President Trump, would-be peacemaker on a global scale, has apparently decided he can fulfill that role with a decimated diplomatic corps that by mid-January will see more than half of the U.S. embassies lacking an ambassador.

Nearly 30 ambassadors were told just before Christmas to pack up and leave their postings next month, adding to what is already 79 ambassadorial vacancies, according to the Ambassador Tracker maintained by the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents career diplomats. The U.S. at full complement has some 195 ambassadorships.

And the ambassadorships currently on the president’s hit list aren’t those glamor postings his friends and campaign contributors would be interested in occupying.

No, Charles Kushner, father of the president’s son-in-law Jared and a convicted felon, isn’t about to vacate the Paris embassy any time soon for the new vacancy in Papua New Guinea, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, ex-fiancee of Donald Trump Jr., is likely to remain the U.S. ambassador to Greece, despite the new opportunity in Somalia.

About a dozen of the posts in question are in sub-Saharan Africa, another half dozen in Asia, including Vietnam and the Philippines, and several in the Balkan region such as North Macedonia and Montenegro, along with Armenia and Slovakia.

So no, not glamorous, but strategically critical, which is why this precipitous move — for reasons not entirely clear — is so utterly reckless, if not downright self-indulgent.

“This is standard process in any administration,” the State Department insisted in a statement. “An ambassador is a personal representative of the president, and it is the president’s right to ensure that he has individuals in these countries who advance the ‘America First’ agenda.”

Wrong, actually.

Diplomats swear an oath to the Constitution. They may be presidential appointees, but they are confirmed by the Senate and they serve this nation, not an individual. And most career officers will serve three or four years.

“Removing senior diplomats without cause undermines U.S. credibility abroad and sends a chilling signal to the professional Foreign Service: experience and an oath to the Constitution take a backseat to political loyalty,” the foreign career diplomats’ union said in a statement on its website.

“After reviewing our archives, we have found no record of comparable actions in the century,” the organization added, and certainly not since “the Foreign Service Act of 1924 ended the spoils system in U.S. diplomacy and established a professional, merit-based Foreign Service.”

It appeared nearly all the ambassadors just recalled had been named to their current posts during the Biden administration, a largely irrelevant fact among career members of the foreign service, although the ambassador to Montenegro, Judy Rising Reinke, was appointed in 2018, during the first Trump administration.

And while the diplomats have been given a couple of weeks to clear out their embassy desks, they have already “disappeared” from the State Department website.

“We have about 80 vacant ambassadorships,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Politico. “Yet, President Trump is giving away U.S. leadership to China and Russia by removing qualified career ambassadors who serve faithfully no matter who’s in power.”

China already outpaces the U.S. in the depth and breadth of its diplomatic missions abroad, with few vacancies, especially in the critical territories Trump has just decimated.

A round of foreign service layoffs, originally set for July, also kicked in during December, hitting some 250 officers under the rank of ambassador.

Those who remain report being demoralized, overworked and operating on too tight budgets. A survey of 2,100 Foreign Service employees conducted by the union and released earlier this month found 98% reported reduced morale since January and 86% said recent changes have “undermined their ability to carry out U.S. foreign policy.”

John Dinkelman, the union’s president, said at the time the survey was released, “America’s diplomats are being asked to represent and defend this country at a time of growing global instability — while the institution that supports their work is being hollowed out in real time.”

Ambassadors are the boots on the ground that send a message to nations large and small that they matter to the U.S. No, not that this nation supports everything they do or even anything they do, but that they and their people are worth the time and effort of the United States to engage with.

So recalling ambassadors to a large segment of Africa sends a message too — one Trump has already made clear. But every time he writes off another nation, China and Russia stand ready to pick up the slack. That’s a dangerous way to play the foreign policy game.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/26/opinion/trump-ambassadors-firing/

— The Boston Globe