The US and its allies are getting some press coverage by kicking Russian "diplomats" (intelligence agents actually) out of the country over the poisoning of a retired Russian spy and his daughter in England last week. We used to do this pretty often during the cold war. I assume the Russians will retaliate shortly, probably by kicking a bunch of allied diplomats out of Russia. And, after the shouting dies down, both sides will replace the expelled diplomats/intelligence agents with new people.
Back before electrical communications (telegraph, telephone, radio, and such) the whole system of diplomacy, ambassadors, diplomatic immunity, extraterritoriality of embassies, the diplomatic pouch, and so on was developed. A country's ambassador, knowing that communication with his national capital takes weeks, acted on his own say-so in matters such as declaring support or opposition to host country's military moves, (invading or being invaded), hiking tariffs, arresting your nationals, fitting out warships for use by a rebel movement, anything. Nowadays, the ambassador doesn't do anything until his home government sends him a cable. We keep the diplomatic system up partly from habit and largely for the intelligence it can gather. There is a lot of very valuable legal intelligence that can be gathered simply be reading the local press, and buying maps and books.
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