US embassies. Out of 101 ambassador nominations during his second term, only nine were career diplomats.
The State Department has also faced major budget and staff cuts. Since Trump returned to office, the department has lost more than 3,000 employees, reducing its workforce by over 20 per cent.
“We are looking at the most damaging crisis in the 102-year history of the foreign service,” diplomat Nick Burns told The Financial Times. He served for 31 years in the US foreign service, most recently as ambassador to China until Trump resumed office last year.
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Weakening US diplomacy
State Department veterans are now worried. According to them, the Trump administration is weakening US diplomacy by cutting jobs, reducing expertise, and relying less on experienced diplomats.
Bill Burns, who served in the US foreign service for 32 years and later led the CIA under President Joe Biden, said, “Things are quite bad.”
Burns told FT that the damage that Trump is causing is even greater than the fallout of the McCarthy era in the 1950s, when many China experts left the government.
“That was on one relatively specific set of issues and it cost the United States in significant ways for the next 15 years or so until the Nixon-Kissinger breakthrough with China,” he said. “But this cuts across the board. It’s not just about one region or one set of expertise.”
Burns also added that experienced diplomats are essential for difficult negotiations with Iran, Ukraine and Russia, which the US is now lacking.
Yael Lempert, a 27-year veteran of the department, who was fired as ambassador to Jordan on the first day of Trump’s second term, also emphasised the need for experienced diplomats in the system.
“We were outplayed,” she said to FT. “The Iranians are experienced negotiators and they brought teams of experts with them who knew these issues inside and out. The US did not, and so unilaterally put our side at a disadvantage.”
However, some diplomats said the department needed reforms because of outdated systems and overlapping responsibilities. But they acknowledged that it is happening too fast without any analysis.
“There is something to the argument that the state was long overdue consolidation and modernisation,” said Jacob Shapiro, the John Foster Dulles Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University to FT. “ But it feels like it was done very quickly, without a lot of analysis of the consequences for US diplomacy.”
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)