America’s Empty Chairs: Ambassador Posts Sit Vacant Across Globe as China Moves In

The United States is conducting some of the most consequential diplomacy in a generation: navigating a war with Iran, pushing toward a ceasefire in Ukraine, and deepening trillion-dollar economic ties with Gulf monarchies, all without a Senate-confirmed ambassador in the capitals where it matters most.According to the State Department’s own records, 112 of 205 ambassador posts worldwide, including multinational associations, sit vacant — a vacancy rate over 56 percent, one of the highest of any modern administration this deep into a term.The hollowing is not evenly distributed. With heightened tensions in the Middle East, vacancies include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Iraq, and Kuwait. In Africa, nearly three-quarters of embassies have no ambassador. The numbers speak to only a portion of the story.“The lack of experienced and meaningful diplomatic engagement in Saudi Arabia and the UAE has certainly led to mass missteps and miscommunications with those two countries in terms of the Iran war,” former career diplomat and Distinguished Lecturer in International Understanding at Dartmouth College, Elizabeth Shackelford, tells The New York Sun. “The damage is likely to be long-lasting. It certainly complicates our ability to end this war, which is serving no United States interests.”The vacancy crisis did not emerge overnight. It accelerated sharply when, in December, Secretary of State Marco Rubio recalled at least 31 career ambassadors, according to the American Foreign Service Association. Africa was hardest hit, with envoys pulled from Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Uganda, Algeria, and Egypt.Changes simultaneously swept through postings in Fiji, Armenia, Slovakia, and elsewhere, leaving a patchwork of chargés d’affaires to lead the missions. The Philippines and Vietnam have since received confirmed ambassadors. Speaking to PBS last year, American Foreign Service Association President John Dinkelman described the mass recall as “not standard practice,” calling it “unprecedented” and “unheard of” — “a sabotage of the American diplomatic machine.”The official line from Washington has been more measured. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told CNN that the idea the diplomatic corps was being hollowed out is “false.” He dismissed as “baseless” any claim that losing hundreds of experienced diplomats would undermine the country’s ability to deliver on its priorities.On the ambassador recalls specifically, the department said it was “a standard process in any administration” — that the president has the right to ensure his representatives abroad advance the America First agenda, and that in embassies without a confirmed ambassador, “experienced chargé d’affaires lead the missions.”“The Trump administration isn’t filling these positions because it does not think it needs the input, advice, or expertise of diplomats who have on-the-ground experience, cultural and political knowledge, and access and relationships,” says Ms. Shackleford, who notes that much of the diplomatic work could be undone by an X post the moment a meeting ends. “That is putting us at a tremendous disadvantage to China and many others.”The Middle East GapThe vacancy problem is nowhere more visible than across the Persian Gulf, where the Trump administration has staked some of its most ambitious foreign policy bets. President Trump’s May 2025 visit to Riyadh produced pledges of $600 billion in Saudi investment in the United States, a figure that has since climbed to nearly $1 trillion. The presidential visit secured the headlines; however, implementing a commitment of that scale requires sustained, senior-level engagement, say foreign policy analysts. Without a confirmed ambassador, critics contend, the United States lacks the formal institutional capacity to ensure those pledges are followed through.The embassy at Riyadh has operated throughout the war with Iran without a Senate-confirmed ambassador. The administration nominated Wesley Hunt for Saudi Arabia on September 14, 2026. It also announced its pick for Kuwait, Dino LaVerghetta, just days ago, on September 28. Both are political appointees, not career diplomats, according to the American Foreign Service Association, and both await Senate action. No nominee has been named for three other nations essential to the Iran war negotiations — the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, or Iraq. Relying on the Second String Without a top diplomat, negotiations fall to the second-in-command at each outpost. That creates limitations, says a former United States assistant secretary of state for African affairs and ambassador to Guinea and Ethiopia, Tibor Nagy.“Chargés d’affaires may be just as competent as Senate-confirmed ambassadors, sometimes even more so, but their status is inherently inferior,” Mr. Nagy tells the Sun, but, he says, “They are limited in their dealings with the host country. For example, a department director versus a minister, and they are rarely able to deal with the head of state.”The vacancies hold even more significance given China’s 2023 brokering of a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran, restoring diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Tehran after seven years of severed ties, a breakthrough widely read in foreign ministries as a signal that Gulf anchor states were hedging their bets and that Beijing had claimed a role Washington could not.With the president conducting direct talks with select foreign leaders, not everyone agrees that the Americans are at a total disadvantage in key nations. “In most countries, not having a United States ambassador seriously limits access to the top leadership,” a career diplomat and president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, Ronald Neumann, tells the Sun. “But the UAE and Saudi Arabia have such close contact with the Trump administration that this probably isn’t the case.”As the Iran conflict grinds on, the State Department has also begun restaffing Middle East posts and allowing diplomats’ families to return to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a sign Washington does not expect the conflict with Iran to turn hot again. China Fills the Void in AfricaThe consequences of the diplomatic vacuum in Africa may prove the most durable. Compared to the United States, China maintains far fewer vacant posts, and Beijing regularly fills its positions with career diplomats promoted internally through the foreign ministry. Where Washington’s diplomatic bench has thinned dramatically, China’s has not. Chinese envoys show up, get access, and stay.“The Chinese advantage is huge. There is a sense that America is ignoring Africa, cutting aid, not reacting to the increase in terrorism, and pulling ambassadors out without replacements or assigning new ambassadors,” Mr. Neumann says in contrast to the Middle East situation. “The Chinese are good at playing to these injured feelings. That is a significant advantage. They have better access to senior leaders. In many countries, commercial decisions are heavily influenced this way, so that is another advantage for the Chinese.”The empty posts problem traces to several converging factors: the pace of nominations, the December recall, and a Senate confirmation process that has moved in fits and starts over the political nature of the nominees. As of this summer, 92.5 percent of the administration’s ambassadorial nominees had been political appointees, the most lopsided ratio in 50 years, according to the American Foreign Service Association. Association data show President Obama appointed career officers to roughly 70 percent of posts, President George W. Bush to 68 percent, President Biden to 59 percent, and Mr. Trump’s own first term came in at 56.5 percent.Last spring, Mr. Trump named former television anchor Kari Lake to lead diplomacy in Jamaica and a Pennsylvania state senator and retired Army colonel, Douglas Mastriano, to head to Slovakia. Both are strong Trump allies. Both won partisan approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but the Senate has not scheduled floor votes.Mr. Trump has also begun naming other replacements. Nominees are pending for 14 African posts in Kenya, Somalia, Chad, Gabon, Madagascar, and Togo, among others. Most are career officers awaiting Senate confirmation who also are in limbo awaiting Senate confirmation. Mr. Nagy says failure to act at Washington reinforces the point China is trying to make. “It certainly adds to the narrative that Africa is unimportant in how we view the world,” he says. “Some globally important issues emerge in Africa, transnational terrorism across the Sahel, some of the world’s worst conflicts, pandemics like the emerging Ebola, and without an ambassador in place, the United States cannot give those problems the attention they deserve.”With more than 110 posts seats still empty, the math of confirmation timelines runs headlong into the pace of attrition. Roughly 2,000 foreign service officers left the State Department last year, according to American Foreign Service Association estimates, and former officials say the department has shed 20 to 25 percent of its entire Foreign Service corps over the past 16 months. Because the Foreign Service operates as an “up or out” system — requiring promotion to remain — senior career diplomats with no prospect of an ambassadorship under this administration have been left with little choice but to retire. Former officials say it will take a decade to rebuild that bench, on personnel alone.“The only hope is that we get a chance to start rebuilding our international credibility and diplomatic capacity before it’s too late,” Ms. Shackelford says. “That won’t happen under this administration because this administration has no appreciation for it whatsoever.”Senior administration officials, nevertheless, have argued that reorganization was designed to empower those in the field, not weaken them. They maintain that political appointees unburdened by institutional inertia bring the kind of direct loyalty and fresh energy that career bureaucrats rarely deliver.

America’s Empty Chairs: Ambassador Posts Sit Vacant Across Globe as China Moves In

America’s Empty Chairs: Ambassador Posts Sit Vacant Across Globe as China Moves In

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