ENGLISH
The U.S. State Department has informed Congress that it plans to close five diplomatic missions operating abroad.
According to «Armenpress», this was reported to Reuters by sources familiar with the content of the notification. In the notification sent to several congressional committees at the end of last week, it was mentioned that the U.S. missions in St. George's, Grenada; Nagoya, Japan; Medan, Indonesia; Douala, Cameroon; and Winnipeg, Canada are set to be closed.
Reuters notes that this is a rare case where the U.S. is simultaneously closing several foreign missions without it being linked to any specific geopolitical event.
Democrats, as well as some former officials in foreign policy and national security, believe that the reduction of U.S. diplomatic presence, along with the effective cessation of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) activities, could weaken the U.S. role and create a dangerous vacuum that competitors like China and Russia will try to fill. Although a large-scale structural overhaul was carried out at the State Department last year, resulting in the dissolution of dozens of offices and the reduction of hundreds of staff, no foreign mission was closed.
* This text was automatically translated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
