US State Department Plans to Close Five Foreign Missions

The US State Department has notified Congress that it plans to close five foreign missions in a rare downsizing of America’s global diplomatic footprint, according to people familiar with the notice.

In the notice sent to some congressional committees late last week, the State Department said it ‌planned to close its posts in St George’s, Grenada; Nagoya, Japan; Medan, Indonesia; Douala, Cameroon; and Winnipeg, Canada. The people familiar with the notice spoke on condition of anonymity because the notice was not public.

The expected closures, which have not been previously reported, represent a rare example of the United States closing multiple foreign missions in a downsizing that is not tied to a particular geopolitical event.

Early last year, during the opening months of the Trump administration, the State Department began preparations to shut down ⁠nearly a dozen foreign missions, Reuters and other media outlets reported at the time, as part of a broader push by the Republican ‌president to transform the US bureaucracy so that it is fully aligned with his “America First” agenda.

The White House Office of Management and Budget had advocated for an even more ambitious closure programme, targeting up to ‌30 foreign missions. Some administration officials have privately argued that some smaller foreign missions are inessential and not cost ⁠effective.

Democrats and some former foreign ⁠policy and national security officials argue that cuts to the US diplomatic footprint – coupled with the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, which provided billions of ‌dollars worth of aid globally – risk undermining American leadership, while leaving a dangerous vacuum for adversaries such as China and Russia to fill.