A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is making a last-ditch effort to get more career ambassadors confirmed by the Senate. He's tried to rebuild a department gutted during the previous Trump administration. As NPR's Michele Kelemen reports, those reforms may not last long.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: In a recent speech, before Donald Trump was reelected, Secretary Blinken looked back on what he calls his deep attachment to the State Department, where he started his government career three decades ago.
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ANTONY BLINKEN: Those of us who are entrusted, for a brief period of time, with responsibility for leading this institution owe it to the institution, and owe it to the institution's people, to try to leave it a little bit stronger, a little bit more effective, a little bit more fit for purpose than when we found it.
KELEMEN: There are some changes he made that could last. Blinken has made it easier for Americans to renew their passports online, and he had more diplomats focused on China.
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BLINKEN: We built what we call China House, an office that brings together experts from across the department and other agencies under one roof, where they can better coordinate and better manage this most complex and consequential relationship.
KELEMEN: But he also had his department focus more on disinformation, climate diplomacy and anti-corruption, topics unlikely to get much focus in the second Trump administration. As the transition approaches, U.S. ambassadors are drafting their letters of resignation. Usually, only the political ambassadors leave, while career diplomats tend to stay put, says retired Ambassador Eric Rubin.
ERIC RUBIN: Only once since FDR has an incoming president fired all of our ambassadors, including our career foreign service ambassadors. That was 1981, Ronald Reagan.
KELEMEN: Back then, it took only a few months to get a new ambassador vetted and through the Senate confirmation process. Now Rubin says it can take a year or more, so firing all the ambassadors would be disruptive.
RUBIN: If he fires all the ambassadors, we just won't have any ambassadors anywhere. And China will have an ambassador in every single country.
KELEMEN: Concerns about China's influence in the world is something that also animates the head of the American Foreign Service Association, Tom Yazdgerdi. He welcomed the Biden administration's decision to open up five new embassies in the Maldives, Tonga, the Seychelles, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.
TOM YAZDGERDI: That's great. And I think there was bipartisan support for that - as there should be - but we have more work to do. Everybody has an interest in not sort of ceding the diplomatic field to China.
KELEMEN: This year, the State Department saw its largest-ever class of foreign service officers. But Yazdgerdi says the department is still recovering from the Trump years.
TOM YAZDGERDI: I think we're still playing catch-up ball, to be honest with you. There are still - particularly at the mid-level, we have vacancies. You can see that when you go over - abroad and visit our embassies, we have vacancies. We have vacancies in Washington, as well.
KELEMEN: Many at the department are nervous that President Trump may try to reclassify jobs as political in order to fire career professionals. Others are predicting an exodus of experienced diplomats who might retire rather than serve.
DAN SPOKOJNY: I think that one has to approach this as a normal transition and see how the cards fall.
KELEMEN: That's Dan Spokojny, a former foreign service officer who says career diplomats need to do their jobs, offering nonpartisan advice to the incoming team.
SPOKOJNY: Every foreign service officer, every civil servant - whether they're in national security or otherwise - has to go into their work knowing their own ethical red lines. They understand, deeply understand, their oath to the Constitution.
KELEMEN: He's founder and CEO of fp21, a think tank dedicated to modernizing the State Department, which he says has been losing influence for years.
SPOKOJNY: One could make too much of this just being a Trump effect. I think that there's a broader issue here of the foreign service's authority, supposedly as being the institution of foreign policymakers within our national security establishment. But they haven't been able to play that role for decades, and I think that that's a shame.
KELEMEN: Spokojny says it's a good idea for Blinken to make one last attempt to get career diplomats confirmed. Transitions are tenuous times, he says, and it would be good to have professionals in place, even if the new administration might reassign them.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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