U.S. diplomats depart; the new Grand Egyptian Museum

0:00This message comes from IDTech. IDTech is where kids 7 to 17 find their people. The Camp Crunch Labs IRL, BattleBots, and Game Design People. Visit IDtech.com and use code IDTECH to save$150. Today on State of the World, U.S. diplomats depart and the new Grand Egyptian Museum.

0:26You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. In a few minutes, we visit a new museum showcasing artifacts from ancient Egypt. First, at the same time the U.S. is flexing its military might overseas, it is also seeing a loss of diplomatic talent. The State Department has had a surge of new retirements. Like the military, the Foreign Service is a so-called up-or-out system, so diplomats have to be promoted to stay in. And longtime Foreign Service officers are finding it hard to advance during the Trump administration.

1:05NPR's Michelle Kellerman explains why this is happening and the ramifications. Kelly Adam Smith served for 28 years as an American diplomat and recently retired along with others who still wanted to serve. It's heartbreaking, staggering. We had experts on every area of the world going out the door at a very senior level. She was on tap to become ambassador to Moldova, but was nominated in the Biden administration when many career diplomats languished in the Senate confirmation process. After Trump came back to office, she received an impersonal email. I said, dear colleague, you are no longer considered to be a nominee and that I needed to find another position within the Department of State.

1:53She says the government invested in her training over the years. She speaks Russian, Romanian, Czech and other languages. But finding a place in the Trump administration proved difficult. It was our job to give the American taxpayer a return on that investment. And we have not been able to do that now. The State Department points out that the numbers of retirees is up because some of those foreign service officers worked in the now dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development. A statement to NPR says career ambassadors have been encouraged to seek onward roles. But there aren't many opportunities, says former ambassador to Estonia George Kent.

2:33He says the Trump administration effectively fired him on day one, so when he returned to Washington, he retired, and says there have been larger-than-usual retirement classes recently. What this shows is that under the second Trump administration, there's a concerted effort to make senior foreign service officers feel unwelcome, not give them onward assignments, and to try to create the conditions in which they retire, leave willingly, so that they are no longer within the system. In recent decades, about 70 percent of American ambassadors were career diplomats, but more than 90 percent of Trump's ambassadors so far are political appointees, and the Foreign Service is shrinking.

3:17We've lost 20, 25 percent of our Foreign Service officers over the last 16 months, and my guess is that will take a decade to recover just on the personnel side, not to mention institutional integrity. That also worries Daniel Rosenblum, who retired as ambassador to Kazakhstan last year. The real thing that haunts many of us as we're looking at it is, how bad will the damage be and how long will it take to recover? His social media feeds have been filled with news of retirements, including most recently the acting ambassador to Ukraine, Julie Davis. And last year, the State Department recalled about 30 career ambassadors from overseas assignments.

3:58Very few, if any, of them have found opportunities and most of them are heading towards retirement. Dozens of embassies remain without an ambassador, including Moldova, where Kelly Adams-Smith was planning to serve. She says in diplomacy, America is ceding ground to its geopolitical rivals. We have more than 80 embassies without an ambassador right now. We are disarming. We're unilaterally disarming. Russia or China would never do that. She's now teaching at American University and still encouraging young people to think about a future career in the foreign service. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, the State Department.

4:37The new Grand Egyptian Museum has been more than 30 years in the making. Its decades of planning and construction were interrupted by the Arab Spring Revolution and a slump in tourism. But it has finally opened its doors to the public. It replaces a dimly lit, cramped museum in downtown Cairo. The new spacious museum, which cost around a billion dollars, is just outside Cairo, in Giza, next to the pyramids and the Sphinx. It bills itself as the largest museum in the world dedicated to a single civilization, ancient Egypt, with 5 ,000 years of history on display. NPR's Aya Betrewe recently had the chance to visit the museum, and she brings us along as she sees its collections for the first time.

5:24So the first thing that greets you when you walk into the Grand Egyptian Museum are these really, really high ceilings. You can see the sunlight beaming through, and in the center is a towering ancient Egyptian statue of Pharaoh Ramses. He's standing with his fists clenched by his side. My name is Matilda Filipek. I'm from Poland. It's very great in here, very crowded, but it's great so far. I can't wait to see pyramids. So when you come up the last escalator and you get to the top of the museum where the main galleries begin, the first thing that greets you are these massive, huge windows. And right through, straight, you see an eyeline view of the pyramids.

6:18And it's magnetic. Everyone's got their phones out. It is breathtaking.

6:26I'm Mona Mohamed Al-Sibai. I'm truly in awe. It's really beautiful, and to see something that's thousands of years old, it's incredible. It is so crowded. Every single glass encasement is surrounded by people taking photos, people from all over the world.

6:53I'm Maddie McPherson from Utah. I think that it's amazing that they have managed to fit as many exhibits and collections in this museum as they can. And there's still more that we haven't even seen. Any of the exhibits that stood out for you so far? Well, I think the exhibit that we're in right now, Tutankhamen's burial exhibit, just the fact that there were shrines within shrines within shrines, and then the sarcophagus and the coffins. And I think it's very special that we're able to see it. One of the most popular exhibits I've seen so far here is the sarcophagus and coffins. Because they're so well-maintained, you can still see all the vibrant reds and turquoise and coral colors and navy blue colors.

7:47You can still see all the drawings of the lotus flowers, the phoenix, the etchings of the hieroglyphics. everything is so well preserved. Hello, I'm Father Jacob Lindell from Ohio. I'm a priest studying Rome, but I'm here on a visit to Cairo, visiting the Grand Egyptian Museum. What I'm looking at right now is the funeral mask of King Tut that you've seen in pictures, you've seen on magazines, and here we are in the flesh. It's a little different when you can actually see it with your two eyes and your perspective. and as a I'm a Catholic priest and as the attention that we give to our dead, it's something that's constant throughout cultures and it's really cool to see the different ways that different cultures have paid respects, but of course this is for their king, this is for their pharaoh and you can't really get the amount of gold the lifelike eyes the jewels, it's incredible To see the bust of Tutankhamun, there's actually a line that kind of wraps around the exhibit and the glass that contains the actual bust.

8:57And it sort of reminds me as if you were going to the Louvre and there's a line to go see the Mona Lisa, very much like that. Hi, I'm Mark Austin from Utah. What's the feeling you're walking away with? How advanced they were. The feeling of awe, how advanced the pharaohs and their kingdom. That they managed. That was NPR international correspondent Aya Batraoui visiting the new Grand Egyptian Museum just outside Cairo.

9:36And that's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening. This message comes from ID Tech. ID Tech is where kids 7 to 17 find their people. The Camp Crunch Labs IRL, BattleBots, and Game Design People. Visit IDtech.com and use code IDTECH to save$150. This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash switch. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. This week on Up First, gas prices just jumped 30 cents per gallon in a single week. With the Strait of Hormuz still closed, the global energy shock is only getting deeper.

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