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President Donald Trump’s transition team asked more than a dozen senior career diplomats to step down from their roles, two US officials familiar with the matter said, as the newly inaugurated president moves quickly to shape his foreign policy and the diplomatic corps.
Among those expected to step aside as Trump was inaugurated yesterday were the agency’s No 3 official John Bass, who was acting under-secretary for political affairs overseeing policy from Asia to Europe and the Middle East, sources said. His planned departure was first reported by the Washington Post.
One of the sources said all under-secretary and assistant secretary level officials – effectively the entire two layers of officials under the secretary of state – were asked to step down.
Reuters reported last week that the team overseeing the State Department’s transition to the new administration asked three other senior career diplomats who oversee the department’s workforce and internal co-ordination to resign from their posts.
Trump has pledged to ‘clean out the deep state’ by firing bureaucrats he deems disloyal. The staff changes appear to be in line with a broader effort to seize greater control of the federal government than any modern president.
Neither the State Department nor the Trump transition team responded to a request for comment.
The White House issued a statement shortly after Trump’s inauguration listing the new president’s first priorities, among them improved accountability for government bureaucrats.
“On the President’s direction, the State Department will have an America-First foreign policy,” the White House said.
Trump is likely to adopt a more muscular foreign policy and has vowed to bring peace between Ukraine and Russia, and give more support to Israel. He has also pushed for unorthodox policies such as trying to make Greenland part of the United States and pressing Nato allies for higher defence spending.
A diplomatic workforce that dutifully implements rather than pushes back will be key to achieving his goals, experts say.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, during his confirmation hearing last week said the State Department was ‘marginalised’ and that the agency’s staff should have a bigger role in setting and implementing foreign policy.
The officials leaving their roles remain as State Department officials but their future is uncertain. They have the option to retire, but if they wish to stay in the foreign service they would need to find new jobs within the department and be reassigned. That will be up to the new leadership.
While political appointees typically submit their resignations when a new president takes office, most career foreign service officers continue from one administration to the next, even as the incoming president has the right to instal new officials to those positions.
Many of the diplomats who were asked to step down have worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations throughout the years.
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