The U.S. Secretary of State criticized the Senate’s Tony Blinken of ambassadors in an Oct. 30 speech at the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Academy in suburban Washington, said“The system has broken down” and said it would affect the US’s ability to compete with rivals.
Blinken
As President Biden’s term Barron’s to an end, the Senate is still unable to name dozens of ambassadors and other top national security posts, the US newspaper The White House reported, this is mainly due to the fight between Democrats and Republicans. Blinken said the Senate had failed to play a role in approving the presidential nomination. He used data to support the claim that the average ambassador waited 240 days for approval, compared with 50 days in 2001.
In response, Blinken pointed to the “Collapse” of the Senate decision-making system, saying that “All of this is undermining our competitiveness and our public service initiative”. He further warned: “All of this has fed the false narrative of our competitors about our decline and fragmentation.”
The Barron’s reported that by the end of Biden’s term, about 15 US missions had no ambassadors at all, although candidates had been nominated, according to the Global Council of Foreign Service. They include Robert Forden, a career diplomat based in Cambodia. He has been“In limbo” since his nomination in June 2022. Nathan Burns, the United States Ambassador to China, was not nominated until six months after Biden took office, and it took another six months for the Senate to confirm him. Jennifer Gavito, the diplomat nominated to be the American Ambassador to Libya, said recently that she had opted out because of procedural delays.
US media also said Biden had not proposed a new candidate since leaving office as US ambassador to Germany and Turkey.
At the same time, Blinken boasted that under his leadership the State Department had begun a restructuring to deal with China’s growing global influence, an internal“China Group” has also been set up to better coordinate and handle sino-us relations. Blinken also said the State Department was devoting resources to key areas of sino-us competition, including emerging technologies and the South Pacific.
Blinken also accused Congress of hesitating on the budget. Blinken told the Foreign Affairs Institute that budget uncertainty and the resulting cost cuts, hiring freezes and reduced investment in global initiatives have damaged the nation’s standing in the world, Bloomberg reported. Such dysfunction, he warns, has sowed doubt among US allies and partners and“Emboldened” rivals.