The State Department, which has slowly refilled its ranks since it was decimated under Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is today the most-staffed Cabinet Department, but it still lacks numerous key positions. Three of its six undersecretary positions, its chief legal officer, and its general counsel roles are all either vacant or filled with acting personnel.
At a time when the Trump administration is confronting the restarted nuclear programs of both Iran and North Korea, the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance is being led by a deputy assistant secretary because there’s no undersecretary or assistant secretary.
As part of his ongoing post-impeachment purge, Trump last week fired Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, but there’s also no permanent assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, nor a US representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a key group of advanced western nations. As the US confronts a rising and aggressive China, it lacks a representative to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the closest analogue in Southeast Asia to NATO or the EU. There’s no ambassador to Afghanistan, as the US tries to negotiate its way out of a nearly two-decade war there, nor of course in the wake of impeachment and Trump’s purges is there a permanent
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