By Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON, Dec 24 (Reuters) – Democratic senators urged President Donald Trump on Wednesday to reverse a recall of nearly 30 career ambassadors, warning the move leaves a dangerous leadership vacuum that allows adversaries like Russia and China to expand their reach.
The Trump administration in recent days has ordered more than two dozen career diplomats serving across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America back to Washington to ensure U.S. missions abroad reflect its “America First” priorities.
Calling the abrupt mass recalls an “unprecedented move” that no other administration has done since Congress established the modern Foreign Service a century ago, 10 Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said there was no plan to replace them with qualified candidates.
The removals bring the number of empty U.S. ambassadorial posts to well over 100, about half of all such posts worldwide, the senators said in their letter addressed to Trump and seen by Reuters. The senators said 80 posts had been vacant before the decision.
State Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter. A senior department official on Monday described the mass recall as “a standard process in any administration.”
“As the over 100 U.S. embassies lacking senior leadership await a new U.S. ambassador, China, Russia and others will maintain regular communications with the foreign leaders that we will have effectively abandoned, allowing our adversaries to expand their reach and influence to limit, and even harm, U.S. interests,” Democrats said in their letter.
The senators, who included Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen, Chris Murphy and others, provided examples of how Washington would lack top-level U.S. presence in crucial locations as Beijing and Moscow make inroads.
In regions from the Indo-Pacific to Africa and the Balkans as well as Latin America, Washington would be on the back foot countering China’s expanding economic reach, the senators said.
“These ambassadors have demonstrated their commitment to faithfully execute the policies of administrations of both parties for decades,” the senators said. “We urge you to reverse this decision immediately before more damage is done to America’s standing in the world.”
Political appointees leave their posts when a new administration takes office but career diplomats, while serving at the pleasure of the president, are often considered bipartisan and typically serve three to four years in their overseas posts regardless of a change in government.
But Trump has long been suspicious of the bureaucracy and has repeatedly pledged to “clean out the deep state” by firing bureaucrats whom he deems disloyal and placing loyalists in senior roles.
In February, Trump ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to revamp the U.S. foreign service to ensure that the Republican president’s foreign policy is “faithfully” implemented.
In July, the Trump administration fired more than 1,300 State Department diplomats and civil servants as Washington grappled with multiple crises on the world stage: Russia’s war in Ukraine, the almost two-year-long Gaza conflict, and the Middle East on edge due to high tension between Israel and Iran.
The Department’s total workforce reduction in the U.S. totaled roughly 3,000 after deferred resignations and early retirements, accounting for more than 11% of its total foreign and civil service officers.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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