2/5/20
Lana Marks is a successful fashion designer and member of U.S. President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Though she has no prior diplomatic experience, Marks is also Trump’s ambassador to South Africa, and last month she forced out her second in command, the veteran career foreign service officer David Young. Several officials say concerns were raised over the conflicting accounts of whether her son would have a role at the embassy. Marks deleted a tweet on Nov. 8, 2019, referring to her son, Martin Marks, as her “chief of staff” on Twitter. She did so at the State Department’s request, the embassy official said. To some current officials, Young’s case illustrated a growing trend in the Trump administration. Already, several of Trump’s political allies-turned-ambassadors—he has appointed a higher percentage than most previous presidents—have sacked their deputies amid a culture of mistrust between politically appointed and career State Department officials. Last month, the State Department dispatched several senior officials to South Africa to help manage tensions at the embassy, two officials said. t’s not the first time the State Department has had to respond to allegations of mismanagement at embassies abroad, nor is it unique to the current administration. But Trump’s politically appointed ambassadors are sacking their deputy chiefs of mission—an embassy’s second-in-command post held by foreign service officers—in unusually high numbers, officials say. This story draws on interviews from over a dozen current and former U.S. officials and other people familiar with the matters in question. The State Department did not respond to five requests for comment for this story.
Along with South Africa, Trump’s envoys in Canada, France, Iceland, Romania, and the United Kingdom have all removed their deputy chiefs of mission, some ambassadors doing so just shortly before or after arriving at their new posts. Ambassadors have full authority to remove their deputy chief of mission, even without cause, given how important the relationship between an ambassador and his or her deputy is to ensuring the smooth management of an embassy. But the high rate at which it’s happening now reflects how wide the gulf can be between politically appointed ambassadors and the diplomatic corps—an issue laid bare by Trump’s impeachment trial that dragged the State Department into Congressional impeachment investigations. Behind the scenes, some officials fear it is hampering embassies’ abilities to carry out their missions. Ambassadors require a presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. Traditionally, two-thirds of ambassador posts are held by career diplomats, while one-third are held by political appointees. Under Trump, the ratio of ambassador posts held by political appointees has increased—42 percent of Trump’s ambassador appointees are political, and 58 percent are career, according to data from the American Foreign Service Association. An unusually high number of ambassador posts have sat empty under Trump, leaving deputy chiefs to lead the embassy for years on end. Since Pompeo came into office, that trend has declined as more ambassador nominations move through the White House and Republican-controlled Senate. The ambassadors’ relationships with their deputy chiefs of mission is key, but it can be difficult to manage with a high-powered political donor-turned-ambassador stepping into an embassy for the first time, said Lukens. “What you want ideally is for the ambassador and DCM to complement one another’s skills,” he said. “It’s a bit more complicated when the ambassador is a political appointee who doesn’t really bring any [diplomatic] skills or background to the job. In those cases the DCM is really responsible for running and managing the embassy.”
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