The Dilemma Facing U.S. Diplomats
As autocracy takes hold, and American diplomats face their consciences, history has much to teach us.
As Elon Musk and his merry band of post-pubescent vandals figuratively carry out drive-by shootings at one federal agency after another, summarily terminating the employment of thousands of career federal workers — from tax processors to nuclear weapons guardians — U.S. diplomats, next on the MAGA hit list, face two existential dilemmas: 1) who among them will be sent packing in the course of minutes? and 2) those allowed to stay must ponder how in good conscience they can defend and promote the policies of a mafia state led by a madman.
In the course of one week, we witnessed the following:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Europeans not to assume that America’s military presence on the continent will last forever, that the U.S. would not accept NATO membership for Ukraine or provide peacekeeping troops, and lectured Kyiv not to expect to return to pre-2014 borders. He added that NATO peacekeeping troops in Ukraine would not be covered by the Article 5 mutual defense commitment.
President Trump announced that in a phone call with Vladimir Putin, the two agreed to meet to discuss an end to the Ukraine conflict. Neither Ukraine nor NATO allies were consulted.
At the Munich Security Conference, Vice President Vance harangued Europeans, insisting that they embrace right-wing parties, and then shunned German Chancellor Scholz, instead meeting the head of Germany’s far-right party.
Treasury Secretary Bessent, meeting President Zelensky in Kyiv, pressured him to sign over rights to half of Ukraine’s critical minerals as the price of American support in negotiations.
Trump again called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, moving them to Jordan and Egypt, thereby destabilizing both countries, and threatening cut off of U.S. aid if they didn’t agree. This comes on the heels of his repeatedly threatening to take Greenland and the Panama Canal by force and annexing Canada.
President Trump signed an executive order titled “One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations,” directing the secretary of state to “implement reforms in recruiting, performance, evaluation and retention standards.” It also directs officials to “revise or replace the Foreign Affairs Manual,” along with “any handbooks, procedures or guidance” governing diplomacy. “Failure to faithfully implement the president’s policy is grounds for professional discipline, including separation,” it adds.
As with their military counterparts, diplomats are expected to adhere to “service discipline,” i.e., to loyally carry out the orders and policies given them from above. Presidents come and presidents go. Republicans and Democrats. Great leaders and poor. Pillars of rectitude and scoundrels. The career public servant is honor bound to serve their commander in chief loyally and put aside personal beliefs. But what does one do when the policies are illegal, extreme, destructive, immoral, even insane? Whereas past officials may have battled their consciences over the Vietnam War, Cuba policy, the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions, the array of morally and legally questionable policies of the Trump administration challenges all who have taken the oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
In recent essays, I have compared Trump’s rapid consolidation of power to Gleichschaltung — Hitler’s aligning or consolidating power to methodically extend authoritarian control over society. Government ministries, the business and media sectors, educational institutions, etc. were quickly suborned; ministries were purged of those deemed not loyal, to be replaced with Nazi true believers. MAGA commissars are employing the same tactics to eliminate opposition and consolidate power in accordance with their Project 2025 manifesto.
It is instructive to see how this played out in Germany’s Auswärtiges Amt — Foreign Ministry some nine decades ago. The vast majority of German diplomats in 1933, the year Hitler assumed power, came from upper-class families, a large number from the old aristocracy. They were very conservative and bought onto Hitler’s pledge to make Germany great again. The sole diplomat to resign was Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron, Berlin’s ambassador to the United States, on the grounds that he could not in good conscience serve the Nazi government. He had hosted German Jewish playwright Lion Feuchtwanger at a dinner that day during which he advised Feuchtwanger not to return to Germany.
Other German and Axis diplomats subsequently found their moral conscience and acted on it.
According to the Study of Rescue and Altruism in the Holocaust (ISRAH), between 1933 and 1945 diplomats representing 27 countries rescued Jews in more than 35 geographic areas. These included diplomats of Axis nations as well of neutral and Allied countries. Japan’s vice consul in Vilnius, Chiune Sugihara helped some 6,000 Jews flee Europe by issuing them exit visas to Japan. German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz covertly helped arrange the mass flight to Sweden of almost the entire Danish Jewish population and other Nazi targets, totaling some 8,000, in 1943. Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz saved the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews, including 10,000 children. At one point, Lutz even jumped into the Danube River to save a bleeding woman, a victim of Hungarian fascists. Switzerland, of course, was a neutral nation. A number of Italian diplomats likewise risked careers and freedom to rescue and protect persecuted Jews.
While the focus of attention on internal opposition to Hitler is on Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and his circle of military officers who conspired in a failed assassination plot against the Führer, a group of German diplomats was also involved. The most interesting figure for me is Adam von Trott zu Solz. Born into Prussian aristocracy, von Trott, a devout Christian, saw Nazism for the evil it was. Determined to help bring the Third Reich down, he joined the Nazi party in order gain access to the secrets and inner workings of the regime. At the same time, he served as a foreign policy advisor to a clandestine group of anti-Nazi intellectuals known as the Kreisau Circle, which coordinated with Stauffenberg. He met secretly with allied diplomats to pass on what he learned as well as the views of his fellow conspirators. After the bomb Stauffenberg placed in the Wolf's Lair failed to kill Hitler, von Trott and his fellow diplomats were rounded up along with the involved Wehrmacht officers, given a kangaroo trial and hanged. At the gallows he reportedly said, “It’s living that makes sense of dying.”
The Department of State is the nation’s oldest cabinet agency. Its effective exercise of soft power to avoid conflict, promote democratic values and human rights, maintain our alliances and counter adversaries is severely damaged by this administration. It is an organization manned by serious, smart and patriotic Americans who labor hard in some of the most dangerous and unappealing places on earth to promote and defend the nation. It can be seen as one pillar of a triad of our national security: Diplomacy, Military, Intelligence. All must function effectively, or risk plunging the world’s sole superpower into weakness, even conflagration.
The U.S. Foreign Service used to be dominated by Ivy-educated men from old upper class WASP families — “Pale, male and Yale.” For decades, this no longer has been the case. The ranks are much more diversified now, ethnically and by gender and class.
The State Department is facing the greatest assault on its people and mission since the McCarthy era. USAID’s shameful termination underscores this. By most measures, it is in crisis. And, by extension, so is the nation’s security. Those in the diplomatic trenches, trying to keep their heads low, are now being confronted with instructions to pursue policies that are legally or morally questionable. Will they merely follow orders, or act on their consciences?
I wrote about this during Trump 1.0. A number of diplomats resigned rather than serve Trump, but, with a handful of exceptions, they were able to avail themselves of early retirement with full benefits. Some confided in me about their angst. One described an increasingly toxic work environment in which employees are afraid to speak frankly, even to friends for fear of being exposed and punished. Another stated he felt like “the last of the Mohicans.” Many simply kept their heads down and took low-profile positions. The vast majority, burdened with mortgages, day care costs, car payments and college tuition for their kids, toughed it out.
This time is different and much, much worse. Those deemed not with the program will be purged, as in other agencies, and replaced with MAGA shock troops. Project 2025’s Gleichschaltung measures are aimed to bring about a bureaucracy of sock puppets serving a master. Expect the morally eviscerated Marco Rubio to be Trump’s Joachim von Ribbentrop, full-throatedly carrying out and defending the ending of alliances, aligning with Putin, pursuing racist policies and even wars of aggression.
The late UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, “It is sometimes said that diplomats lack a moral compass, passively following the orders of bosses and regimes regardless of their political or ethical character — or lack thereof.” And, in The Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt wrote, “Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home.” In other words, one’s actions should not be based on society’s widely accepted norms at a given period of time, but rather on whether one will be able to live with oneself when contemplating one’s words and deeds. Can you look at yourself in the mirror without shame?
If you are an American diplomat, these are the questions you now face.
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.
Wow I believe Pres, VP, Cabinet, Congress, MILITARY, Diplomats and all Civil Servants took a PLEDGE TO UPHOLD THE US CONSTITUTION!!! As our Founding Fathers put forward!!!
Another diplomat who deserves to be remembered for his courage is Aristides de Sousa Mendes. He was a Portuguese consul who gave numerous exit visas to Jews escaping the Holocaust in the face of disapproval from his bosses.