America Without Ambassadors

One year ago, I wrote a piece called The Diplomatic Void. I warned that nearly a third of America’s ambassadorial seats were empty, that the Senate was sleepwalking, and that adversaries were watching. I called for a flood of appointments and Senate confirmations, a 60-40 balance between career and political appointees, and an audit of the holdovers from the previous administration. I said the time for delays, dysfunction, and divided loyalties was over.

Twelve months later, I am writing to tell you that the void has not closed. In many of the most consequential capitals on Earth, the posts are still missing a U.S. Ambassador.

The Baseline From June 2025

When I wrote the first piece, the picture was already grim. Of the 195 ambassadorial posts, 71 had no nominee. Another 41 nominees were stalled inside the Senate confirmation pipeline. Only 11 had been confirmed since President Trump was inaugurated. Seventy-two career officers appointed under the previous administration were still calling the shots inside our embassies abroad. That was the starting line. I said then that an army cannot fight with half its generals AWOL. I meant it.

Where We Stand in May 2026

Per the American Foreign Service Association tracker, updated this month, the Trump administration has put forth 80 ambassador-level nominees across the entire second term. Of those, roughly 57 have been confirmed by the Senate. The remaining 22 to 23 are still sitting in the confirmation pipeline, some of them have been waiting since February of 2025. The last Senate confirmation of an ambassador came in December 2025. After 16 months in office, fewer than 1 in 3 American embassies has a Trump-appointed U.S. Ambassador.

Then there is the larger number. Roughly 115 of the 195 ambassadorial posts have no Trump nominee at all. That is just under 60% of the American diplomatic footprint with no name attached to it by this administration.

Those 115 posts fall into three categories.

The first are posts run day-to-day by a chargé d’affaires, a lower-ranking Foreign Service officer holding the Embassy without the authority of a Senate-confirmed ambassador.

The second are posts still occupied by career holdovers from the previous administration, the same lifers I flagged a year ago.

The third are a small handful of countries with which the United States does not currently exchange ambassadors, such as Iran and North Korea.

Strip out that last category, and well over 100 strategic posts remain for which this President has not yet sent the Senate a name. That includes Moscow, Riyadh, Berlin, Cairo, Kyiv, Baghdad, Islamabad, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Brasilia, Bogotá, Lagos, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Jakarta, and Kuwait City. The most strategically valuable real estate on the planet, and no nominee in sight. That is the scope of the void at one year. It is a strategic vulnerability spanning every continent.

A Year of Adversary Advantage

While we sat on our hands, the adversaries went to work.

One year without a Senate-confirmed American ambassador in Moscow. One year. A war is grinding through Eurasia, nuclear rhetoric is on the table, and the United States is represented in the Kremlin’s capital city by a placeholder.

One year without a confirmed ambassador in Riyadh. Energy markets swing on a phone call, Iran is closer to a weapon than at any point in this century, the Abraham Accords need a steward, and the Saudis have been left to read American intent off cable news. The House of Saud does not respect a chargé. They respect a confirmed American with the President’s number in his pocket. We have not sent one.

Berlin. The political nerve center of Europe, the largest economy on the continent, the keystone of NATO.

Brasilia. The hinge of the Western Hemisphere, the gateway to South America, a country actively flirting with Beijing’s orbit.

Kyiv. The most consequential European war since 1945, billions of American dollars and weapons flowing into the theater, and the senior American on the ground does not have the rank to walk into the presidential office with full authority.

Every one of these capitals has no ambassador appointed by this administration and confirmed by the Senate majority. Sixteen months in. There is no rational national security justification for that fact. There is only inertia, ego, political horse-trading, and a Senate that has decided that the lives of Americans abroad and the credibility of the Republic can wait until after the next recess.

While we wait, the adversaries do not.

China sends ambassadors with Belt and Road checkbooks and instructions to buy ports, mines, and elections. Russia sends ambassadors who have studied us for 30 years and know our pressure points better than we know our own. Iran sends operatives who do not bother with credentials, because credentials are for nations that play by the rules, and Tehran does not. They show up. They work the room. They cultivate the host government. They leave with the influence we once owned. We send chargés. The equivalent of a colonel in a meeting that demands a general, and then we wonder why the room treats us like a colonel.

The Foreign Service Is Bleeding Out Beneath the Vacancies

The vacancies at the top are only half the story. Underneath them, the career service is collapsing in real time, and that includes those stationed domestically. The American Foreign Service Association reports that the Foreign Service workforce has lost more than 20% of its ranks since January 2025. 1 in 5 officers walked out, retired, were pushed out or were driven out. These are not entry-level desk officers. These are the political officers, the economic officers, the regional specialists, and the linguists who keep an embassy operational while Washington argues over who gets the corner office. They are the men and women who hand a new ambassador a country book on day one and tell him where the bodies are buried. They are leaving faster than the Senate can confirm anyone to replace the people above them.

Think about what that means in plain terms. We are losing the people who can read a foreign minister’s body language, who know which colonel in the host military actually runs the unit, who can pick up a phone at midnight and get a hostage out of a holding cell. That talent is not interchangeable. It has been built over decades. It does not come back when you finally decide to recruit again. We are running two failures in parallel. The political appointment machine is choked at the top, and the career workforce is hollowing out beneath it. The combination is catastrophic.

The result is an American foreign presence that cannot provide the political access, linguistic depth, local relationships, or intelligence reporting the Commander in Chief needs to make sound decisions.

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Naming the Failure

I am a soldier. In the military, after-action reviews are brutal, honest, and assign responsibility by name. So let me run one.

The United States Senate has failed. Both parties. Republicans control the floor and have not moved nominees with anything close to the urgency this moment demands. They have allowed the calendar to bleed, the recesses to pile up, and the political class to treat ambassadorial confirmations as a secondary chore. Democrats have weaponized every procedural tool available to stonewall almost every name attached to this President’s foreign policy. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has allowed qualified nominees to sit for months on end without a hearing or a vote. Cloture has been treated as a parlor game. There is no constitutional excuse for this pace. There is no national security justification for it. There is only political cowardice, institutional rot, and a Senate that has forgotten its advice and consent duty is a duty, not a favor it grants when convenient.

The State Department has failed. The career bureaucracy that should be a force multiplier for any sitting President has too often functioned as a slow-walk machine, resisting the administration whose policies these officers took an oath to execute. Some of that resistance is honest professional disagreement, and honest disagreement has its place inside the building. Much of it is not. Much of it is ideological obstruction dressed up as process. The American people did not elect Foggy Bottom. They elected a Commander in Chief, and the men and women under his authority owe him execution, not sabotage.

The nominating process inside the White House has failed at scale. Two countries on the brink of war, half the G20, and the entire former Soviet space cannot be left to chargés while political vetting drags into a second year. Vetting matters. So does urgency. Both have to move at the speed of war because that is the speed at which our adversaries are operating right now. Three institutions, three failures, one cost. The

The Republic is being represented abroad by a skeleton crew while the world contests every inch of ground we once held. Name the failure, own the failure, then fix it.

What Must Happen, and It Must Happen Now

This is not complicated. The path forward is a matter of will, not analysis.

Confirm the pending nominees. Every name currently sitting in committee or on the Senate floor gets an up-or-down vote within sixty days. No more procedural fog. No more anonymous holds. If a Republican senator is sitting on a nominee, that senator owes the American people a public explanation with his or her name on it. If a Democrat senator is stonewalling on principle, that senator owes the country the same. Hide behind the rules and the rules will be remembered when you ask the voters for another term.

Send names to the Senate for every strategically vital vacancy still standing empty. Moscow. Riyadh. Berlin. Cairo. Kyiv. Baghdad. Islamabad. Abu Dhabi. Doha. Brasilia. Bogotá. Caracas. Lagos. Nairobi. Jakarta. Addis Ababa. None of these can wait another quarter. These are battlefields of influence, and right now we are fighting them with empty chairs.

Rebuild the Foreign Service. The one in five who walked out must be replaced by Americans who understand the oath they are taking. They serve the Constitution. They serve the Commander in Chief. They do not serve a permanent caste inside a Foggy Bottom corner office. Recruitment must accelerate. Training must sharpen. The culture must be unmistakably America First, top to bottom, and the lifers who cannot accept that should find new careers.

Audit the holdovers. Sixteen months in, there is no excuse for a Biden-era political alignment to be running an American embassy in a strategic capital. Move them, retrain them, or replace them. The American people did not vote for continuity of the agenda. They voted for a course correction, and the embassies are part of the course.

The Republic runs on people in rooms making decisions in the name of the United States. When those rooms are empty, our adversaries fill the silence. They are filling it right now, in real time, in capitals we used to dominate.

The Constitution gives the President the authority to nominate. The Constitution gives the Senate the duty to advise and consent. Both branches owe the American people a movement. The patriots in this country owe pressure to both branches. Call your senators. Demand floor votes. Read the AFSA tracker for yourself and see whose name sits next to the country you care about. Pray for the men and women still serving abroad without the leadership they deserve.

One year ago, I warned that empty embassies send the wrong message to allies and adversaries alike. One year later, that message has hardened into a posture. We must change it.

The President is one man. He cannot personally sit across the table from every foreign minister, walk every embassy corridor, or carry the voice of the United States into 195 capitals at once. That is precisely why the Founders built the ambassadorial system that meets this need in the first place. The President nominates, the Senate confirms, and the country sends a confirmed American into each of those rooms to extend the reach of the Commander in Chief. When the Senate stalls and the embassies stay empty, the President is left to do alone what a Republic of 330 million people is supposed to do alongside him. No one man, no matter how capable, can substitute for an absent diplomatic corps.

The world is not waiting for us to get our house in order, and the cost of waiting is being measured in influence. We will not go back without a fight.

America cannot remain silent on the global stage.