Lieutenant General Ben Hodges leads about 30,000 American troops stationed across Europe | Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images ‘It hurts not having ambassadors,’ says US Army commander in Europe ‘Now is a bad time not to have an ambassador in Germany,’ says Lieutenant General Ben Hodges.

BEZMER AIR BASE, Bulgaria — The Trump administration's slow pace in appointing ambassadors, which has left major posts vacant around the world, is hampering the ability to carry out American policy, the top U.S. Army commander in Europe said.

"It hurts not having ambassadors," the commander, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, told POLITICO in an interview.

Trump has yet to nominate an ambassador to France, Germany or to the European Union — as well as to Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and to United Nations posts in Geneva, Rome and Vienna, according to the American Foreign Service Association.

Trump has nominated ambassadors to NATO, the U.K., Italy, Belgium, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and the Holy See, but they are all still awaiting Senate confirmation. Dozens of other posts around the world are also vacant.

Trump demanded that all of former President Barack Obama's political appointee ambassadors resign and immediately leave their posts.

Hodges, who leads roughly 30,000 U.S. troops stationed across Europe, said the absence of an ambassador was particularly notable in Germany, where U.S. Army Europe headquarters is located on a base in Wiesbaden.

"Now is a bad time not to have an ambassador in Germany," the general said.

Trump's repeated calls for increased military spending by NATO allies have caused some friction with Germany, which is the wealthiest NATO ally after the U.S.

Trump is pressing allies to meet a previously agreed-upon goal of working toward annual military spending equal to 2 percent of GDP. To fully meet the 2 percent target, Germany would have to vastly increase its military spending, to a level that German officials say may be unwise and impractical. German officials, including Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, have pushed back against Trump's demands.

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen rejected Trump's assertion that Germany owed vast sums, and has said there are other ways to measure contributions to the alliance. Germany has also suggested that Trump does not understand how NATO spending works.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted that Germany remains committed to the NATO spending pledge, but her relationship with Trump has been uneasy for many reasons, including Trump's positions on trade and climate change.

Trump demanded that all of former President Barack Obama's political appointee ambassadors resign and immediately leave their posts. While such resignations are customary, presidents have often allowed for transition periods so that major posts are not vacant for extended periods of time.

The Trump administration, however, has struggled to fill positions not just in overseas embassies but throughout the federal government, in part because of a lack of sufficient planning but also because of opposition and stalling by Democrats, and the unwillingness of some career Republican officials to serve an unconventional president with no prior experience in government.

In the interview, General Hodges emphasized that many ambassador posts come vacant during a change of administration, and so he was not singling out the Trump White House for criticism.

"That's not unique to this change of administration," he said when pressed about the impact of the vacancies. "There were countries under the previous administration that didn't have ambassadors for an extended period of time."

"So I don't want to make too much of it," the general said, "except to say how important it is to have ambassadors and people in place. There's a reason you have them."

Hodges said that one of his priorities was to demonstrate constantly to foreign partners the importance in the U.S. of the military answering to an elected, civilian political leadership.

In all of the embassies with vacant ambassador posts, veteran career foreign service officers serve as chargé d'affaires and carry out the ambassador's duties, but they are typically not expected, nor able to take on the visible, public role filled by a president's personally chosen envoy.

Hodges, who is planning to retire from the military at the end of his tour in September, praised the Trump administration for its dedication to defense programs, which he said had continued smoothly in recent months. The general also said that he had never doubted the commitment of Trump or the White House to America's military allies in Europe.

"From a defense standpoint, I personally have never worried or wondered for a second about what's going to happen," Hodges said.