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U.S. diplomats pride themselves on being nonpartisan. Their careers often span Republican and Democratic administrations. If they don't agree on a policy, they can register their dissent in hopes of influencing change, or they can resign or retire. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that many are choosing the latter right now.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Robbie Marks says he was committed to his job at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, helping refugees uprooted by conflicts.
ROBBIE MARKS: And that was something I really believed in because it's easy to believe in a mission statement that says, our work is to save lives, alleviate suffering and promote human dignity.
KELEMEN: But he says his job changed overnight when President Trump came back to office. The U.S. is now only letting white farmers from South Africa come to the U.S. as refugees, and it's encouraging what it calls remigration - that is getting migrants to leave the U.S..
MARKS: The idea behind it was to use our humanitarian funds that we used to use to relieve suffer to encourage people to self-deport from the United States to their home countries, including with their American children, if they had them.
KELEMEN: Marks felt he could not carry out what was being asked of him.
MARKS: I am a professional diplomat. I'm a bureaucrat. I follow the rules, and if I don't agree with them or the policies of the day, you know, the honorable thing to do is to walk away. And that's what I decided to do.
KELEMEN: Marks was old enough with enough years in service to retire. His and other recent retirement groups have been overflowing, says John Dinkelman, a former career diplomat who heads the American Foreign Service Association.
JOHN DINKELMAN: The intensity of this, shall I say, divorce of the foreign service from the administration is much more deep than anything I've experienced in my 38 years.
KELEMEN: The State Department has not confirmed any numbers, but Dinkelman says the Foreign Service has shrunk by at least 20% in the Trump administration. Asked by NPR if Secretary of State Marco Rubio is worried about the large number of experienced diplomats leaving, his press office wrote in an email that, quote, "the department remains confident in the strength, capability and professionalism of its workforce to carry out its missions at home and abroad." That's not how it feels to Dinkelman.
DINKELMAN: We are dispatched to be the eyes and the ears and sometimes the conscience of our own government. But it seems the value added of the American diplomat has been diminished, at least in the eyes of this present administration.
KELEMEN: Dinkelman says foreign service officers understand that their role is to carry out the policy of a president. A few quit during the Bush administration over the war in Iraq, and more than six publicly resigned over the Biden administration's handling of Israel's war in Gaza. Now we're living through a major policy shift, says Kelly McFarland, a diplomatic historian with Georgetown University.
KELLY MCFARLAND: Different administrations come in, and they've got their own focus on foreign policy, and they want to emphasize different things or change a policy that has been going on, but we've never seen anything really this drastic, at least post-World War II, where it's really trying to shift from this liberal internationalist role for America to a more sort of Trumpian nationalism.
KELEMEN: And that, he says, is a starkly different outlook for diplomats who have served under both parties.
MCFARLAND: It's not necessarily what they signed up for, nor what they believe in at their core.
KELEMEN: Union leader John Dinkelman puts it this way.
DINKELMAN: The department that I entered, I no longer recognize.
KELEMEN: And he says it will take a long time to rebuild America's diplomatic corps. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
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