Over 100 U.S. ambassador posts around the world are sitting empty in the Trump administration, a vacancy rate without modern precedent and one that some current and former officials warn is hamstringing U.S. diplomatic power abroad.
In the Middle East—where the U.S. is simultaneously grappling with ending the Iran war, cementing peace in Gaza and trying to broker a cease-fire between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon—the U.S. doesn’t have ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Iraq or Kuwait. In Africa, 37 of the U.S.’s 51 embassies on the continent have no ambassador.
The U.S. also has no full-fledged ambassador in either Ukraine or Russia as the Trump team works to break a deadlock in negotiations to end the continuing Russia-Ukraine war. Trump relies heavily on his special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, to lead negotiations with Moscow and Kyiv. A career diplomat, Julie Davis, is serving in Kyiv as the acting top U.S. envoy, while also simultaneously serving as U.S. ambassador to Cyprus, the Mediterranean island some 1,000 miles south of Kyiv. She is retiring from the State Department in June, officials said.
U.S. ambassadors are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Lower-ranking career diplomats, known as “chargé d’affaires” in diplomatic parlance, fill these empty ambassador posts as placeholders until an ambassador is confirmed. Those officials often have decades of experience but can lack the clout, gravitas and—most important—access to foreign governments compared with a full-fledged ambassador.
Trump, like other past presidents from both parties, has tapped political allies and deep-pocket campaign donors without prior diplomatic experience for important or plum ambassador posts, such as in Western Europe and the Caribbean. Vacancies abound in many other parts of the world.
In total, 115 ambassador posts out of 195 total positions are vacant nearly 18 months into the second Trump administration, according to the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents foreign service officers. The vacant posts are due to a combination of factors: Trump has been slow to nominate ambassadors, and those he nominates can often be held up in an increasingly slow and logjammed Senate confirmation process. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s decision in December to abruptly recall nearly 30 career ambassadors also contributed to the unprecedented vacancy rate.
Veteran diplomats say the cumulative effect of so many empty ambassador posts adds up to a significant, if diffuse, effect on U.S. foreign policy. “It really limits an administration’s foreign policy in terms of its ability to respond to crises, to communicate effectively with the highest levels of foreign governments,” said Tom Shannon, a former senior career diplomat who served as the State Department’s third-ranking official under both the Obama and first Trump administrations.
“When I was ambassador, if I needed to see the foreign minister, national security adviser or president, all I had to do was call up and they’d see me,” said Shannon, recalling his time as U.S. ambassador to Brazil from 2010 to 2013. “That would not be true for a chargé d’affaires.”
Senior foreign officials from close U.S. allied governments have complained that the absence of seasoned U.S. ambassadors often makes it difficult to pass and receive messages from the Trump White House.
A State Department spokesperson said the Trump administration is committed to advancing an “America first” foreign policy agenda and is currently re-establishing the department committee overseeing the nomination process to deploy more career ambassadors.
Trump officials play down the significance of these empty posts and say the administration’s foreign policy is still operating smoothly. They also point out that Trump leans on trusted envoys to manage relations with multiple countries at a time, which they say offers the president a more efficient model for his chosen envoys to deliver on his foreign policy needs region-by-region.
For example, Tom Barrack, Trump’s ambassador to Turkey, also serves as his envoy for Syria. Sergio Gor, a former top White House aide, serves as both ambassador to India and Trump’s envoy for the Central Asian region. Other trusted advisers to the president, Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, lead both Iran negotiations and Russia-Ukraine peace efforts. Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, is Trump’s ambassador to France.
The total number of U.S. ambassador posts has changed over the years. In some cases the U.S. started or stopped exchanging ambassadors with international institutions. In other instances it closed or reopened embassies in smaller countries depending on changing foreign policy priorities or cost-saving measures.
The current number of empty ambassador posts stands in contrast to previous administrations—including Trump’s first term in office. Almost 18 months into the Trump administration’s second term, around 60% of U.S. ambassador posts worldwide sit empty, according to AFSA data—though there are currently over 20 ambassador nominees in the Senate confirmation process. The White House on Monday sent a batch of new nominees to the Senate, including Trump ally Kari Lake to be ambassador to Jamaica and former failed GOP Pennsylvania Governor candidate Douglas Mastriano to be ambassador to Slovakia.
At around the same point in Trump’s first term, 45 out of 188 ambassador posts were empty—a vacancy rate of around 24%. In 2015, during Obama’s second term, 12 out of 187 ambassador posts were empty, a vacancy rate of around 6.5%.
Write to Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com
