The United States is currently operating without ambassadors at 92 of its 196 diplomatic missions — nearly half its posts abroad — a gap that persists a year and a half into President Donald Trump's second term, even though the Senate responsible for confirming his nominees is controlled by the president's own party.

In some cases, the White House has not yet sent names to Capitol Hill. In others, the Senate has not acted on the nominees it has received. Whatever the explanation, the vacancies are drawing concern from experts in diplomacy — among them Donald Heflin, a former U.S. ambassador who now serves as executive director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and senior fellow of diplomatic practice at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. In his view, the embassies still without a top diplomat include key U.S. partners: countries Washington needs in order to achieve its security, economic and strategic objectives.

What makes the situation more worrying, he argues, is that the vacancies coincide with other concerning developments in how the State Department staffs its missions.

Politicizing diplomacy

Foremost among those developments is the high proportion of politically appointed ambassadors relative to positions filled by career diplomats — senior foreign service officers who typically bring at least 20 years of diplomatic experience.

While many countries send politicians abroad as ambassadors, the American diplomatic service stands apart in two ways. First, the share of U.S. ambassadors who are political appointees — people who have not followed a career civil service path — is higher than in comparable countries around the world. Second, those appointees are often donors with little or no government experience.

The practice has existed for decades, but the number of political appointees has grown in recent years. During the Obama administration, political appointees made up roughly 30% of ambassadors. The figure rose to around 40% in the first Trump administration and held at about that level under President Joe Biden. In Trump's second term, however, some 80% of the names the White House has sent to the Senate have been political. That is at least double the share of any of the three preceding administrations.

Many of the people Trump has put forward also do not appear to hold the credentials usually associated with important diplomatic posts. Rather, many are friends, associates or donors of the president, often with little overseas experience or knowledge of the country to which they are assigned.

Lee Lipton, the U.S ambassador to key ally the Philippines, owns the Palm Beach, Florida restaurant Benny's on the Beach, is a member of Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club and contributed to his political campaign. The ambassador to Greece is Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Trump adviser and the former fiancée of the president's son, Donald Trump Jr.

Handing ambassadorships to friends and supporters has always been part of the political appointment system. What has changed under Trump is the range of positions now going to noncareer picks. In the past, ambassadors to pivotal countries such as Chile, Israel, Peru, the Philippines, Turkey and Egypt were almost always career appointees. Under the second Trump administration, that has changed.

Appointing noncareer diplomats even to small, faraway nations carries an additional problem: the person chosen may not actually spend much time there. The rule of thumb has long been that ambassadors should spend no more than one month per year back in the United States — a standard that is compromised when the selectee has expansive business ties at home.

The role of the deputy

A closely related issue is the State Department's handling of an ambassador's second-in-command, the deputy chief of mission, or DCM, under Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

During Trump's first term in the White House, politically appointed ambassadors were often encouraged to swap out the DCMs they inherited from their predecessors. That meant going through a long hiring process, leaving the key jobs unfilled for months.

In 2025, the department went further, canceling the assignments of senior officers en route to take up embassy jobs and opening a new hiring process. The move formed part of a broader purge of a civil service that many MAGA Republicans have characterized as a “deep state.”

In reality, DCMs fill a critically important role. They help political appointees navigate the bureaucracy, implement policy ideas and, on occasion, raise a reality check. With more politically appointed ambassadors — some with no relevant experience — an experienced deputy can be the difference between success and failure.

Looking for other friends

Taken together, these personnel changes amount to a degradation of what was once seen as one of the most effective diplomatic services in the world. What makes that potentially more worrying is where the vacancies are.

Belarus and Bulgaria, neighbors to Russia and Ukraine, are without U.S. ambassadors. So are countries important to the fight against terrorism or situated in geopolitical hot spots, such as Kuwait, Qatar and Mauritania.

Others still without envoys include Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest nation and the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world; key Middle East ally Egypt; nuclear power Pakistan; and Haiti and Guatemala, nations the United States needs to help manage inward migration.

The problem of absent or inexperienced ambassadors cuts both ways. It means Washington may lack a capable diplomatic figurehead in these countries to contact in times of need. It also leaves fewer avenues for host nations to successfully convey messages back to the U.S. administration. Faced with absent ambassadors, amateurish political appointees and deputies who are very junior or have short résumés, host countries may conclude they are not seen as important to the United States — and start looking for friends.

The hollowing out of the ambassadorial corps has come at a time of growing international influence by the likes of Russia, China and Iran — rival nations hoping to capitalize on a perceived diplomatic void left by Washington.

The examples are pointed. As the United States tries to contain Beijing's influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Fiji, Indonesia and Laos remain without U.S. ambassadors. China's diplomatic relationship with Pakistan — a former key security partner for Washington — has grown while the ambassadorial seat in Islamabad remains empty. And former Soviet states including Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan do not have U.S. ambassadors even as Russian President Vladimir Putin attempts to consolidate Moscow's regional influence.

In large areas of the world, such as Africa and the Pacific region, and in important areas of policy, the lights may be on in U.S. embassies, but nobody is home. That, the author argues, is a distinct problem for U.S. national security and strategic interests. Refilling those chairs, for now, depends on the two steps still outstanding across the network: nominations leaving the White House for Capitol Hill, and Senate action on the names already received.

---

Donald Heflin is Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.