The State Department’s top arms control official is resigning today, apparently at the request of the Trump administration. He joins a large number of managers exiting the agency.
Thomas Countryman has been acting undersecretary for arms control and international security since October 2016, after Rose Gottemoeller left the State Department last summer to join NATO as deputy secretary general. He has been with the agency since 1982, serving in Washington, at the United Nations, and at embassies in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Serbia.
Per standard practice in a change of presidential administrations, federal political appointees submitted letters of resignation following Donald Trump’s election as president on Nov. 8, Reuters reported Thursday. That applies to Countryman for the position he has held since 2011, assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation. The veteran diplomat was told his resignation would take effect Friday, according to the Reuters report.
The State Department on Friday told NS&D Monitor only that Countryman would resign today as undersecretary for arms control and international security, and would retire from the State Department next Tuesday. Countryman himself had not responded by deadline to a request for comment.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone had been selected to replace Countryman as acting undersecretary. The Senate would have to approve any candidate to take the job on a permanent basis.
Word of Countryman’s imminent departure spread quickly Thursday evening through the arms control and diplomatic communities.
“Tom Countryman, FSO, acting “T” at State, told to leave Dept tmrw. Was on plane to Rome for non pro mtg; ordered to turn around & fly back,” tweeted Bathsheba Crocker, who until this month was the State Department’s assistant secretary for international organization affairs.
Separately, Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy and three key career foreign service officials in his branch all resigned without notice on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported. Two other senior State Department officials also exited on Inauguration Day, according to the article.
Other reports questioned the Post’s characterization of the resignations of Kennedy and his team members, with Vox quoting the State Department as saying the four officials had put in their resignation notices when the new administration took office.
While large-scale turnover among senior officials at federal agencies is the norm when a new president takes office, the vacancies at Foggy Bottom are opening up in rapid time before Trump’s designated secretary of state, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has been confirmed by the Senate.
The undersecretary of state for arms control and international security oversees three bureaus: the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance; the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation; and the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. The position’s duties include negotiation, implementation, and verification of arms control treaties covering both conventional and nonconventional weapons.