The paradox of noise and the void
Seventeen months after his return to the White House, Donald Trump is dominating the entire landscape. Statements, forceful actions, contradictory signals and dramatic announcements are a daily occurrence. The noise is constant. But behind this commotion, a more discreet phenomenon is taking hold, potentially with graver consequences: in nearly a hundred capitals, the American diplomatic voice remains incomplete, delayed or simply absent.
This silence deserves our attention. Since 1945, the network of embassies has never been a mere extension of American power; it forms its invisible backbone. It is this network that sustained the Western effort during the Cold War, consolidated NATO over the decades, and enabled Washington to prevent or contain many crises before they escalated. Today, this architecture is gradually fraying, without its weakening yet attracting all the attention it deserves.
How can a doctrine founded on the assertion of power and ’America First« claim to reinforce American influence whilst weakening its principal channels for action? The question now goes beyond mere administrative sluggishness. As vacant posts continue, they look less like a delay and more like a method of governance. Where Washington once relied on the density of its institutions and the permanence of its representatives, the centralisation of decisions, immediacy and direct engagement now seem to be favoured, at the risk of undermining, in the silence of embassies, the very foundations of its influence.
When the exception becomes the norm
By 2026, the issue is no longer so much the number of vacant posts as their normalisation. Seeing nearly a hundred US embassies operating without a confirmed ambassador has become almost ordinary.
Yet this apparent normality masks a deeper evolution. Delays are lengthening. Confirmations are becoming scarcer and imbalances are being felt from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, from Africa to the Middle East. For a diplomacy that has long made its global presence an instrument of precision, absence ends up becoming a strategic factor.
A distinction must be made. A charge d'affaires ensures the administrative continuity and daily running of a mission. An ambassador, on the other hand, embodies the political authority of the president. They carry a mandate, give weight to the American message and signal the level of Washington's commitment. One keeps the embassy running; the other gives it its political significance.
Consequently, when these vacancies become permanent, they are no longer merely a matter of bureaucracy. They reflect an evolution in governance: a reduction in the number of intermediaries, a recentring of decision-making around the executive, and reduced autonomy granted to the State Department. The latter was long considered one of the principal instruments of American power. From this perspective, the vacuum appears less as a dysfunction than as the product of a political logic.
However, this evolution is not without consequences. It changes the way Washington perceives local realities, follows long-term issues and maintains its political presence with its partners.
What the void makes disappear
The first loss is also the most strategic: the capacity for anticipation. An ambassador does not merely represent their country; they detect weak signals, take the pulse of the elites, and perceive developments before they appear in official reports. This detailed local knowledge cannot be replaced by video conferencing or remote communication. Diplomacy remains, above all, a profession of presence.
The second loss is more discreet but just as decisive: the erosion of diplomatic memory. When holidays are extended and interim appointments follow one another, the continuity of files is weakened. Yet major negotiations — whether concerning NATO, the Indo-Pacific, technologies, energy, trade or security — unfold over the long term.
They are based on relationships of trust, accumulated knowledge of the people involved, and an institutional memory that cannot be improvised.
Finally, a two-tier diplomacy is gradually taking hold. Washington continues to manage, coordinate and arbitrate major international issues. However, its political presence is becoming less personalised, less visible and sometimes less audible. The United States remains at the heart of global equilibria; yet its diplomatic footprint is shrinking. It continues to influence the world, but by inhabiting it less and less.
The vacancy dividend: when absence benefits others
In diplomacy, an absence is never neutral. When a post remains vacant for too long, it ceases to be a mere lack and becomes an available space. In a world that has become multipolar once again, every withdrawal is observed, interpreted and then compensated for. Vacancy does not suspend the balance of power; it redistributes it.
For United States partners, the consequences are first and foremost very concrete. Without a fully authorized interlocutor, exchanges slow down, arbitrations become more complicated and negotiations lose their fluidity. On dossiers as sensitive as artificial intelligence, supply chain security or defence cooperation, the absence of an ambassador is not a mere administrative formality: it reduces decision-making capacity. Foreign capitals then look for other channels of access to Washington.
Coping strategies are emerging rapidly. Ministries are favouring direct contacts, multilateral fora are regaining a centrality that American unilateralism had partly diminished, and several allies, faced with a less predictable America, are strengthening their strategic autonomy rather than waiting for guidance that has become more uncertain. Without any dramatic rupture, this is a silent reorganization of the circuits of trust, the scale of which Washington does not always measure
Rivals, for their part, know how to exploit these gaps. China, Russia or regional powers do not need to provoke an American withdrawal; they merely have to occupy the spaces it vacates. In geopolitics, a vacuum is never left unfilled for long.
What constitutes an institutional weakness for some quickly becomes a strategic advantage for others.
Trump 2.0: a centralisation diplomacy
Donald Trump's second term rests on a simple conviction: institutions are less instruments of power than constraints on presidential authority. The Department of State, with its culture of continuity, its procedures and its expertise, appears more as a slow-moving apparatus, at times suspicious, structurally resistant to the presidential will. In this logic, expertise becomes a hindrance, and administrative red tape almost a political fault.
This results in a first development: loyalty takes precedence over expertise. Appointments are driven less by a logic of diplomatic experience than by a criterion of political trust. The ambassador is no longer chosen solely for their knowledge of a country or region; they are also someone to whom those in power intend to delegate their own voice. Diplomacy thus shifts from a state service to a more directly personalised relationship with the executive.
The second evolution relates to the primacy of the transactional over the institutional. The method favours summits, ad-hoc initiatives and the immediate balance of power. Conversely, it tends to relegate the patient work of diplomatic networks, daily presence and discreet negotiation to the background. While this approach may offer tactical gains, it nevertheless weakens the drivers of enduring influence.
The most visible consequence is a fragmentation of the American message. Special envoys, informal advisers and parallel channels coexist without an always discernible hierarchy. Partners sometimes struggle to identify the truly decision-making authority, whilst coordination between the various departments becomes more complex.
The paradox is then clear: by concentrating more authority at the top, the system makes this authority more difficult to transmit, harder to interpret and, ultimately, less predictable. Diplomacy gains in personalisation what it loses in legibility.
The strategic cost: a power that speaks loudly but sees less
The cost of incomplete diplomatic representation does not immediately become apparent. It reveals itself when a crisis occurs and capitals urgently search for an American counterpart capable of deciding quickly, speaking with authority and mobilising already established networks. Whether it is an escalation in the Middle East, a crisis in Asia or an energy shock, every hour counts. Yet diplomacy cannot be improvised at the moment a crisis erupts: it is built beforehand.
Because an embassy is not just a place of representation. It constitutes a permanent mechanism for warning, knowledge and credibility. When this mechanism weakens, relational capital gradually erodes. Partners become more cautious, diversify their support and reduce their dependence on Washington. In diplomacy, trust is a long-term investment; it can erode much faster than it is built.
Beyond the vacant posts, it is therefore a more profound evolution that is taking shape. The United States remains the foremost military power and one of the principal economic and technological powers on the planet. Yet by favouring impulse over presence, personalisation over institution, and centralisation over network, they are progressively reducing the finesse of their foreign action. A great power can retain its capacity for coercion whilst losing its diplomatic acuity. It can dominate the media space without fully occupying the political terrain. The true cost of the vacancy is not the decline of American power; it is the progressive erosion of its capacity for anticipation, influence and strategic depth.
The lesson of the middle powers
It would be tempting to view this situation as an American singularity, specific to a superpower capable of absorbing, at least temporarily, the effects of its own contradictions. Yet, the paradox highlighted goes far beyond the case of the United States. It recalls a fundamental rule of international relations: the more limited a state's resources, the more the continuity of its diplomatic presence becomes a decisive factor in its influence.
For middle powers or states with more modest capabilities, an embassy is not merely a symbol of sovereignty. It constitutes a strategic lever. Where a great power can sometimes compensate for incomplete representation through its military, economic or technological weight, other states have far fewer margins. Their credibility rests first and foremost on their presence, their consistency and their ability to be represented where decisions are being prepared.
The effects of a prolonged vacancy are not always visible in the short term. They accumulate gradually. They reduce the capacity to influence decisions upstream, undermine the continuity of negotiations and weaken the networks of trust built up over time. Added to this is a more subtle but equally real cost: incomplete representation ultimately fosters an image among partners of a less present, and therefore potentially less committed, State.
In an international system that has once again become more competitive, diplomacy is no longer merely an instrument of representation; it constitutes one of the principal power multipliers available to states that can rely neither on mass effect nor on coercion. For them, every embassy is an advanced outpost of influence, information and negotiation. The short-term saving made can thus translate, in the long term, into a loss of capacity for action.
A power that risks seeing less far
The paradox of diplomatic Trumpism is now becoming fully apparent: wanting to project greater authority while weakening the human instruments that give it reach. By favouring centralisation, personal relationships and immediacy, Washington runs the risk of eroding what has long constituted one of its main strategic assets: a dense, experienced diplomatic network capable of acting before crises erupt.
The question is therefore not administrative; it is geopolitical. A model founded on transaction, emissaries ad hoc and can the concentration of decisions sustainably respond to a world where crises are multiplying, where alliances are being reshaped and where rivalries are played out as much in networks of influence as in balances of power?
The coming crises will provide part of the answer. But one certainty is already clear: in an international system that has become multipolar once again, a power's influence is not measured solely by its military, economic or technological capabilities. It also depends on the density of its networks, the quality of its presence on the ground and the continuity of its engagement.
A superpower can continue to dominate the news while gradually losing its ability to shape political balances. For diplomacy is not only about projecting power; it also makes it possible to understand the world before others do. Ultimately, the real risk for Washington is not losing its voice; it is losing part of its capacity for anticipation — in other words, seeing less far ahead.
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