Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came into the State Department with promises to streamline the agency. However, so far, his plans to do have mostly taken the form of staff reduction.
According to the New York Times, Tillerson has launched a department reorganization with the goal of cutting the department's budget by 31 percent. As such, he has frozen hiring and is offering a $25,000 buyout to almost 2,000 career diplomats and civil servants in hopes that they'll leave by October 2018.
Members of the State Department say this is a bad idea. Career diplomats sit at the top of the department; the Times compares them to four star generals. By cutting their ranks from 39 to 19, as Tillerson is on track to do, critics of the secretary's plans say the department will be without leadership.
“Leadership matters,” Nancy McEldowney, a former ambassador who retired in June, said. “There’s a vacuum throughout the State Department, and the junior people now working in these top jobs lack the confidence and credibility that comes from a presidential nomination and Senate confirmation.”
Not only that; those still at the State Department fear the future of the department is in jeopardy. Without experienced hands to train the next generation of diplomats, department officials fear that in 30 years, the U.S. will be a weak international presence.
Too, students graduating from international relations programs that would normally apply to the State Department jobs are taking heir talents elsewhere, fearful that the department no long offers paths for career development. The Foreign Service Association recently admitted that it has seen a 50 percent drop in applications.
Democratic members of the House Foreign Relations Committee are just as concerned as State Department employees. They recently wrote a letter to Tillerson denouncing “the exodus of more than 100 senior Foreign Service officers from the State Department since January,” and “what appears to be the intentional hollowing-out of our senior diplomatic ranks.”
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) sent Tillerson a very similar letter, warning the secretary that “America’s diplomatic power is being weakened internally as complex global crises are growing externally.”
And the Senators weren't taking necessarily about 50 years down the line.
Like many other Trump administration departments, many empty seats in the State Department have yet to be filled.
For instance, although the United States continues to near the brink of nuclear war with North Korea, the Trump administration has not appointed an ambassador to South Korea or an assistant secretary for East Asia. The people filling both those positions are the point people for dealing with North Korea.
The same is true in the Middle East and Africa, where dozens of ambassadors' and secretaries' chairs are empty.
In a move that has also been seen in other department, the new leader of the State Department is working hard to undo Obama's legacy there.
Newsweek reports that the Obama administration worked hard to hire and promote officers who were women and of color at the State Department, in order to ensure it “looked more like America.”
Those at the top that Tillerson has fired or offered buyouts to have overwhelmingly been women, black or Latinx.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career Foreign Service officer who served as ambassador to Liberia under Mr. Bush and as director general of the Foreign Service and assistant secretary for African affairs during the Obama administration, felt the pressure to leave but stood her ground to remain until her September retirement date.
She said that while she is among those black high-ranking officials asked to leave, she didn't “feel targeted as an African American.” Instead, echoing the words of many other department employees, she said, “I feel targeted as a professional.”
