Press Release | Is It Finally Time to Get Serious About Conducting Foreign Policy?

Washington, D.C. – The American Academy of Diplomacy applauds the effort by both Republican and Democrat senators to advance the confirmation process of ambassadorial and other senior foreign policy nominations. Partisan politics and the administration’s bureaucratic lags have left the conduct of American diplomacy seriously hampered by the current failure to fill senior positions important to U.S. national security.

In the Senate, over 67 nominations for ambassadors and many others for senior officials at the State Department are being blocked by a handful of senators. The Academy supports the bipartisan effort to get around this block and calls on Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer to begin holding night and weekend sessions to clean up the backlog.  Senators need to do the nation’s urgent national security business before they take time off for weekends and holidays.

While the Biden Administration is understandably frustrated by the slow pace of confirmations, it needs to move faster than it has on making nominations.  It took months to nominate an Under Secretary for Management, a key position in the running of the State Department.  Ukraine is already the scene of a major diplomatic crisis with Russia; yet the Biden administration has still not even proposed a nominee to be ambassador there.

The Academy calls on the Administration and the Congress urgently to fill the gaps in America’s senior foreign policy team in the interest of U.S. national security.

The American Academy of Diplomacy is a non-partisan and non-governmental organization of former senior diplomats including both career and non-career appointees. It is dedicated to strengthening the professionalism of diplomacy and explaining to the American people the importance of diplomacy. This statement has been approved by the Board of Directors of the Academy.

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