The US is reportedly eyeing a slash in its diplomatic presence – mainly in Western Europe – as part of its latest cost-cutting drive at the State Department.
Rumors began circulating last month that a major reduction in staff at foreign embassies and consulates could be part of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s larger push to reduce the size of his department under pressure from White House adviser and auditor Elon Musk.
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Discussions about this major reduction in America’s diplomatic footprint come as President Donald Trump takes heat for his hostile treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during last week’s White House visit that upended bilateral diplomatic efforts to sign a security deal and halt the fighting in Ukraine.
Politico first reported on Feb. 11 that Rubio was looking to overhaul the State Department and was open to at least a 20% reduction in staff. The US has hundreds of diplomatic missions worldwide and tens of thousands of employees.
The State Department Executive Secretariat asked the Defense Department, CIA, and other agencies to rank existing embassies on a scale from zero to ten in terms of their “importance,” Politico reported later the same month.
The ranked list was to be weighted so that a quarter of the embassies in each region receive scores between zero and two; a quarter between three and five; and half between six and ten, an anonymous official told Politico.
America the Horrible
On Thursday, The New York Times reported that senior officials have begun drafting plans to close at least a dozen foreign consulates and lay off hundreds of local employees who work for the diplomatic missions.
On Friday, Reuters cited unnamed US officials to name a number of small European consulates that might soon be slashed, including those in Leipzig, Hamburg and Dusseldorf in Germany, Bordeaux, Rennes, Lyon and Strasbourg in France, and Florence in Italy.
US consulates in Belo Horizonte in Brazil and Ponta Delgada in Portugal were reportedly under consideration as well.
Officials also said the State Department had notified Congress on Monday of its plan to close its Gaziantep branch in Turkey, which supports humanitarian work in northern Syria.
“Some of these are so small the savings from cutting is quite insignificant… It just fits with the theme of the administration’s performative and arbitrary cuts without any method or strategy,” an unnamed US official told Reuters.
The planned cuts formed part of Trump’s cost-cutting agenda – championed by billionaire Elon Musk, the largest donor to Trump’s election campaign – across the federal government, the effectiveness of which has been questioned by a Reuters report as savings via terminations have been reportedly outweighed by health and retirement programs spending.
The US State Department has over 270 diplomatic missions worldwide with nearly 70,000 staff, including 45,000 local employees, 13,000 foreign service members and 11,000 civil service employees, according to Reuters, citing the department’s site.
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