Can I be the Ambassador?

From Andres Oppenheimer's OAS is a basket case – but a needed one

On a positive note, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a bipartisan amendment sponsored by Engel and Mack that calls on the State Department to open embassies in five small Caribbean countries —  Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines — where the United States has no diplomatic missions.

Under this amendment, five of the more than 800 U.S. diplomats currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq would open one-person missions in these countries as they are phased out from their current posts in coming years, at no cost to taxpayers. Cuba and Venezuela already have embassies in these small Caribbean nations.

Please don't tell me that the House wants to open embassies in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines just because Cuba and Venezuela have embassies there. That sounds like a terrible reason. 

If US interests are better served by opening missions in these countries, do it.. There are issues related to migration, transnational crime, and trade where having personnel on the islands would probably be useful. There's also a need to assist US citizens on the islands. Those reasons work for me. (But if those are the actual reasons, why just one-person missions?)

What doesn't work is some argument about the need to open embassies on the islands based upon the threat that comes from Cuba and Venezuela already having embassies there. If we fail to station a single American on each island, we are somehow going to lose Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines? It'll be like Carter losing Nicaragua all over again.