State Department senior ranks being depleted at 'dizzying speed'

State Department senior ranks being depleted at 'dizzying speed'

The U.S.’s ranks of diplomats are losing key leaders at a “dizzying speed” as the State Department struggles to recruit talent amid a hiring freeze and sinking morale in the Trump administration, according to a new essay from a top ambassador.

Sixty percent of the agency’s career ambassadors, the highest rank for diplomats, have retired or quit since January. Nearly half of career ministers — the next level down and equivalent to the military’s three-star generals — are gone too, down to 19 from 33. The next-level minister counselors have seen their numbers drop by 62 diplomats, to 369, since Labor Day “and are still falling,” writes Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, the president of the American Foreign Service Association union.

Without these leaders, the U.S. could face a diminished role on the world stage, unable to keep up with the increasingly aggressive foreign policies of rising countries like China, she argues.

“There is simply no denying the warning signs that point to mounting threats to our institution — and to the global leadership that depends on us. There is no denying that our leadership ranks are being depleted at a dizzying speed,” Stephenson, who has headed the AFSA since 2015, writes in a new essay in the group’s monthly publication.

The AFSA rarely makes forays into political issues, making Stephenson’s essay that much more surprising.

There has been a sharp impact on the next generation as well, the AFSA reports. A departmentwide hiring freeze prevents new employees from coming on board and limits current employees’ ability to take on new roles unless granted special permission. In 2016, 366 new foreign service officers were admitted, and only about 100 will join in 2018, according to the AFSA.

What’s worse, diplomats said, is that interest in joining the foreign service is plummeting because of these policies. More than 17,000 people applied to take the foreign service test last year, but fewer than half that number have taken it so far this year.

The implications of that trend could be felt long term, with a new crop of talented diplomats missing and unable to take the helm in a couple of decades, Stephenson argues.

“The talent being shown the door now is not only our top talent but also talent that cannot be replicated overnight,” she writes.

While the union — as well as many outside the government — is raising alarms about the situation, Trump has made clear that he does not see the need to fill many of the roles or build talent.

“The one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters because, when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be,” he said in a Fox News interview last week.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said he is revamping the State Department to be more efficient and sustainable — calling the project “the most important thing I want to do during the time I have.”

That redesign began with an employee survey and hundreds of staff interviews, led by an outside consulting firm, to hone the department’s focus and mission, Tillerson’s team said. Until it is complete, he has imposed that hiring freeze and left several top roles vacant or filled by staff in an acting capacity.

Tillerson has said he has the “utmost respect for the foreign service officer corps here, and they’re vital ... and critical to the country’s ability to carry out its foreign policy,” telling The New York Times magazine he doesn’t understand the backlash against the redesign. “I’m mystified by it. I’m perplexed by it.”

But to foreign policy hands, he is depleting the nation’s diplomats, which will diminish America’s role on the world stage — or lead to a heavier reliance on the Pentagon at a time when the military is already stretched thin by two wars, in Afghanistan and in Iraqand Syria, as well as conflicts in other hotspots around the world.