Originally published on the CGS blog on April 23, 2014.
Politico Magazine put out an article last week by James Bruno about how US diplomats stack up to Russian diplomats. Based on his experience as a foreign service officer, he concludes that America’s diplomats are woefully inferior in experience to their Russian counterparts.
Only one ambassador to a major NATO ally, Turkey, is a career diplomat — Mr. Francis Ricciardone. Of the remaining 25 filled U.S. ambassadorships to NATO countries, three quarters are political appointees. (Two of these posts are currently unfilled, one to our major NATO ally, France. My colleague Kevin Burke wrote on the backlog of nominees for diplomatic posts last month.) Eleven of these secured their position by giving big money to Obama’s campaign, including our ambassadors to Germany and the UK. In contrast, all but two of Russia’s ambassadors to NATO countries are career diplomats.
By Bruno’s calculations,
The total number of years of diplomatic experience of Russia’s 28 ambassadors to NATO nations is 960 years, averaging 34 years per incumbent. The cumulative years of relevant experience of America’s ambassadors are 331, averaging 12 years per individual. Russia has 26 NATO ambassadors with 20-plus years of diplomatic service; the United States has 10.
These statistics are very worrisome in a world where nations can no longer act unilaterally; a world where multilateralism increasingly rules the day. With unskilled and untrained diplomats US influence will continue to wane as others rise.
TV producers and computer executives, “who won their positions through the exchange of cash or cronyism” (as described by Bruno) are not the diplomats the U.S. needs. We need seasoned professionals at all levels who can navigate the complex waters of multilateral, international diplomacy. Without them the US will lose out to nations that churn out strong diplomats like Germany and Russia, who, as Bruno put it, were trained to rely on an arsenal of “blackmail, vodka, and the threat to kill” to reach their ends.
