The Trump administration’s recent decision to recall some 30 career ambassadors has launched a new round of handwringing among the U.S. Foreign Service’s old guard. Washington foreign policy establishmentarians and their media allies are predictably critical of the move. They reject the charge that some career ambassadors might be out of step with the president, conveniently overlooking examples like Ambassador Bridget Brink. Brink represented the president for four months in Kiev before resigning to run for Congress as a Democrat, particularly denouncing Trump’s Ukraine policy. She stayed four months under Trump not to represent the president’s diplomacy in that country, but to try to change it, departing only when it was clear she could not.
Oblivious to examples like Brink, John Dinkelman, president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), went on NPR to denounce stridently the presidential recall. When asked if some career diplomats might not be enacting Trump policies, Dinkelman said he found such an idea “inconceivable.” For Dinkelman, Trump’s recall decision is a catastrophe, nothing short of State Department’s Götterdämmerung:
This is unprecedented. This is unheard of. This is a sabotage of the American diplomatic machine. This is an affront to the professional Foreign Service that we have spent decades, a century in building in our country.
As a seasoned U.S. diplomat, Dinkelman should moderate his hyperbolic language. In theory, the organization of Foreign Service officers (FSOs) that he represents is non-partisan, but in practice, AFSA’s leaders automatically align with whatever Democratic administrations want—e.g., Biden’s radical DEI agenda—and oppose Republicans. In the matter of the recall, Dinkelman’s argument is another version of the constant AFSA complaint that Trump should stop meddling in how the State Department runs foreign policy.
Consider how Trump’s recall actually works in the field: These 30 career ambassadors will be replaced, in the short term, with other FSOs who will assume temporary leadership as the chargé d’affaires in each affected embassy. The handover process is routine. Whenever an ambassador is physically outside the country he is assigned to, embassy leadership is transferred over to a chargé d’affaires (or simply chargé—the French nomenclature endures in the world of diplomacy). The chargé is almost always the ambassador’s deputy at post (called the “deputy chief of mission” or DCM), who, as mentioned, is a career FSO. Whether the ambassador’s absence from post is just for a few days, or permanent, the same procedure always happens: The chargé takes immediate command of the embassy, and American diplomacy continues in that country.
To temporarily replace an ambassador, State can send out a new chargé from Washington, or the DCM at post can assume the duties for the long haul, depending on what the administration wants. A chargé may stay on to represent the president for any numbers of reasons—e.g., the White House is slow in deciding on a new ambassadorial nominee, or the Senate blocks a nominee, or the president decides not to choose a nominee to send a message to the foreign host country. Career chargés, like ambassadors, always serve at the pleasure of the president (per the Constitution: Article II, Section 2, Clause 2).
Trump’s ambassadorial recall is just speeding up the turnover. Typically, career ambassadors serve a three-year assignment and then rotate out; maybe they retire, or get another ambassadorship, or take on another job in the State Department. When they leave a post, they are often replaced by another career ambassador, and—to reiterate the central point—the State Department has many experienced senior FSOs who can step up to run an embassy. If the White House names instead political ambassadors, which is AFSA’s constant fear, these envoys will also be backed up by experienced career DCMs.
The fundamental flaw in Dinkelman’s the-sky-is-falling analysis is the assertion that these 30 career ambassadors are somehow irreplaceable. Some may be very capable envoys (and some may be duds), but they can and will be replaced. For Dinkelman to imply that this recall is a “sabotage” of American diplomacy is in fact an insult to other qualified FSOs who could serve as ambassadors or chargés and match the professionalism, judgment, and expertise of the incumbents they replace. Anyone who has served at State or been an FSO knows that to be the case.
But the real issue here is not diplomatic professionalism or foreign country expertise; the problem goes back to the Brink example. It is not credible that Brink could have been Trump’s trusted envoy for months and then, turning on a dime, bitterly oppose the president in a Congressional bid. The first Trump administration foolishly tolerated senior FSOs who resisted the president’s policies. Their resistance was often subtle—e.g., leaking documents to hostile media, bureaucratic foot dragging, and obfuscating clueless political appointees—but it also included open defiance, best typified by the 1,000 leaked dissent messages that protested Trump’s immigration pause in 2017. Anyone who thinks this is an exaggeration should read the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s memoir of his time inside Foggy Bottom.
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The second Trump administration has taken almost a year to look closely at all those FSOs who represent the president as career ambassadors. There may be more recalls on the way. In contemporary Washington, it can be no surprise to anyone, including Dinkelman, that there are officers with a record of opposition to Trump. Rarely is such a record public, but it is discernible, most often as part of their “corridor reputation” (to use Foggy Bottom lingo). The administration understandably doubts that many senior FSOs can pivot from Biden to Trump priorities on issues such as DEI, visas, refugees, foreign assistance, Ukraine, transatlantic priorities, etc. To be sure, some can pivot, but many others are poor candidates to do so.
Too many senior FSOs, like Brink, have Trump-skeptical profiles that should disqualify them from high diplomatic posts in this administration. It may be their partisanship, but much more likely it is their intense personal commitment, over years, to policies the administration opposes. Their comportment is observable by colleagues and might include openly editorializing in staff meetings, reaching out to foreign interlocutors to “apologize” for Trump’s decisions, and posting anti-Trump social media. Such behavior has been the conscious choice of many career government officials, and they should expect to live with the consequences. It is not “politicizing” State, as Dinkelman maintains, to refuse high position to such FSOs; it would be foolish for any president to leave them as his personal envoys in foreign capitals.
Dinkelman’s criticisms ignore that Trump is implementing policies he promised the American electorate. The administration is building a State Department that authentically reflects all Americans, and that includes 77 million Trump voters. We still need to forge a Foreign Service that is not a lopsided 90–10 in a country that ideologically breaks 50–50.
