Ambassador Susan Rice announced to her staff today that the 32 year career foreign service officer Ambassador David Dunn will serve as her interim deputy. He replaces Brooke Anderson, who has moved to the White House to serve as chief of staff to the National Security Council.
Ambassador Dunn will serve as the Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations on an interim basis until a nominee is approved by the Senate. There is no word on when a permanent Alternate Representative will be nominated.
Ambassador Dunn is a recently retired foreign service officer who served as Ambassador to Togo (2006 – 2008) and Zambia (1999 – 2002), Principal Officer in Johannesburg, South Africa (2002 – 2005), Deputy Chief of Mission in Tanzania, Mauritius, and Burundi, and Director for East African Affairs in the State Department’s Africa Bureau.
The Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs is typically the point person for much of the U.S. mission’s interaction with the Security Council. Given that over three quarters of all the business of the Security Council deals in some way with Africa, it is probably useful to have someone with this kind of experience in that role.