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With all that @JoeBiden has to do, restoring national and international trust in America is key. Appointing ambassadors qualified by their cultural expertise rather than their political connection helps fix both. It’s an easy “soft power” flex that can start *today*. 1/
Embassies are vital points of cultural exchange between America and the world. Of the many complex missions they conduct, they are symbols for who we are and how we wish to engage with the world around us. They deserve ambassadors who can and wish to engage with their mission. 2/
For decades, though, the process of using ambassadorships to reward donors has unquestionably undermined America’s international standing. Too often we aren’t showing the world the best of us. We’re showing the world the best connected of us. 3/
Like Robert Wood "Woody" Johnson IV, Trump’s ambassador to the UK. Among other things, he reportedly pushed English officials to hold the British Open at a Trump-owned golf resort. His qualification for the job was giving millions to Trump. 4/ https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/22/politics/woody-johnson-oig-report/index.html
Or Jeffrey Ross Gunter, Trump’s ambassador to Iceland, one of the safest countries on the planet. He publicly insulted the Íslendingar by demanding, like a paranoid cowboy, that he be allowed to pack heat (as in guns, not heaters) while in the country. 5/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/controversial-u-s-ambassador-to-iceland-wants-firearm-security-for-reykjavik-post/
Did the Californian dermatologist nevertheless know Icelandic or have an abiding affinity for their history and culture? No. He gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump. 6/
What if, instead of going to these rich friends and old buddies, our ambassadorships instead went to invested cultural experts in the Foreign Service or in the fields of academia? 7/
Surely a scholar of the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges would make for a more productive American ambassador to Argentina than Noah Bryson Mamet, an Obama appointee who’d never been to the country before he was appointed (but had raised lots of $$$, of course). 8/
A career Foreign Service expert would surely have been better than soap opera producer Colleen Bradley Bell, whom Obama named ambassador to Hungary despite her inability to answer a simple question from Sen John McCain regarding America’s strategic interests in that country. 9/
Biden can make a powerful statement about where his priorities are by starkly limiting the number of appointees from outside the foreign service — and by ensuring that the few exceptions are identified by their knowledge for foreign duty and not their knack for fundraising. 10/
Making our embassies places of appreciation rather than appropriation does more than just reinvigorate the public trust. It also reinvigorates the spirit of international cooperation. 11/
In this regard, Biden should ensure that one of these symbolically powerful appointments is @UNESCO — from which the Trump Administration withdrew in October 2017. 12/ https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/12/16464778/unesco-us-withdrawal-trump
(In full disclosure, I am Secretary-General of the US Commission on Military History, the American component of the International Commission of Military History, whose history leads directly back to UNESCO.) 13/
https://www.uscmh.org
https://www.uscmh.org
America’s strained relationship with UNESCO goes back decades — today it’s complicated by the membership of an independent Palestinian state — but Trump’s withdrawal marked nothing more than his desire to win points with his base’s hatred for anything related to the UN. 14/
But UNESCO has undergone significant reforms. And its dedication to the international spirit of cooperation in science and cultural exchange is something America should embrace and foster. 15/ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03311-3
Rejoining UNESCO — and appointing as American ambassador someone with the appropriate credentials — would signal, in a single stroke, the resetting of our international agenda from the isolationist mentality that has harmed our relationship with so many would-be allies. 16/
Whatever the embassy, having ambassadors with credentials beyond a letter from the president (especially one they bought through their checkbooks) is the embodiment of effective “soft power” on the international stage.
It’s good foreign policy. It’s cheap national security. 17/
It’s good foreign policy. It’s cheap national security. 17/
It underscores our commitment to democratic ideals rather than oligarchic classes. It renews the faith of our Foreign Service professionals. It even scores ready political points. (Though that shouldn’t be the reason for doing the right thing, it surely can’t hurt.) 18/
More than all that, appointing qualified individuals would be an easy and extraordinary way to help restore Americans’ trust in government by showing them a world in which the levers of government aren’t controlled by who you know, but what you know. 19/
Look to the work being done by American Foreign Service Association — @afsatweets — who for years have been seeking diplomatic corps fixes to what @RadioFreeTom has elsewhere called the Death of Expertise. Look to where a parade of unqualified appointees has taken us. 20/
The administration of President Biden can fix this. All it takes is telling some rich fundraiser that he doesn’t get to be ambassador to Luxembourg — that we’re restoring our country, not pay-backs.
It’s Day One. Let’s do this, Mr President.
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It’s Day One. Let’s do this, Mr President.
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