Personally I’m not sure I like this and would rather see Buttigieg with a prominent role in the Cabinet. This seems a way to get a potential rival out of the limelight for four years and not let him build any street cred in Washington and with the US public.
That said an ambassadorship to China is one of the most important ones and Buttigieg has the language chops to learn Mandarin fast and he was a former intelligence officer. He is whip-smart too. I have no doubt he would be good at the job.
I wonder how China, which is LGBTQ unfriendly, would react to a gay US ambassador living there with his husband?
If Biden wishes to repair relations with China that Trump has disrupted, probably not the best idea.
It is possible he doesn’t wish to repair relations, in which case this would be like when Obama tapped Billie Jean King for the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Wouldn’t you normally hire someone who already knows the local language? When I read the title I was like “Interesting that he knows Mandarin”, but the OP says he simply had language chops to learn languages quickly. Wikipedia says that he has “some knowledge” of various languages, not that he’s fluent in them. I never really thought of ambassadors as political appointments, although I suppose it’s more like other cabinet appointments for major ones like China where the guy in charge decides mainly on general direction and the professional diplomats that work with every administration do all the actual work. If that’s the case, it would make sense that not knowing Mandarin immediately wouldn’t be as big of a drawback.
Buttigieg wanted to read a book written in Norwegian so he learned Norwegian. He also speaks French, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, Arabic and Dari. How fluent his is in any of them I cannot say but still…I’d say he has a knack for learning languages.
U.S. Ambassadors are all political appointments, who serve at the pleasure of the President. Both parties, for a very long time, have handed out ambassadorships to campaign donors. Those are usually a relatively small number of postings, of “minor” ambassadorships to relatively unimportant countries.
The more important ambassadorships (UK, Russia, China, UN, etc.) are generally more technocratic appointments. They are often career foreign service personnel, or old Washington hands with foreign policy experience. There is also a tradition of filling such posts with friends and close political allies of the President - it’s not nepotism, but a signal to the other government that the U.S. President takes the relationship seriously, that the U.S. ambassador speaks for the President, and that messages given to the ambassador will go straight to the President, without being filtered by the foreign policy establishment.
In any case, U.S. ambassadors are generally not chosen based on their subject matter expertise with a given country - that’s why they have staff. And professional translators and interpreters. Buttigieg may well learn some conversational Mandarin, but while a command of the local language is of course a plus for an ambassador, it’s never been a particularly important consideration for U.S. ambassadors.
I suspect it’s far more important if you’re the ambassador to some extremely minor country where you probably don’t get the staff that the Ambassador to China does. Especially if the local language is not very widespread, it would be a big consideration. That’s obviously not a problem for Mandarin.
even now there are some ambassadors who are career state dept. people and are not political although the president can fire them at any time… They are normally posted to smaller countries that are allies. We had a local lawyer and big donor to Bush Jr who was ambassador to Denmark for a few years I am pretty sure he had never run for or held any elected office.
I really don’t think it is. I mean, how many qualified candidates are there in the U.S. that speak Kirundi*?
It’s certainly a plus for an ambassador to have a command of the local language, but it’s not like the host country isn’t going to have anyone who can speak English. It really just isn’t much of a consideration.
*That actually raises another problem with appointing an ambassador based on language skills. Appointing an ambassador to, say, Nigeria who is fluent in Hausa could easily be seen as actively taking sides against the Yoruba, Igbo, and Fula.
I guess I had a poor impression in my head on what was important for ambassadors, as I remember learning about them at a very young age. It wouldn’t surprise me that things were oversimplified or just plain wrong.
Political appointee ambassadorships are a bad idea. It’s not a terrible idea. Trump has had hundreds that are worse. But, ideally, Biden should end this bad tradition.
His criticism and his relationship may well be factors in Biden’s decision.
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Biden is not willing to “pander” to China, and this could be a crystal clear signal both of that, and of the importance that is placed on treating all with respect (i.e the LGBTQ unfriendliness of China)
I do know that there have been other ambassadorial appts in the past that are potentially “against local custom” - and the host country had to make a decision about this
Fully agree with this post. If you look at the list of recent U.S. Ambassadors to China, I’d be very surprised if Max Baucus or Terry Brandstadt speak a word of Mandarin. And it doesn’t matter. With a posting like China, it doesn’t matter whether the ambassador speaks the language, has foreign service experience, etc. He will have plenty of staff for that. All that matters is whether he or she will have the President’s ear.
On the other hand, Jon Huntsman was an LDS missionary in Taiwan, so I’ll bet he has some language fluency. I think they emphasis that. And GWB’s ambassador Clark Randt "was the China representative of the National Council for United States-China Trade.
Randt was a resident of Beijing from 1982 through 1984 where he served as First Secretary and Commercial Attache at the U.S. Embassy. He then lived in Hong Kong for 18 years, most recently as a partner with the international law firm of Shearman & Sterling where he headed the firm’s China practice. Randt was Governor and First Vice President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. He is a member of the New York and Hong Kong bars and is a recognized expert on Chinese law." And he was fluent in Mandarin. I was no fan of GWB but that guy sounds like he was qualified.
Reading what I wrote, I went too far in giving the impression that language skills and longstanding diplomatic experience with the country are worthless in an Ambassador. Quite the contrary, they can be very valuable in helping the Ambassador and the embassy build relationships throughout the host government, understand internal politics and generate goodwill toward America and Americans. I just was trying to make the point that Chinese government’s primary concern will be whether Buttigieg has influence with Biden and the Administration. If they believe that he does, then he’s much more likely to be able to engage effectively with them.