Get ready for turf battles among Trump’s many foreign envoys

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped multiple people for overlapping foreign affairs posts. Get ready for turf battles and confusion over who’s in charge.

The positions include special envoys whose exact responsibilities are unusually vague and that echo roles traditionally played by ambassadors, assistant secretaries of State and National Security Council staffers.

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped multiple people for overlapping foreign affairs posts. Get ready for turf battles and confusion over who’s in charge.

The positions include special envoys whose exact responsibilities are unusually vague and that echo roles traditionally played by ambassadors, assistant secretaries of State and National Security Council staffers.

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped multiple people for overlapping foreign affairs posts. Get ready for turf battles and confusion over who’s in charge.

The positions include special envoys whose exact responsibilities are unusually vague and that echo roles traditionally played by ambassadors, assistant secretaries of State and National Security Council staffers.

Perhaps the most intriguing position Trump has handed out has been to Richard Grenell, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, who will serve as a “presidential envoy for special missions.”

Trump said in a social media post that Grenell “will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.” It’s unclear how Grenell’s duties would intersect with those of others — such as Claver-Carone’s in Latin America.

One Latin American official questioned whether the many appointments would undercut the authority of Trump’s nominee for secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

“It either duplicates or short-circuits the secretary of State’s authority by creating a direct link to or reporting to the White House,” the official said of some of the appointments.

Ultimately, foreign officials will need to talk to as many of the relevant people as they can — “or try to go to Trump if you can,” the Latin American official said.

Asked for comment on the implications of overlapping positions, the Trump transition team avoided specifics.

“President Trump will continue to appoint highly-qualified men and women to critical foreign policy positions who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to Make America Great Again,” spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a tweaked version of a standard statement the transition has been handing out in response to requests for comment on filling administration jobs.

Special envoy roles — sometimes called special representatives, special coordinators or similar monikers — have proliferated in recent decades under presidents of both parties. The first Trump administration had many special envoys, although Trump’s first secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, tried to trim down the numbers.

Usually, however, the jobs are tailored to deal with concrete issues or certain conflicts, and they are meant to ease the burdens of ambassadors, assistant secretaries and others who have numerous other duties.

The U.S. has had special envoys who dealt with resolving the war in Afghanistan, engaging in nuclear talks with Iran, and pursuing climate change talks with other nations. Some have even more focused tasks, such as implementing initiatives from a major conference or trying to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The envoys need to coordinate across what’s known as the “interagency” — which includes the State Department and other Cabinet agencies — in a process overseen by the officials at the NSC.

Such coordination is a challenge under any president. The NSC in particular is often accused of micromanaging policymaking or even sidelining various agencies involved, and often it is NSC officials who are the most influential voices on any particular policy.

In recent decades, presidents have appeared to rely more on special envoys because partisan gridlock made it harder to get Senate approval for ambassadors and other posts.

Lawmakers took umbrage to that workaround, so they imposed rules a few years ago that now mean many special envoys require confirmation. How an envoy’s duties are defined could affect whether they need confirmation, so it’s still possible not all of Trump’s envoys will ultimately require Senate approval

Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed to this report.