{"id":99313,"date":"2021-04-03T10:20:29","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T04:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=99313"},"modified":"2021-04-03T10:20:29","modified_gmt":"2021-04-03T04:50:29","slug":"appointment-of-ambassadors-in-us-and-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/appointment-of-ambassadors-in-us-and-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Appointment of Ambassadors &#8211; in US and India"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><b>Synopsis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: The US administration needs to make a choice between appointing career diplomats or big contributors for appointing the new ambassadors. In India as well, there is a practice of appointing diverse people as ambassadors.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Background<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US administration under Joe Biden will be appointing new ambassadors as per the spoil system.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The system allows the president to give government jobs to its supporters, friends, and relatives as a reward for working toward victory.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It is assumed that many ambassador posts would be given to wealthy contributors.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Why are wealthy contributors made ambassadors<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">?<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a token of <\/span><b>reward <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for making hefty contributions towards the party and assuring future contributions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further, their appointment has become a <\/span><b>tradition <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in US politics. Minimum 30% to a maximum of 57% (under Mr. Trump) posts of ambassadors were offered to them.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>US Constitution<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0doesn\u2019t forbid their appointments.<\/span>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Article II provides that the President can appoint ambassadors with the advice and consent of the Senate.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There exists a notion that long careers in the Foreign Service are not necessary to be effective ambassadors.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Why shouldn&#8217;t they be appointed?<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Incompetent:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Many wealthy contributors are not aware of the history and geography of the country in which they get posted.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Undermines Diplomatic potential<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: They treat ambassadorship as an extended holiday and seldom focus on strengthening bilateral relations. For instance, an ambassador wanted to get a private jet on his diplomatic mission.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Appointments of ambassadors in India<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India appoints politicians and other renowned people (Former Maharajas, Judges etc.) for ambassadorship as a recognition of their hard work and talent. The appointments are not based on the quantum of donation towards a political party.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Government apparently has the discretion of appointing political ambassadors in up to 30% of the posts. Apart from this, other positions are filled by career diplomats.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier career diplomats were not appointed to very strategic locations like London, Moscow, or Washington.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Currently, the number of political ambassadors is very small and career diplomats are given top posts in every foreign embassy.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Positive role of Political Ambassadors:<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. K.S. Shelvankar, D.P. Dhar and I.K. Gujral were appointed at the Moscow embassy at different time periods.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They played a pivotal role in strengthening bilateral relations.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Career diplomats used to do much of the work, leaving the political ambassadors to deal with high policy.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kushok Bakula Rinpoche was appointed to Mongolia. He helped in strengthening Indo-Mongolia relations as Mahayana Buddhism provided a common platform for convergence.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Way Forward:<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A balance can be established by appointing some wealthy contributors as ambassadors provided they are familiar with basic history and geography of the nation.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The senate should conduct due investigation and prohibit the appointment of truly incompetent persons.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A potential candidate for ambassadorship of Fiji had to withdraw after a senate investigation or else face FBI charges.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A divergence from tradition will ensure a greater number of career diplomats are made ambassadors. This will boost the credibility of Biden diplomacy but may dry up future political funding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.thehindu.com\/Home\/ShareArticle?OrgId=GEP8EHI44.1&amp;imageview=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Hindu<\/a><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synopsis: The US administration needs to make a choice between appointing career diplomats or big contributors for appointing the new ambassadors. In India as well, there is a practice of appointing diverse people as ambassadors. Background:\u00a0 The US administration under Joe Biden will be appointing new ambassadors as per the spoil system. The system allows&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/appointment-of-ambassadors-in-us-and-india\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Appointment of Ambassadors &#8211; in US and India<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[1333],"class_list":["post-99313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-ir_0","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704708160},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}