FP This Week: The Price of an Ambassadorship

Plus, the latest on Russia’s invasion. [Foreign Policy This Week]( January 30, 2023 | [View in browser]( To access all the benefits of an FP subscription, [sign in]( or [subscribe](. Thanks for reading. “So you want to be a U.S. ambassador? Broadly speaking, there are two ways to do that,” FP’s Robbie Gramer [writes](. The first is to gain experience in a career devoted to public policy. The second, Gramer reports, is “to have money. Lots and lots of money.” The United States is the only Western country that routinely rewards mega-donors with top diplomatic posts. Scouring public disclosure and campaign donation filings, Gramer looks at five countries where major donors were tapped to be ambassadors and totaled up the known available amount they donated. [Read on]( to discover how much the top job in Switzerland, Canada, the United Kingdom, Argentina, and Kenya cost U.S. President Joe Biden’s appointees.—The Editors --------------------------------------------------------------- New and Noteworthy - [The Latest on Russia’s Invasion]( Last week, Germany and the United States announced that they would be supplying Ukraine with dozens of Leopard 2 and M1 Abrams tanks to combat Russia’s invasion. Moscow said these tanks were more evidence of direct and growing involvement by the West in the conflict. FP’s team of reporters answered subscriber questions on these developments in our latest [FP Live]( - [Cities of the Future]( The latest edition of [Flash Points]( explores how cities, new and old, provide glimpses into global leaders’ ambitions and how they’re changing as the surveillance state expands, urban populations grow, and local governments become increasingly important to state-level diplomacy. - [China on U.S. Debt Default]( The big political drama in Washington over the next few months will be the fight over the federal debt ceiling. The worst-case scenario is that Congress refuses to raise the ceiling and the U.S. Treasury defaults on its debt. China views the prospect of U.S. default with worry, not glee, Arthur R. Kroeber [writes](. --------------------------------------------------------------- FP Live [Biden’s Foreign-Policy Report Card]( Feb. 1, 2023 | 12 p.m. EST Two years into his first term, how has Biden fared on foreign policy? Is there a clear Biden doctrine? Is the United States in a stronger or weaker position globally? The answers depend on whom you ask. Join FP’s Ravi Agrawal for a lively debate about the Biden administration’s foreign-policy successes and failures halfway through his first term, with Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Nadia Schadlow, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former U.S. deputy national security advisor for strategy during the Trump administration. [Register here.]( [Do U.S. Sanctions Work?]( Feb. 6, 2023 | 12 p.m. EST Join FP’s Ravi Agrawal in conversation with two experts: Agathe Demarais, the global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit, and Nicholas Mulder, an assistant professor of history and a Milstein faculty fellow at Cornell University. Together, they will explore whether sanctions are an effective tool to achieve U.S. interests abroad and how the government might improve them. [Register here.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Exercise Your Mind Peruvian tourist site Machu Picchu has closed indefinitely due to anti-government protests in the area. Which is not one of the demonstrators’ demands? - The resignation of Peru’s president - Moving the capital from Lima to Cusco - The dissolution of Peru’s Congress - New presidential elections You can find the answer to this question at the end of this email. [Click here]( to take the rest of our weekly news quiz. FP subscribers can [sign up]( to be notified when new editions are available. --------------------------------------------------------------- It’s Debatable: Will Tanks Turn the Tide for Ukraine? Germany and the United States are sending Leopards and M1 Abrams tanks—but Washington’s desired endgame is still a mystery. Matthew Kroenig: You put it well on Twitter. The huge debate over tanks is really a proxy for the broader debate about strategy. Those who want to give the Ukrainians what they need to defeat Russia are in favor. Those who are more cautious or parsimonious were against. I put myself in the former camp, so I am happy the tanks will be sent. But I am puzzled by the rapid about-face in both Washington and Berlin. And I am also not so naive as to think that a few armored vehicles are going to be the silver bullet that suddenly turns the tide of war. Emma Ashford: Let’s back up for just a minute, because I do think it’s an interesting political question. For readers who haven’t necessarily been following this closely, foreign-policy elites in Washington, Berlin, and various European capitals have been almost entirely consumed in recent weeks by the question of whether Germany would send tanks to Ukraine or not. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was hesitant to do so, and I think it was a more difficult problem than many in Washington gave the German government credit for. On the one hand, the Leopards are among the easier to master tank systems that could be transferred to Ukraine. On the other hand, there’s a host of good reasons why Scholz didn’t want to be in the lead on this, from escalation fears to German public opinion to the unpleasant historical echoes of German tanks killing Russian troops on the Eastern Front. So I don’t quite understand why everyone has been so focused on this. The tank debate has taken on an outsized importance in conversations about Ukraine here in Washington. [Continue reading in Foreign Policy]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Most Popular on FP - [How India’s New Bridge to Kashmir Divided a Region]( by Junaid Kathju - [Why Saudi Arabia Doesn’t Want Iran’s Regime to Fall]( by Talal Mohammad - [The True Power Center of Germany Isn’t Berlin]( by Alexander Clarkson - [Mexico’s Government Is on Trial in New York]( by Ioan Grillo - [The Myth of American Exceptionalism]( by Stephen M. Walt --------------------------------------------------------------- From Around FP - “Adani Group: Hindenburg’s claims are baseless”: FP’s Ravi Agrawal talks about the Adani Group’s $50 billion slide amid fraud allegations. Watch the CNN interview [here](. - Freeing the State: Join FP for a [timely discussion]( on the pace of democratic backsliding and concrete strategies for fortifying democracies and democratic movements around the world. Feb. 9, 2023 | 11 a.m. EST | [Register here.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Are you interested in learning more about FP Analytics’ cutting-edge research services, hosting an FP Virtual Dialogue event, or building a podcast with FP Studios? [Explore partnership opportunities]( Answer: 2.) Moving the capital from Lima to Cusco. Corruption is the single greatest factor behind Peru’s protests, Simeon Tegel [argues](. 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