U.S. faces foreign crises with a hollowed out diplomatic corps

National SecurityDiplomacy in declineRoughly 2,000 U.S. diplomats have been laid off or forced to retire, taking with them decades of institutional knowledge, crisis response experience and highly specialized language skills.Dozens of senior career foreign service officers have left the State Department since Trump took office.Justine Goode / NBC News; Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 31, 2026, 7:00 AM EDTBy Abigail WilliamsKelly Adams-Smith dedicated her life to the U.S. Foreign Service, serving her country for almost three decades as a diplomat.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“I came in with my husband. We were a tandem couple. We met in graduate school, took the exams together, entered together and served together for 28 years,” Adams-Smith said. “We also left the Foreign Service on the same day.”She was nominated as ambassador to Moldova in 2024 — a milestone in her career — where she expected to draw on the diplomatic experience she had gained across Europe, along with her training in economics and fluency in multiple languages, including Russian.But in February 2025, Adams-Smith was one of dozens of senior career foreign service officers whose nominations were pulled down by the Trump administration. Offered little to no other prospective jobs to fit her skills, she is part of a wave of high-level retirements from the State Department in recent months as experienced foreign service officers struggle to find available positions in a system that — like the military — you must move up or be forced out.“My job, and the people who left with me, they had more runway. They had expected to serve in those mentoring and leadership roles, and so it was devastating,” Adams Smith said. “But I also felt that there was not a place for me in the department anymore, and that I really didn’t have a choice.” Kelly Adams-Smith at the U.S. Capitol in 2024.Kent Nishimura / Getty Images fileThe State Depar...