America’s diplomats are missing in action — it’s endangering national security

Like millions of Americans, I am tuning into the Women’s World Cup, excited with the hopes of a three-peat for Team USA. It is a thrill to watch veteran Megan Rapinoe, breakout star Sophia Smith and the rest of the U.S. Women’s National Team members. But imagine if they were missing all of their forwards or their defensive backline playing against their toughest competitors like Germany and Brazil.

This is basically what we are doing when it comes to deploying America’s diplomatic team on the global playing field. And this time, we’re playing against China and Russia with our security and economic interests on the line.

The facts are clear. Even as a last-minute deal emerged to confirm 17 critical foreign policy leadership positions ahead of the Senate recess, we cannot lose sight that nearly 70 posts are also unfilled with close to 50 nominees remaining trapped in a dangerous procedural blockade by a small number of U.S. senators. This includes high-ranking State Department and USAID officials, our nation’s ambassadors and leaders at other key foreign policy agencies.

The United States Senate must do what it takes to put America’s full team on the field.

As the Senate goes on recess, let’s begin with the reality of what we’re facing. It’s an incomplete lineup resulting in a unilateral reduction of our civilian forces on a diplomatic battlefield where our adversaries are showing up in force, with real risks to our national security. For example, China now has more diplomatic posts around the world than the United States and they just upped just their diplomacy budget to a record $8 billion per year. This comes as Vladimir Putin continues to destabilize Europe and global food security by prosecuting his war against Ukraine.

At American outposts around the world, 1 in 4 American embassies currently are in limbo awaiting a Senate vote for an ambassador to lead our engagement in those countries. More than 35 of those 50 embassies have no current sitting U.S. ambassador. This is diplomatic insanity.

But the numbers only tell part of the story in countries critical to America’s interests.

As we compete with China on the global stage, we are failing to demonstrate our full strength and influence in the wider Indo-Pacific region with six ambassador posts sitting empty. And as we compete with Beijing in Africa, eight countries currently lack sitting U.S. ambassadors along with the U.S. ambassador to the Africa Union, where China has already overtaken the U.S. as the continent’s largest trading partner.

At this perilous moment in Europe, as we counter Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, critical posts for American engagement are vacant, including the State Department’s assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs and the U.S. director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

In the Middle East, Egypt and Kuwait are critical for stability in the region, but neither has a Senate-confirmed chief of mission. In our own hemisphere, we still lack an ambassador in Colombia, where every issue from trade and exports to counternarcotics to migration is on the table. One glaring national security example: The State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism has lacked a Senate-confirmed leader for more than two and a half years.

Most frustrating is the reason behind these delays. Twenty-four nominees for senior roles have completed all the required steps for a vote on the Senate floor and more than 80 percent of those are nonpartisan career Foreign Service Officers, which means they shouldn’t be controversial at all. The average confirmation process for presidential appointees has increased to 127 days — up more than 10 percent — and the State Department and related agencies account for close to half of all pending Senate-confirmed appointments across the federal government.

Why? Largely because Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and a few others are using senatorial procedures to drag out the process and deny nominees a vote without a substantive basis for the objections to individual nominees.

Will a tiny minority continue to hold America’s national security and our nation’s frontline diplomats hostage?

The answer I hope that the Senate might summon can be found in the words that Paul himself wrote earlier this summer, that we must “elevate diplomacy to the forefront of United States foreign relations.” But a big part of elevating diplomacy takes showing up. There again, the senator once wrote that “‘Peace through Strength’ only works if you have and show strength.”

Endless, pointless and unnecessary delays to confirm the most senior positions at America’s foreign affairs agencies jeopardize our security and economic interests in every corner of the globe from Asia to Europe to Africa to our own hemisphere. In every competitive playing field, China and Russia are showing up, while we are stuck with our best players pacing in the locker room, waiting desperately to suit up. Even with a crowded legislative docket, the Senate needs to make these nominees a priority for an up or down vote.

Because in a world where the stakes are not a game, it’s time to get America’s team on the field.

Liz Schrayer is president and CEO of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.