Former President Donald Trump, the current Republican primary front-runner, recently released an ambitious plan to rework the federal bureaucracy. While this plan — the centerpiece being Schedule F, which would allow Mr. Trump to fire up to 50,000 federal workers and replace them with loyalists — has been soundly rejected by his Democratic opposition, it does speak to a bipartisan desire to remake the federal government to be more responsive and democratic.
But one area of the federal government has been overlooked when it comes to reform: foreign policy bureaucracy and, in particular, America’s system of ambassadorial selection.
Any future president wishing to truly change establishment foreign policy will need to grapple with a deeply embedded and ideological foreign policy bureaucracy that is predisposed against change. In changing how they select ambassadors, presidents could provide themselves with solutions to this problem.
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Events on Grand strategy
