Biden in Rome for the G20 without US ambassadors in 15 countries, including Italy

Arriving at the White House with the promise of ‘America is back’ in dialogue and cooperation with allies and the international community, Joe Biden is about to go to the G20 summit in Rome and then to the COP26 in Glasgow with very few of his ambassadors confirmed by the Senate. as soon as you are. Among the other 19 members of the G20 are 15 who currently do not have an American ambassador in office, considering that in Russia and Indonesia the heads of mission of the Trump administration have been confirmed. And for Italy, which hosts the summit and co-chairs COP26 with the United Kingdom, the ambassador has not yet been appointed. Just as those for the United Kingdom, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Australia have not been formalized. Arriving in the fall of his first year as president, Donald Trump could count 22 confirmed ambassadors, 17 with voice voting in the classroom, numbers that stand out more like some Republican senators, in contrast to the tradition of a bipartisan consensus on ambassadors, are using these appointments to lobby the democratic administration. In particular, Ted Cruz who states that he will not unblock the appointments until Biden backs down on the decision, which he called “a generational geopolitical mistake”, not to impose sanctions for the construction of Nord Stream 2. “It’s like negotiating with a terrorist – says an exasperated Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Chris Murphy, in reference to Cruz – He is not the secretary of state and the people of this country have not elected him or his party to represent us abroad, and instead he wants control of foreign policy. “The line of Cruz and the other extremist republican senators is paralyzing dozens of appointments: after the approvals of the ambassadors to the UN and Mexico, yesterday only those of the former senators, the Republican Jeff, were approved. Flake in Turkey and the Democrat, Tom Udall in New Zealand. And the same “courtesy” also led to the green light for two widows of senators: Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of Ted Kennedy, as ambassador to Austria, and Cindy McCain, the widow of the Republican senator, an enemy of Trump, who becomes the ambassador to the UN offices in Rome.