The former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman campaigned, in part, on a wish to promote the country's position on the world stage after four years of former President Donald Trump's "America first" foreign policy. Biden and other Democrats maintained the 45th president was too harsh on traditional allies and presented disinterest in filling America's traditional seat at the head of the Western table.
Though Biden's ambassador nomination process has been hindered by internal State Department politics, specialists explained, leaving the president without influential diplomats in capitals around the world as he prepares for his first trip abroad, a European jaunt in June.
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Biden not only has to fill the about 50 political ambassadorships vacated by Trump's appointees, but he further has to restore a State Department gutted by the last administration, according to retired Ambassador Ronald Neumann, head of the American Academy of Diplomacy.
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Yet at the same time, he is running a selection process that is a snail's pace as opposed to the last two occupants of the Oval Office. Former President Barack Obama nominated his first political ambassador in March 2009, and Trump was even quicker, doing so throughout his transition period.
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"It affects relationships if it goes on too long. I do not think it has yet affected relationships," Neumann said.
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Retired Ambassador Dennis Jett agreed, explaining that gaps are noticed by the host government and that embassies struggle when managed by interim leaders for long periods.
"Like any organization, if the top person leaves and somebody temporarily takes over, then there's limits to what that person can do and how much authority that person has, how he or she is viewed by others. All of that matters," he said.
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Under Trump, the State Department's senior ranks were governed by political appointees, so Biden's preference has been employing those staff members, Neumann said. Neumann was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Bahrain, and Algeria under former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
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"They simply have not yet sorted out what they want to do about political appointees," he said. "The real question is, are they going to put people in these jobs that really count, that are the big countries, who clearly have the credentials to go there?"
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Of the nation ambassador nominees Biden has announced, all nine are career diplomats. That does not cover United Nations envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is a career official as well. The nations covered thus far are Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Cameroon, Congo, Lesotho, Senegal, Somalia, and Vietnam.
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