A brief overview of how the State Dept works: The top people meet publicly. But the real work gets done by long time employees. Over the years, these people get to know their counterparts and build the relationships that will help define diplomacy in the years to come. During the Trump era, much of that was obliterated. And it’s gonna take a long time to fix it. “In an interview before taking office as the current Secretary of State, Antony Blinken warned that the departure of so many career diplomats had deeply damaged the department. That ‘penalizes you in all sorts of ways that will go on for generations, not just for a bunch of years,’ Blinken told me. Absent a more robust department, he said, ‘We’re going to get into all kinds of conflicts we might have avoided through development, through diplomacy.'” Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker: Can Biden Reverse Trump’s Damage to the State Department?