How the White House Chooses Us Envoys

The White House selects US ambassadors from two pools: career diplomats, usually with a track record in the region to which they are posted, and political appointees, largely as a reward for their patronage. Appointments have to be approved by the Senate. Most sail through the approval process but some stall amid political infighting, most recently over Christopher Hill, the career diplomat nominated by Barack Obama as ambassador to Iraq.

Increasingly, ambassadors are appointed as a reward for political support or large donations to presidential election campaigns, including recent envoys to Britain, which was once seen as a staging ground for future national leaders after five ambassadors went on to become president. Four out of five US ambassadors to the EU in recent years made large donations to George Bush's Republican party.

Many US ambassadors have no previous experience of the countries they are posted to. That appears to matter less as diplomatic issues between Washington and foreign capitals are settled through direct contact between senior officials.

Any country can veto another's choice of envoy. In 1984 the US refused to accept Nora Astorga as ambassador from the Sandinista government in Nicaragua because of her role in the killing of a general in the former rightwing regime who had also been a CIA operative.