In the reporting yesterday of Ivanka Trump’s death, it was mentioned that while Donald Trump was president, he offered her the position of ambassador to the Czech Republic. Other than having been born and raised there, I couldn’t see what in her history might qualify her for diplomatic work.
And then I started wondering what kind of experience does prepare a person to serve as an ambassador, and I realized I don’t really have any idea.
If I were President and trying to act in the best interests of the United States, what should I look for on the resumes of candidates for an ambassadorship?
No real qualifications are required, its a time honored political appointment that rewards your loyal friends, one of the perks of being POTUS. Shirley Temple Black was an ambassador whose only qualification was that she was a child star with name recognition.
Of course some assignments are more important than others, like say the ambassador to Russia. Most likely has a CIA backgound or other intelligence agency experience and can speak the language.
The people who hold the official title “Ambassador” are usually figureheads. Most of the actual work at an embassy is done by career Foreign Service agents.
I would imagine there’s probably an expectation that an ambassador have social skills somewhat above merely knowing better than to pick their nose and wipe it on a foreign dignitary’s shirt.
It is widely understood the “Ambassador” is simply a well-heeled and well-connected person, with no real qualifications. It is further typically understood by all involved that it is something the President can hand out as pure political patronage, there is no illusions that it is a merit based appointment.
Ambassadors have evolved into a role which is mostly that of a ceremonial figurehead. However, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes Ambassadorships go to people who are more directly political, and they can sometimes take actions to advance policy agendas they care about, for better or worse. Their power is still fairly limited, but a few people have used Ambassadorships as rungs up the political ladder. Additionally, sometimes when an Ambassadorial post is empty, a career Foreign Service Officer will be given the post on a temporary basis (which can sometimes last quite a while), and in that case you have someone in the role who is an actual diplomatic professional and probably deeply informed on the country.
I think this has relatively old origins. In the early 20th and 19th centuries for example countries like the United Kingdom and France frequently appointed people from the hereditary aristocracy to Ambassador posts, which really just meant “hey we’re sending this important person as a sign of respect to your country.” That person’s actual life experience and duties was basically “go to dinner parties, go on hunting trips, and generally live it up on a generous government stipend.” Their role was to really show respect for the host country due to it being seen that an “important person” was stationed there. Functionaries who worked in their office frequently did most of the real work. This appears to have just continued to progress along those lines since then.
A country like the United States doesn’t have a hereditary nobility, but we have rich connected people who are perceived as important by the host country.
The role has probably changed considerably since the concept originated. It used to be that communications between nations could take weeks, and so if you wanted to be able to negotiate anything with a foreign country, either the leaders themselves had to travel (which would only happen for the most absolutely important agreements), or you had to send someone with the authority to negotiate agreements on behalf of the nation, who you therefore needed to be able to trust absolutely. For instance, when Robert Livingston was sent to France, he was authorized to spend up to $10 million to purchase New Orleans, but was instead offered the entire western drainage basin of the Mississippi for $15 million. On his own authority, without hearing from the President, he had to decide that that was a deal well worth taking, and that the US government would agree once they found out. That kind of authority means something.
Of course, nowadays, that’s all irrelevant, because if a diplomat now has any doubt at all about what their country will be willing to offer or accept in a deal, they can just make a phone call, email, or other instantaneous communication.
The problem of hacks/donors being favored for ambassadorships is an old one in the U.S.
“Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, presidents nominated individuals to diplomatic posts with little regard for experience, language abilities, knowledge of the host country, or other criteria that are now commonly accepted as relevant. The Senate, moreover, routinely confirmed these nominees. Thus, even into the second decade of the twentieth century, virtually all U.S. chiefs of mission lacked significant prior experience in diplomacy. These individuals rarely spent “more than a few years in the nation’s service overseas” and “did not compare in knowledge and competence, and certainly not in experience, with the professional diplomats of the European powers.” Historians have suggested that this pattern resulted from a combination of public and congressional apathy toward diplomatic appointments, the advent and subsequent normalization of the spoils system, and a general skepticism toward diplomatic expertise in early American politics. These influences created a political context in which amateurism was tolerated and even idealized.”
Hard to believe, but things aren’t as bad now, even if Congressional oversight still leaves much to be desired. At least federal law encourages professionalism.
“Political appointees held roughly 80 percent of ambassadorships during the Wilson administration, 50 percent by the end of the interwar period, and only 30 percent by the 1950s…
Further professionalization is possible going forward, but so is a reversion to extensive amateurism. Over the first two years of the Trump administration, over 40 percent of bilateral ambassadorships were filled by individuals who came from outside the Foreign Service… This is the highest percentage of political appointees since Franklin Roosevelt, 46 percent of whose appointments were of the political variety, and a marked increase from Barack Obama, who appointed noncareer diplomats in only 30 percent of cases.”
Ivana Trump was perfectly qualified for Ambassador to be Czech Republic. Most of her job would’ve been attending functions & ceremonies, socializing, and carrying herself with dignity. That she had native level understanding of the language and culture was just a bonus.
I’ll just add that Foreign Service Officers are actually commissioned officers in the United States Foreign Service in the US Department of State who do all of the ‘heavy lifting’ when it comes to overt interactions with foreign nations. From arranging visits by US government personnel and ‘official’ representatives to assisting Americans abroad in need, FSOs are the largely unseen and uncelebrated corp of diplomatic professionals that navigate foreign laws and customs for presidents, congresspeople, and other visitors while keeping the State Department informed about local conditions and issues. They’ve often been attacked and neglected by various presidential administrations for not espousing and promoting official US policy (and across partisan lines) but they have the on-the-ground knowledge about what policies are actually workable versus some idealized view of the world from D.C.
Diplomat is often a position awarded in political favoritism but not all diplomats are complete figureheads. Shirley Temple Black was mentioned upthread as an example of a celebrity ‘figurehead’ appointment but at the time she was appointed ambassador to then-Czechoslovakia she was quite experienced in politics through years of working for the California Republican Party and the Commonwealth Club of California, and had extensive foreign service experience as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and various other roles that made her quite well-versed in foreign affairs. She was also appointed Chief of Protocol of the United States by Jimmy Carter (the first woman to hold that position), and during the Velvet Revolution played a key role in engaging with and maintaining diplomatic relations with the nascent Czech Republic.
However, perhaps the most notable engagement of a diplomat was Llewellyn E. “Tommy” Thompson Jr., a member of President John Kennedy’s Executive Committee and former Ambassador to the Soviet Union who counseled him with reserve in his response to the two cables sent from Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, responding to the earlier conciliatory cable with an offer of negotiation rather than the later more aggressive one (later determined to have been drafted by Khrushchev’s military advisors recommending an aggressive posture in Cuba to include installing nuclear warheads on the missiles based there. Thompson had spent much time with Khrushchev (to the point of describing actually vacationing with the Khrushchev family in their dacha) and understood the General Secretary and the Soviet mindset sufficiently to know that they did not want war over Cuba.
So, I’d say that the best qualifications to be an ambassador aren’t any specific knowledge but a general openness and empathy with other nations and cultures, a willingness to listen and learn, and a willingness to speak up and share opinions even when they are not in alignment with official US policy. The ‘real’ day-to-day work is done but the Foreign Service Officers and the ambassador to a nation, like a good leader, should request and accept guidance and counsel from these dedicated professionals.
The US ambassador to the UK can be someone with no qualifications whatsoever other than money/connections. E.g., Trump’s pick was a Johnson&Johnson heir and owner of the NY Jets. And remember Joe Kennedy back in the 40s?
The lame excuse is that such a post requires throwing a lot of parties and such so having money is a plus. They even throw on the title “Ambassador of the United States of America to the Court of St James’s” (I don’t get the last possessive thing.)
OTOH, they can be remarkably qualified such as Biden’s pick Jane Hartley.
One of the weirdest appointments was Bush I’s choice of ambassador to the USSR: former DNC chair Robert Strauss. Strauss openly said he voted against Bush. There’s some who think that this plum job was payback for some dirty favor Strauss did for Bush, e.g., in the 1980 campaign.
That explains why the Foreign Service Officer Practice Exam I took last fall was so challenging. My results showed an overall 91% chance of passing the real exam, but man, it was tough.
I imagine that much of this was done in the late afternoon or evening. How does a typical ambassador (in a country whose relations with the USA are rather calm) typically spend their mornings? Do they go to their office in the embassy and discuss current events with the staff? Are there any decisions or discussions that they are part of?
IOW, is the post really and truly a mere figurehead nowadays? What about the embassy staff? In a calm country, do they do anything besides processing visas and such?
Yeah, it’s a real profession, not just a curtesy service staffed by the children of wealthy donors looking to worm their way into politics. FSOs tend to be very apolitical (or at least keep their politics to themselves) because their role is to facilitate smooth relations between nations even if the political leadership of the countries are at odds with each other.
Not really, the current Ambassador to Russia (John J. Sullivan) is a political appointee without any career in the foreign service or any subject matter expertise on Russia. Now, Sullivan isn’t a hack or anything solely appointed for donating money. He has a long career of government service as a lawyer, and has worked in appointed positions across several administrations–his highest profile position in terms of authority prior to Trump was in the Department of Commerce under W. Bush where he was Deputy Secretary of Commerce overseeing many departments, a decently large budget and lots of employees.
Trump appointed him Deputy Secretary of State in 2018, he briefly served as interim when Rex Tillerson was fired, and he was appointed to the Ambassadorship in 2019. Again, not a hack–he’s a lawyer with management experience in several government departments going back to the early 1990s (DOJ, Commerce, State), but he is not a diplomat, does not have special expertise in diplomacy, and does not have subject matter expertise in Russia–he does have a vague and unelaborated history of doing ‘client business’ with Russia (also with Cuba, Iran and Iraq.)
He would not be qualified for the posting under the rules by which career foreign service officers are selected to fill Ambassadorships. And that’s the Ambassadorship to Russia which has always been important, and that is obviously not a friendly country.
In the US. Most other countries promote from among the professionals, with occasional exceptions where the powers that be judge someone is likely to have or develop close contacts in the country they’re posted to.
Yes, that’s how it works in Canada. The exceptions, non-career diplomats, are not donors, but people who have some sort of background which is seen as advantageous.
For example, PM Chrétien appointed General John de Chastelain as Ambassador to the US in 1993. Given de Chastelain’s high rank in the Canadian military, the purpose was likely because of the military situation post Gulf War I. Sending the former Chief of the Defence Staff was an indication of the importance of US-Canadian military matters.
Chrétien also appointed Frank McKenna as ambassador. Former Liberal Premier getting plum spot, right? No, actually. This was in 2005, post 9/11, and there were lots of US concerns about northern border security, possibly reducing cross-border trade as a result. As a former premier, McKenna knew a lot about border issues and trade issues and could speak with authority on the topic. (He said after the gig was over that at nearly every Q&A session with members of the public in the US, he had to respond to questions about “Didn’t some of the 9/11 terrorists come to the US from Canada/New Brunswick/Nova Scotia?” No, they didn’t. As the former Premier of New Brunswick he was very familiar with US-NB border controls.)
Point being, there can be reasons for non-career diplomats being appointed ambassador, but in Canada those reasons don’t normally include political donations.