[3] In 1985, Burghardt was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to serve as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, replacing Constantine Menges as Senior Director of Latin American Affairs on the National Security Council staff.

[1] He was appointed on November 28, 2001 to be the second United States Ambassador to Vietnam, replacing Pete Peterson.

From February 2006 to October 2016, he served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Institute in Taiwan.

[1][5] He is one of the few diplomats who was a serving Foreign Service Officer when the United States derecognized the Republic of China in 1979 and remains a skeptic of the validity of the 1992 Consensus.

[6] As outgoing AIT chairman, he also called for "creativity" and "flexibility" in dealing with the political impasse in cross-strait relations.