Farewell to Mexico’s snake-eating eagle, the Saudi Arabian sword and the broken trident of Barbados.
Hello, stars and stripes.
For decades, the flags of the 190 or so countries with which the United States maintains diplomatic relations have hung above the State Department’s main atrium, greeting visitors with a menagerie of symbols, creatures and colors.
Today, however, they are gone. Each one has been replaced by an American flag, forming a red, white and blue row perhaps 100 feet long in what could be the highest density of stars and stripes anywhere outside a flag factory. For good measure, two gigantic American flags — many times larger than the others — have also been hung at both ends of the lobby.
The change has touched a nerve in diplomatic circles, where many State Department veterans call it an embarrassing symbol of the Trump administration’s showy brand of nationalism.
But Trump officials and allies have suggested that some State Department bureaucrats have grown too cozy with the countries they handle, and have confused their interests with those of the United States.
“It’s a good reminder of who we work for — the American people!” Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, posted on X beneath a photo of the new flag array, when it was unveiled on June 29.
The change drew little notice at the time, perhaps because Mr. Landau framed it as part of the country’s 250th birthday celebrations, leaving the impression that it would be temporary. But the new look got a second look this week after another social media post showing the long row of American flags went viral online.
The new flags “remind State Department employees who they work for,” wrote the post’s author, Matthew Kroenig, a conservative senior fellow with The Atlantic Council and a professor at Georgetown University who has worked at the Defense Department.
The post, which circulated far more widely than Mr. Landau’s original announcement, prompted disdain from foreign policy veterans.
“It’s so much worse than ‘America First,’” said Aaron David Miller, a State Department veteran of several administrations who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It sends the extraordinary signal to the world that it’s America only.”
Even the celebrity chef and humanitarian activist José Andrés scolded Mr. Kroenig, saying: “Respect for the world is not weakness. It is strength.”
“Patriotism isn’t measured by how many flags you display,” Mr. Andrés added. “It’s measured by the actions you take to make your flag — and what it stands for — worthy of respect.”
Eventually, the State Department’s top public affairs official, Dylan Johnson, chimed in with the department’s response to the flap.
“In no other foreign ministry or state department in the world do they display the flags of hundreds of other countries in place of their own,” he wrote on social media. “This is the United States Department of State — not the World Department of State.”
That view echoed a common complaint of foreign policy conservatives, who say that U.S. officials can grow beholden to an “internationalist” agenda reflected by the United Nations or the International Criminal Court, even if they are at odds with public opinion in the United States.
Some of the complaints were merely aesthetic. Many visitors found the foreign flags, which had hung in the atrium since the building opened in 1961, to be kind of cool. They often served as a colorful backdrop for television correspondents broadcasting from the building. Even Mr. Landau conceded as much, writing in his original post that the so-called Hall of Flags was “one of my favorite places.”
“When I was a boy, I used to accompany my father to the office on Saturday mornings and marvel at all the different flags,” he wrote.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who doubles as President Trump’s national security adviser, has not weighed in on the matter.
But Mr. Miller noted that the move came under the official purview of Mr. Rubio, “who once fashioned himself an internationalist” as a Republican senator from Florida before joining the Trump administration.
By Tuesday, Mr. Kroenig was firing back at his critics. He posted on X a public statement issued by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken — a Democrat and proud supporter of international institutions — after the February 2021 death of his Reagan-era predecessor, George P. Shultz.
Calling Mr. Shultz “a patriot,” Mr. Blinken said that the late diplomat “took pains to remind his fellow diplomats that their first duty was always to the American people.”
The statement recalled how Mr. Shultz would call incoming U.S. ambassadors to his office before sending them overseas, and instruct them to “point to your country” on a globe. After the ambassador inevitably pointed out the nation to which they were being posted, Mr. Shultz would correct them by moving his or her finger to the United States. “That’s your country,” he would say.
“He never forgot it,” Mr. Blinken concluded. (Mr. Shultz was also a strong supporter of global cooperation and foreign alliances.)
But at least some former department officials angry about the changed flags are unlikely to be persuaded. .
Richard M. Nephew, who worked at the department in the Obama and Biden administrations, said the suggestion that diplomats needed to be reminded of their patriotism was disrespectful to the more than 300 U.S. diplomats who have died in the line of duty. Their names are memorialized on plaques in the lobby.
“The more I think about this, the angrier I get. Next to those flags are the engraved names of fallen State Department officers,” Mr. Nephew said in a post in response to Mr. Kroenig. “How dare you.”
Edward Wong contributed reporting.
The post A Very American Makeover for the State Department’s ‘Hall of Flags’ appeared first on New York Times.
