ANTHONY BUTLER: SA could get an ideological US envoy
We may get the worst of all worlds: a political appointee who has been appointed on ideological grounds
First published in Business Day
The nomination of US ambassadors is one of the most entertaining dramas in the world’s most advanced banana republic.
In the early 1970s, then US president Richard Nixon — not always a paragon of virtue — instructed an aide that “anybody who wants to be an ambassador must at least give $250,000 … I’m not going to do it for political friends and all that crap.” This equates to a campaign donation of about $2m in today’s money, quite a sum given that the ambassadorship in question was in Belgium.
About three in 10 US ambassadors have been political appointees rather than career diplomats over the past half century. In Western Europe — and in Caribbean islands with beautiful beaches — this figure rises to seven in 10. This means the US is represented in most big economies by amateurs: a recent article in Foreign Service Journal shows that the total GDP of hosts with professional US ambassadors has shrunk dramatically.
Political donors rarely want a spell in Kabul, and they look askance at shopping and recreational opportunities in Islamabad, Brasilia or Abuja. Postings in such capitals, or those across central Asia, have become the highest positions to which US foreign service professionals — typically almost as clever and charming as their international peers — can realistically aspire.
Thinking Americans have consoled themselves that this is all essentially harmless. The ambassador gets the perks of the job (dodgy canapés, an attractive residence and stories about the natives to tell the buddies back home). Meanwhile, foreign service officials are on hand to meet grubby local elites, write the cables and prepare photo-ready development projects in rural areas for the ambassador to launch.
While political appointees have been frowned on by uptight West European governments, Americans believe this is because they don’t have enough money to appoint shadow officials to do the real work. The US also has the admirable Foreign Service Act of 1980 to deter egregious office buying. However, scrutiny by the Senate committee on foreign relations has always been a low bar over which the least meritorious of wealthy donors can leap with ease.
Donald Trump’s first-term ambassador to SA, Lana Marks, was founder of a leather fashion accessories brand and a long-standing patron of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. To be fair, SA-born Marks attended Clarendon High School for Girls in East London. There she acquired high-level tennis skills and a do-gooder mentality that might — had she not emigrated and been a woman — have led to a successful career at Anglo American Corporation on Main Street in Johannesburg.
The recently departed Reuben E Brigety II was also a political appointee, though he had a PhD in international relations and was briefly dean of Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University. The trouble with amateur diplomats though, even knowledgeable ones, is that they can be dreadfully undiplomatic. At Elliot, Brigety described Trump as a “Nazi sympathiser”. In 2023 he “bet his life” that Pretoria had sent a ship filled with weapons to Russia.
We may look back fondly on Marks and Brigety, not least because they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. The assertive second Trump administration does know what it wants: to force a de-alignment from China and Russia, and cause demonstrable pain for the International Court of Justice case on genocide in Gaza.
Trump’s state department believes professional diplomats spend too much time understanding their hosts, are risk averse, and avoid confrontations that might affect their career prospects. Sadly, there are probably no do-nothing rich donors who want to live in Pretoria. That means we may get the worst of all worlds: a political appointee who has been appointed on ideological grounds.
• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.
Practical Reason 