It's Tough Being A Diplomat In Washington Today

View of the Department of State in Washington, DC. (Kevin Lamarque/courtesy Reuters)

Paul Danahar, BBC: The guilty secret of every diplomat in Washington DC

It's tough being a diplomat when nobody talks to you. It's even worse when they aren't talking to you because they don't think you matter anymore.

When he was just a candidate, Donald Trump declared in his first major speech on the issue that "our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster". His solution was to replace it with a slogan: America First. What he hasn't replaced, now that he is president, are the people normally tasked with projecting America's power around the world.

"It can't be business as usual when the entire [upper] floor of the State Department is missing," one ambassador said.

Ambassadors in Washington are clueless these days, or rather clues are all they have, because, as this one was explaining to me, the usual avenues of diplomacy in the US capital have broken down. The same words were spoken by several ambassadors from across the globe that I've spoken to in DC recently.

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WNU Editor: One thing that I learned very quickly when I was a very low level diplomat many years ago was the following .... 90% of my time involved doing nothing. With time I learned quickly that since I had nothing to do it was best to build contacts and friendships .... which I did .... but truth be told .... I ended up doing everything but diplomacy. I carried this proud tradition when I started to work for the UN .... and that is an even worse story. Bottom line .... you can eliminate 80% of the diplomatic staff from of the UN .... and it will not impact its operations. Flash forward to today .... even though I have been out of the game for a long time .... I suspect that nothing has really changed .... and that all the diplomats in the world .... regardless of the country .... are doing exactly what I did 30 years ago .... 90% of the time they are doing nothing. But here is the conundrum for today's diplomats .... to justify these incredibly well paid jobs .... tax free .... access to duty free goods and all the rest .... you still have to produce. And what you had to produce was a weekly/monthly/etc. report to justify why you are an important diplomat ... and why you should not be recalled. I am laughing right now because I can only imagine how freaked-out these diplomats in Washington are right now because they have no one to talk to .... no useless report to send back home .... and all because President Trump and Secretary of State Tillerson have not even bothered to fill many of these posts .... because they know exactly what I know .... many of these positions are useless. A prediction .... these post will be filled over time .... too many people are dependent on getting an appointment to at least pay their bills.

One other note .... Paul Danahar in his post above writes that the Trump administration has become this ....

.... Diplomacy in Washington has been reduced to a modern-day version of Kremlinology, where each individual policy outcome is used to measure the influence of the people arguing for or against it.

LOL. There were no debates on policy in the Kremlin during Soviet times. It was always their way (i.e. what the Politburo said) or the highway. The Trump administration has many faults .... but mimicking what the Kremlin was like during the Soviet times .... that it is not.