Are
ambassadors still necessary? This question has been asked after almost
every major technological invention in history. When the first
trans-Atlantic cable was laid in the mid-19th century, some said that,
if the U.S. secretary of state needed to communicate with a European
minister of foreign affairs, he could just send a telegram. Similar
pronouncements were made after the advent of the telephone, radio,
television, fax machines and the Internet. Today, with easy and
ubiquitous video calls — and, thanks to Covid-19, widespread remote work
— the argument that ambassadors are rarely useful relics arises again
U.S.
politicians of both parties, regardless of what they say publicly, seem
to reinforce this line of thinking. After all, if the United States can
do without ambassadors to dozens of countries for almost a year or
more, perhaps they aren’t essential at all. Until this weekend, when the
Senate confirmed about 30 nominations, only 15 of President Biden’s 85
nominees had been approved. The White House blames two Republican
senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, for blocking
most nominations for reasons that have nothing to do with the nominees
or the countries to which they would go. But the administration has been
slow to make nominations in the first place. Moreover, it has continued
the decades-old practice of handing ambassadorships to unqualified
friends and campaign donors. If that doesn’t denigrate the importance of
ambassadors, what does?
In the friends category, Biden is
sending Jeff Flake, a former Republican senator from Arizona, to Turkey
and Cindy McCain, former Senator John McCain’s wife, also from Arizona,
to U.N. agencies in Rome. Many nominees are fundraisers or rich campaign
donors, who lack diplomatic, government, military or any other kind of
experience that is important for the job. The reason for that is the
cost of presidential campaigns. They have become multibillion-dollar
enterprises, with nearly $6 billion spent on the 2020 election. The
president has few ways to reward his wealthy supporters. As a result,
the United States is the only country in the world where ambassadorial
posts are routinely sold to the highest bidders.
Adding insult to
injury, the few nominees the Senate had confirmed before this weekend
were mostly political appointees. One of them, David Cohen, Biden’s
ambassador to Canada, is a former Comcast Corp. executive with no
government experience at any level. However, he donated $502,000 to
Democrats between 2017 and 2020, with $11,000 going directly to Biden’s
campaign, according to the nonprofit Open Secrets. The newly confirmed
appointees to Costa Rica and Slovenia, Cynthia Telles and Jamie
Harpootlian, donated to Democrats $141,000 and $131,000, respectively.
Ambassadors who received their positions thanks to political connections
and are in over their head abroad sometimes try to hide that by
mistreating embassy staff, which is disastrous for morale. Former
President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Luxembourg, Cynthia Stroum, as
well as Trump’s envoy to Iceland, Jeffrey Gunter, are just two examples.
The
linkage between cash and nominations is often as obvious as it is
illegal. Gordon Sondland is perhaps the poster boy for the corrupt
practice. He did nothing to help get Donald Trump elected in 2016, but
after he bought $1 million worth of tickets to Trump’s inauguration, he
was made ambassador to the European Union in Brussels. As is well known
by now, he chose to spend much of his time in Ukraine, although that
country isn’t an EU member.
Examples like Sondland’s contribute
to the argument that ambassadors are superfluous appendages of
government. That argument, however, is even more erroneous today than it
was in the past. For one, there is the question of power — the soft
kind in particular. The days when a mere phone call or visit by a U.S.
ambassador was enough to get another country to do something — if they
ever existed — are long gone. It takes skill and experience to persuade a
foreign government to see your national interest as its own. Hard power
is rarely a viable option in international relations, even if it’s
backed up by a $770 billion defense budget.
Yes, technology does
make it easier for heads of state and ministers to speak directly with
their counterparts around the world, but they can’t talk to all others
with any regularity. Diplomats, including ambassadors, work on policies
and programs that don’t rise to the head-of-state level but are
nonetheless important. They also do the legwork before their leaders
speak. The United States and Ecuador recently signed an Open Skies
Agreement, which lifted limits to the number of flights between the two
countries. The two presidents didn’t need to discuss the accord, which
was negotiated by diplomats and other officials.
Even though some
view diplomacy as little more than endless cocktail parties and
exemption from paying parking tickets, it’s a real profession that
requires considerable skill, experience and knowledge to be practiced
successfully. Putting someone with a background that includes none of
that, as well as no time spent in the government or the military, is a
prescription for making soft power ineffective and an embassy badly run.
Some argue that it doesn’t matter if an ambassador is incompetent,
since the rest of the embassy is made up of career diplomats. By that
logic, a company’s CEO isn’t important, either, because there are
experienced people at the lower levels.
The most serious
challenges the United States faces today arise from the ability of
people, things and ideas to cross national borders with greater speed,
frequency, impact and reach than ever before. No country can effectively
counter those threats alone — just as no person can fight a pandemic
like Covid-19 alone. Sustained and competent diplomacy is essential, and
it can’t be accomplished with a quick video call or email — or with
people who lack the necessary skills.