The United States’ diplomatic corps is experiencing an identity crisis. The Trump administration is hollowing out the longstanding cadre of apolitical professionals and prioritizing allegiance to the president over expertise and competence. The debate over what’s happening–and why it matters–is taking place mostly inside Washington, D.C., with most Americans seemingly unaffected by the changes. But who represents U.S. interests abroad should concern everyone. The fact that it doesn’t reveals a structural problem with the Foreign Service.
At stake is who advises the president and secretary of state on foreign policy decisions. Is it a narrow cohort of ultra-loyal political appointees? Or a wide array of experts who spend decades shuttling between Washington and posts abroad?
Neither structure works. Both have led time and again to foreign policy results with which the American people disagree. The foreign policy the U.S. government champions is consistently disconnected from the American public.
In short, America’s diplomats feel foreign to Americans.
Recent efforts to reform the Foreign Service do not go far enough to address the question of how the president gets the best information to make decisions – and who informs him. Minor reforms or returning to the status quo ante will only compound this problem and lead to more unpredictable see-saws in American foreign affairs.
Fixing U.S. diplomacy will require a wholesale reorientation of how foreign policy agencies interact with, represent, and recruit from all of the United States. To create a foreign policy that reflects America, the country’s diplomats need to be brought inside the United States.
U.S. Diplomacy is Being Overhauled. Do Americans Care?
For decades, the Department of State’s Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) – and smaller services in other agencies – were viewed as apolitical civil servants pursuing evergreen goals of the United States. FSOs traditionally composed the second layer of policymaking below elected officials, their Cabinets, and select deputies, serving as the experts that analyze, shape, and execute U.S. foreign policy.
After his first administration, Donald Trump and his advisers began to see this arrangement as undermining presidential authority. In their view, rather than serving the elected president without reservation, unelected bureaucrats were conducting their own foreign policy: a deep state representing secret liberal views overseas.
Following a blueprint contained in documents such as Project 2025, the administration has quickly moved to deepen political influence and loyalty within the bureaucracy.
- A little over a year ago, the State Department terminated 1,350 Foreign and Civil Service officers.
- Thousands more from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) lost their jobs with the effective closure of the agency in early 2025.
- Fifty-five percent of ambassadorial posts remain unfilled 18 months into the administration.
- Of those nominated, a record-high 92 percent have been political. The historical norm was a 70-30 split in favor of career ambassadors.
- Recent Office of Personnel Management (OPM) decisions have made a wide swathe of positions trickling down the decision-making hierarchy eligible for political appointment.
Experts have fretted that the loss of an apolitical, expert service is resulting in bad foreign policy. They allege that diplomacy run through tightly controlled channels of loyalists has led to the continued and costly war with Iran with little to show at the bargaining table and a China pressing its diplomatic advantage in the South China Sea and in emerging technology.
But outside Washington, the debate over who should represent the U.S. government overseas is not gaining much interest or attention. Foreign affairs is perennially low in unprompted survey priorities for Americans. According to a survey by the Partnership for Public Service, only 35 percent of surveyed Americans know anyone affected by the State Department’s recent firings. Foreign policy consistently lags behind other areas of concern during presidential election years by large margins. Americans are increasingly feeling unsure about the U.S. role in the world. Young people in particular feel negatively about once-core foreign policy principles, such as U.S. support to Israel.
In short, Americans don’t see how foreign policy affects them because they don’t feel connected to the country’s diplomats or the work they do.
Concentrating Diplomats and Diplomacy in Washington
The State Department is a relatively small federal agency. Its overall footprint is around 40,000 people, double that when counting Locally Engaged Staff, foreign nationals who work for the U.S. government in their home countries. At 14,000, State’s FSOs are just a portion of this agency. Until the last decade or so, there were fewer FSOs than people serving in U.S. military bands.
FSOs spend their careers moving among the 272 U.S. embassies and consulates across the world every two or three years. After a few overseas tours, they return “home” to serve in domestic positions almost exclusively at headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., before heading back to posts abroad.
Non-Washington postings are a tiny proportion of the State Department’s U.S. footprint. A handful of “diplomats in residence,” often late-career officers, pepper the country’s elite universities. Offices tasked with supporting foreign diplomats, investigating fraud and threats, and processing passports and some visas account for a few hundred officers, a miniscule portion of whom are FSOs.
FSOs otherwise interface with the United States sparingly: usually a lone month every few years as part of congressionally mandated “Home Leave.” And while some FSOs have houses and family spread across the country, many spend Home Leave near Washington.
Even if a recruit is from Ohio or Florida, the State Department quickly reshapes their geographic ties because its training facilities, domestic postings, and promotion boards are almost exclusively consolidated in Washington and Northern Virginia. This is the region where officers inevitably put down roots, buy homes, and spend their mandated Home Leave. The result is a system that takes Americans from across the country and turns them into Washingtonians.
Diversity for Whom? Diversity Efforts are Missing Important Elements
Prior to the last major reforms in the 1980s, the country’s diplomats were derisively identified as “male, pale, and from Yale.” This description referred to State’s predilection to recruit from exclusively elite universities and field almost all white men. The few women officers had to resign their commissions once they married as recently as the 1980s.
For 45 years, successive administrations sought to recruit more widely across racial, gender, and religious lines. Yet, a landmark 2020 Government Accountability Office report revealed that between 2002 and 2018, minority representation in the State Department workforce only inched up from 28 percent to 32 percent, while the proportion of African Americans and women decreased. Crucially, the Senior Foreign Service remained stubbornly homogenous.
The second Trump administration moved swiftly to end all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives at State, in parallel with similar efforts across the government. Administration officials aggressively stripped DEI offices, external programs, and recruitment initiatives, saying they were discriminatory and did not reflect a culture of merit.
Private organizations operating within State–chiefly the Benjamin Franklin Fellows–have in recent years claimed to be restoring meritocracy. Yet this group has come under significant criticism for advancing conservative political ends rather than seeking “diversity of thought.” A glance at the Franklin Fellows roster seems to confirm those criticisms: the vast majority are white men from privileged backgrounds, with deep ties to Washington.
Why did decades of diversity initiatives yield such lackluster results? And why do current efforts to restore “merit” look so much like the old status quo?
Both sides of this political tug-of-war are still fighting over the exact same tiny, elite, Washington-centric talent pool. And State is architecturally aligned to concentrate talent and recruitment in that exact same geography.
Through the 2010s, top-flight undergraduate and graduate programs continued to dominate Foreign Service admissions, producing a self-reinforcing elite cadre. Analysis by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training of past FSO entry test results revealed a massive academic disparity. Graduates from elite Northeastern schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Vassar historically passed the written exam at a staggering rate of roughly 60 percent. When less than 5 percent of all applicants become FSOs, this bias skews even further.
A Domestic Assignment for a Foreign Affairs Agency
To more concretely root State–and U.S. foreign policy–in and among the American people, the department needs a mandatory domestic pillar for FSOs. Instead of shuttling only between overseas tours and Washington, State must create a domestic service requirement and the infrastructure to support it.
Over time, this reform would create domestic offices of the State Department across all 50 states, staffed by a small team of FSOs and local hires. In addition to a Domestic Liaison Office (DLO) in each state, the State Department would create positions that interface with significant industrial centers linked to American competitiveness.
State would task DLOs to understand the drivers of state-level legislation, embed with industry, map the supply chains and talent that supports American competitiveness, and report back to Washington. This reporting would add significant value to the previous Washington-based analytical and decision-making process.
An example: A State mission in Michigan would have a DLO in Lansing, led by a senior FSO and staffed by a small team of economic, political, and public diplomacy officers. A branch office in Detroit would interface directly with the automotive industry and other areas significant to U.S. economic competition.
This DLO would include greater outreach to diaspora communities–in the Michigan example, the significant Lebanese and Palestinian populations–to inform how Washington constructs foreign policy. These offices would encourage engagement through foreign exchange programs with communities concretely linked to the area, its economic and social interests, and community.
A DLO in Detroit could blend State, the Department of Commerce and its Export Advocacy Centers, and Department of Homeland Security offices along the Canadian border, and local staff from the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, and other federal agencies. This is a familiar domestic security structure but often lacks an international policy frame.
The officers in Lansing would have a mandate to recruit from Michigan universities and community colleges. Working as a local hire in this office would also have its benefits. In addition to shaping the outreach above, State could grant local hires an accelerated path to Foreign Service and a bonus on their entry test (a familiar technique for increasing State’s pool of foreign language skills).
Later in her career, an economic officer in Indonesia who had served in Detroit would be able to call upon her industry experience, U.S. connections, and DLO colleagues to help secure nickel supply chains vital to electric vehicles – and which U.S. competitors such as China dominate.
This approach would critically focus on targeting U.S. trade and economic security policy in a way that protects industry and the American jobs it supports. While the Department of Commerce has a domestic complement, they are focused on transactional trade, not overall policy. Career diplomats with overseas experience – and onward assignments – would add a significant layer of strategy to these transactions, helping guide State, Commerce, and other foreign policy agencies toward better deals.
Phase 1:
- The president signs an executive order directing the secretary of state to create liaison positions within state capitals to better understand state priorities and where they overlap with foreign policy – similar to the Pearson Program with the U.S. Congress, where a small clutch of U.S. diplomats spend time as foreign policy advisers on Capitol Hill.
- The administration and State begin work with Congress on necessary changes to the Foreign Service Act of 1980, to include requiring domestic service for promotion into and through the Senior Foreign Service.
Phase 2:
- Based on feedback from state capitals and consultations with Congress, Washington bureaus transition DLOs from their temporary, state-hosted desks into permanent lease agreements with existing federal footprints across states. This includes integrating political and economic FSOs into existing State Department offices in Portsmouth, ME; Charleston, S.C.; and Williamsburg, KY.
Phase 3:
- State assigns officers at the first posts (likely the most readily available interagency spaces). Management bureaus distribute and implement assignment and promotion requirements among a pilot cohort.
This idea is surprisingly inexpensive.
Although this framework requires congressional approval to be sustainable, State can pay for this expansion–and more–with some long-overdue international rightsizing. Around 20 consulates – almost all in Europe – continue to operate despite the balance of geopolitical and economic power shifting significantly since the years they were established. (The consulates State has announced its closing in Asia and Africa are neither enough nor the right targets.)
Closing these consulates in cities such as Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Florence, Leipzig, and Amsterdam could save between $80 and $100 million on security, lease, maintenance, and shipping costs for assigned diplomats. That’s more than enough to pay for an expansion of 50 state offices and industry embeds, especially as they’ll piggyback on other federal infrastructure.
It’s fewer cushy posts. But that’s the point.
Pacing these closures over three years gives time for State to restructure its domestic footprint and assignments process. It could also give time for the necessary diplomacy to assure allies that the United States remains committed to them, but is constructing a foreign policy that gives it greater access to the United States and pierces the political shield of Washington.
Foreign Policy By, With, and For Americans
The dismantling of USAID and the massive reductions in personnel at State caused suffering across the globe, both for the hundreds of thousands of people that U.S. programs supported and the U.S. employees who lost their livelihoods. But, in the United States, this tidal wave of disruption almost exclusively happened in one place: Washington.
It was too easy for the administration to make the case to Americans that these overseas programs were not in their interests and to claim that the public servants affected were unsympathetic, corrupt government bureaucrats because they largely dwelled in the “swamp” that is Washington. Job losses and even human suffering did not register because they were abstract concepts.
Requiring a domestic rotation for the country’s diplomats will create a much-needed bond with the people they serve – one that goes both ways. There’s also a hidden benefit here. Well over a year after the 2025 job cuts, hundreds of State and USAID officers are still without jobs. Private sector companies have a hard time seeing profit in what they view as abstract policy work. Former government employees have a hard time getting over that barrier on their own, even though they could possibly be transformative employees.
With domestic tours under their belts, a future diplomatic corps would better speak the language of American business and come to the job market with knowledge of specific sectors and states. They would have deep networks outside Washington.
This is what foreign policy of, by, with, and for Americans could look like. Rooting foreign policy inside the United States makes it more representative, more strategic, and more durable.
By reflecting and hearing from Americans, U.S. diplomats will be better equipped to advocate for the vital interests of Kansas City, Memphis, and Tampa when they are stationed overseas. By integrating with industry and the states, they can help the United States compete with rivals with the full faith and confidence of the American public. Finally, with connections throughout the country, America’s diplomats will feel less foreign – and therefore it will be harder to mischaracterize and shunt them away.
