Restore Career Ambassadors to Fill 115 Vacant Posts Now

Fill the vacant ambassadorial posts with career Foreign Service officers — all 115 of them. The American Foreign Service Association calls this the highest vacancy rate in modern history, and the damage is not abstract. The Philippines faces Chinese Coast Guard aggression with no U.S. ambassador present. Sudan is at war. The DRC is battling Ebola. Somalia has U.S. troops on the ground and no ambassador. China has a diplomat in every single country where we have a vacancy. The administration recalled 31 career ambassadors simultaneously in December 2025 with no replacements nominated, shredding the Foreign Service Act's 70/30 career-to-political split. Replacing seasoned diplomats with a small circle of presidential envoys has not worked — Foreign Policy gave that approach an F for handling Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza. Former diplomat Brett Bruen said the U.S. team "broke every rule of high-stakes negotiations" in Russia talks. Ambassadors are not a luxury. They are a form of American power that, on its best days, listens and attempts to understand the nations they serve in — cheaper than aircraft carriers, quieter than sanctions, and irreplaceable when a crisis breaks. An America without ambassadors is not America First. It is America absent.