"Sovereign" embassies are stupid and anachronistic
And I'm tired of pretending that they're not.
Embassies are dumb.
The entire concept seems anachronistic to me. More applicable to steamship and horse + buggy times than jet travel and Internet times.
Ostensibly, they are for… what? So your ambassador can chat with a local government functionary? We have Skype for that. So that tourists can get an emergency replacement passport? Can’t we do that online?
The whole notion of some tiny bit of “sovereign territory” within the borders of some other country just seems like nonsense to me.
It’s seeming like nonsense to Mexico too. Last week one of Ecuador’s crooked politicians sought asylum in the Mexican embassy in Quito, Ecuador. Ecuadorian police just marched into the “sovereign” Mexican embassy and snatched him up.
Mexico is crying foul to the UN and whoever else will listen in the “world community”, but I doubt anything will come of their complaints.
Then, of course, there’s the deadly “April Fool’s” prank Israel played this year, when they bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing 16 people, including two civilians.
Killing their enemies in a foreign embassy has been seen as a massive escalation in the ever-war that has gone on in that part of the world for as long as I can remember. But again, I doubt anyone really cares. All this embassy talk feels like hot air.
I’m getting the impression that “sovereign” embassies are just an expensive joke, and have been for a long time. They’re a way for the political class to fleece their tax-paying populace to travel and throw parties and feather their nests while puffing up their fiefdoms.
At best, embassies are a place for spies and black-op soldiers in civvies to rest before carrying out some idiotic provocation. At worst, embassies are easy targets for locals to attack when they are mad at the home country of the ambassador. Why put trip-wires to international conflict all over the globe? Again, we have the Internet.
Whatever actual, important, business needs to be conducted by nation-states can just be done on a video call.
Let’s just grow up and be done with the whole stupid idea of a supposedly “sovereign” embassy, can we?
Naturally,
Adam
Ah, but they serve a long and well established purpose as one of the last vestiges of the spoils system. Depending on how much you donate to the campaign will determine your status as an ambassador. Big well connected donors get their pick of fantastic locations like Paris or Munich, while second tier donors can go to locations like Seoul or Bangkok.