Former US Embassy, Iran. A tragic real life example that speaks to the story of Embassies.
For this article I will be generally focusing on Western embassy etiquette and purposes, particularly drawing on examples of Australia and New Zealand's diplomatic presence around the world, as well as personal experiences I've had living near Yarralumla, which is the main diplomatic area of Canberra, Australia, and home to a few dozen major Embassies. I also run a social media management business called Embassy Social Media Solutions irl, so there's that smidgen of information.
Diplomacy is a trade that is as old as contact between tribes, and indeed, good diplomacy is a nation's way of introducing and shaping it's place in the world. Bad diplomacy, meanwhile, makes quaint British monarchs talk shit about you.
International diplomacy has a physical form, in that of an Embassy or similar diplomatic post.
What is an Embassy?
In a general sense, an Embassy is a general term that refers to the delegation of people sent by one state to represent it's interests in another, foreign state. This is a malleable definition - for instance the European Union sends and operates 'Delegations' in various foreign nations, such as Australia, which typically deal in European Union-wide interests; and all nations in real life send a diplomatic delegation of people to represent their national interests at the United Nations.
There is a perception that an Embassy refers solely to the physical building or unit which diplomatic staff use. This building is more accurately known as the Chancery.
The size and influence of an Embassy in a particular nation is an incredibly diverse thing. The largest Embassy ever created in real life was the Embassy of the United States in Baghdad, Iraq, which had a diplomatic staff of around 2,000 people and a total staff (including contractors) of over 16,000 people. The Embassy is the size of the entire Vatican City, and has it's own power generation, military barracks, apartments, Olympic size swimming pools, and so on and so forth. Put in perspective, this 1994 article humorously observes that in Minsk, Belarus, the UK and German embassies to the country shared one building. The Germans had the kitchen and, unironically, the living space; and the sole British diplomatic representative to Belarus had one room lit by candles.
How large should my Embassy be?
That depends on your relationship to the other country. For instance, Australia and the United States have a very close relationship and as such the new Embassy being constructed there will have a large contingent of staff, high-end facilities, and the full gamut of diplomatic representatives and consular officials. The Australian High Commission in London is the only place in the world, other than Australia, that is authorised to print full-validity Australian Passports and issue them direct from the diplomatic mission.
On the other end of the spectrum, Australia has no real diplomatic relationship with a number of Central Asian and African nations, such as the Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, and Burkina Faso. Similarly, Canada has little in the way of relations with Pacific Island states that are Australia's regional neighbours, such as Samoa, Nauru and the Solomon Islands. The Canada–Australia Consular Services Sharing Agreement allows citizens of Canada and Australia to seek consular help from specified nations where their own country does not have a diplomatic mission. Other countries have similar arrangements.
In NationStates you can arrange for similar agreements - for instance, any New Hayesalian citizen can seek assistance from an Allanean, Paddy O Fernaturian or Zellatian Embassy if the NH Government does not maintain one in that country.
There are a variety of diplomatic posts that you can use to represent your diplomatic interests and/or care for the consular needs of your citizens. In general, from most to least importance, they are:
- An Embassy, with a diplomatic and maybe a consular corps, with a level of staff appropriate to your interest in that nation.
- A Consulate-General, which is the same as a Consulate but with a higher-ranked officer in charge of the particular facility, who generally have a reasonably large staff working for them. They may also represent some diplomatic interest in a small country or self-administering province where a full sized Embassy would be considered excessive or inappropriate, for instance, the United States Consulate-General in Hong Kong. Unless they are the only diplomatic post in the country, they are often placed in cities with large populations, that are economic centres, or that have a high number of their nation's citizens visiting as tourists.
- A Consulate, a small office headed by a Consul that provides a varied level of consular services to people. They will generally report to a larger Embassy in that country, and are generally situated strategically in areas similar to a Consulate-General, but also in smaller cities. For instance, while Australia maintains an Embassy in Tokyo and a Consulate-General in Osaka, it only operates a Consulate in the far-northern city of Sapporo.
- A Representative Office of some variety. While these can indeed offer the full service of diplomatic and consular affairs, they are typically located in States that have limited recognition and are seen as a way of ensuring diplomatic representation in a particular nation-like state without implying recognition. For instance, Australia has a Representative Office in Palestine, and a wide variety of nations have Economic Offices in Taiwan.
- An Honorary Consulate, which is generally headed by a very small staff or only one person. That person may not even be a national of the state they represent, but instead be a trusted member of the local community who performs the duty of representing the country and providing very limited consular assistance (such as passport and visa applications.) For example, a number of Honorary Consuls live in Cairns in northern Australia, typically from Germany or Scandinavian countries, to provide services to the relatively high number of backpackers in the area.
- At-Large representation. This may mean that an Ambassador, and the staff of an Embassy located in a nearby state, are authorised to perform diplomatic and consular services in other countries as well. Many Ambassadors of small countries that have Embassies in the United States are also accredited as that state's diplomatic representative to Canada and Mexico, and perhaps other nations on top of that. Such accreditation ensures the diplomatic staff maintain the protection of diplomatic immunity when performing duties in the accredited state.
Note also that you can have an Embassy and multiple consulates in a country. For instance, while Australia maintains an Embassy in Washington DC, it also maintains six Consulate-Generals in different regions of the United States. That's nothing compared to Japan, who also maintain a Washington Embassy and an additional 17 consulates and similar posts across the US and her territories.
One further consideration for when you are developing your own diplomatic program is that almost all Embassies are found in capital cities. There are only a few examples (such as the US Embassy in Tel Aviv) of Embassies not located in capital cities and there are generally very exceptional reasons for this. It is perfectly fine to have a small Embassy in a state's capital city that handles only diplomatic arrangements, and a single or multiplicity of Consulates in major population centres. For example, the Russian Embassy in Canberra (population 381,000) offers almost no consular services but Russia's consulate in Sydney handles the consular needs of the entire country (23 million).
What does an Embassy do, and who works there?
While the specific services offered at an Embassy depend, from country to country, the two key missions of diplomatic representation is to represent the interest of a state's government to the other nation's government, and to provide support to their citizens within that country. These are respectively termed Diplomatic and Consular services.
Here is an excerpt from my Embassy Program which outlines why I invite people to open an Embassy in my nation:
1: Interviewing New Hayesalians and other foreigners that want visas to travel to your country, be it for tourism,
work or study; and to ensure that they are qualified and will return to their home countries following their stay.
2: Promoting your economic interests, at the mutual benefit of your nation and New Hayesalia. This includes promoting fair
trade, and promoting products and services from your nation's companies.
3: Maintaining diplomatic relations and promoting your political interests, allowing your nation and New Hayesalia to work
together to solve issues, develop solutions and ideas, and build a better situation.
4: Reporting events and trends back to your nation. Your Embassy and Consulate staff meet with their counterparts and can
report back information that may not appear in international newspapers. This necessary pipeline of information is difficult without an embassy.
5: Providing assistance to your government employees doing government business in country. For example, they may arrange meetings
for high-level New Hayesalian officials with their foreign counterparts and make logistical arrangements.
6: Providing services to your Citizens in times of need and crisis.
7: An Embassy serves, symbolically, as a clear sign that your nation wishes to develop deeper bilateral ties with New Hayesalia.
work or study; and to ensure that they are qualified and will return to their home countries following their stay.
2: Promoting your economic interests, at the mutual benefit of your nation and New Hayesalia. This includes promoting fair
trade, and promoting products and services from your nation's companies.
3: Maintaining diplomatic relations and promoting your political interests, allowing your nation and New Hayesalia to work
together to solve issues, develop solutions and ideas, and build a better situation.
4: Reporting events and trends back to your nation. Your Embassy and Consulate staff meet with their counterparts and can
report back information that may not appear in international newspapers. This necessary pipeline of information is difficult without an embassy.
5: Providing assistance to your government employees doing government business in country. For example, they may arrange meetings
for high-level New Hayesalian officials with their foreign counterparts and make logistical arrangements.
6: Providing services to your Citizens in times of need and crisis.
7: An Embassy serves, symbolically, as a clear sign that your nation wishes to develop deeper bilateral ties with New Hayesalia.
Naturally this is a small selection of reasons. For instance, you may have an Embassy in a state that is a protectorate or otherwise under your control in some way (think Soviet Embassy in East Berlin, or the Thalmor Embassy in Skyrim). Other reasons you may open an Embassy include:
- Military co-operation or joint training arrangements, which is relatively common;
- Operating an espionage operation in some way, shape or form;
- Command base of a secret force of some variety (eg. KGB agents in the aforementioned Soviet Embassy who may work to arrest dissidents)
Consular services essentially deal with the safety and safekeeping of your own citizens (or approved foreign nationals) or people seeking to visit your nation. They may involve:
- Issuance of visas and passports;
- Processing applications of the above;
- Facilitating the renunciation of citizenships;
- Notarising births, deaths and marriages;
- Help establish markets and commercial opportunities with their own nation's and local businesses;
- Providing a variety of services to nationals arrested or convicted in a nation, such as organising legal support, visiting them in prison, or petitioning to the host nation for their release or sentence commutations in some serious cases (for example, the Executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.) Many of these, particularly the right to be notified of the arrest of their own nationals and the right to visit them in prison, are guaranteed under international law and diplomatic customs.
- Providing support to citizens who are injured in a foreign nation, particularly in mass events;
- Organising the evacuation of citizens and approved foreign nationals in the event of waror disaster.
Embassy Staff are the people that make it all possible. The number of staff that you need is a matter for agreement between your nation and the host state! NationStates is literally huge, and as such your staff are not going to look like real numbers either! Some nations put limits on staff - eg, no more than 50 staff total, no more than 20 security staff, no more than 30 consular staff, etc.
Personally, I think this is a very low number. The population of New Hayesalia is in excess of 15 billion people and has a large tourism trade. If your nation had a similar population, and wished to open a network of diplomatic posts in 20+ tourism hotspots in New Hayesalia, you're absolutely going to need much more than 50 people if you want to address the inevitably tens of thousands of diplomatic and consular needs per year!
Here are some key roles to be filled at a large Embassy, which I have drawn from the London Diplomatic List, which is essentially a roll call of diplomatic officials in the United Kingdom. This refers near-specifically to the diplomatic stream of work, excluding consular officials.
- Ambassador - either career-driven [generally referred to as a Career Ambassador] or politically appointed, depending on your taste, the Ambassador is face of your nation appointed by your national leader. They will be involved in the highest affairs of state where relevant to their posting state. They'll host parties, manage relations, and make agreements.
- Deputy Chief of Mission, aka the Chargé d'Affaires. - this personal is typically a career diplomat and is the second in command of a nation's embassy. In the absence of the Ambassador, such as if they are on leave or recalled, they are in charge of the Embassy and relations with the host state, though they typically cannot direct major policy changes.
- Ministers - a high-ranking career diplomatic position, who are the go-to expert in relevant fields for the Ambassador's referece. These fields include: Management Affairs, Economics, Politics, Public Affairs, Coordination, Consular Servivces, Defence/Security, Commercial affairs and other relations.
- Counselors - senior diplomats with expertise in less important, but still major, affairs; they may also be general diplomatic staff.
- Attachés - generally, but not always, military or other security/defence personnel who are not typically staff of the nation's foreign ministry or department, but are attached from another department. Most commonly these are whole-of-military, army, navy and air forces attachés. Civilian roles include legal attachés from attorney-general departments, interior ministry attachés who deal with general intelligence matters, and cultural attachés and press attachés who work in public relations.
- Secretaries - considered officers rather than managers, they are the core part of the diplomatic service and typically work for or under the relevant Ministers or Minister-Counselor's office.
Consular staff may include:
- Consul-general - manage all consular affairs at their diplomatic post and perhaps other posts (eg. a Consul-general posted an an Embassy may oversee a number of other consulates)
- Consul - manage consular affairs at generally a single, smaller, consulate. They may also work under a Consul-general at a larger Embassy or similar large post.
- Vice-Consul - a general consular worker
- Consular agent or honorary consul - a person employed by the diplomatic mission, who may not even be one of their own citizens, who offers limited services. They typically have limited diplomatic immunity.
Embassies and consulates also require a variety of technical support staff, who have varying levels of diplomatic immunity. These staff may include:
- Security staff - may be drawn from a nation's military, police (in the case of New Hayesalia), gendarmes or even contractors. They work in cooperation with local security services.
- Administrative staff - these include analysts, communications officers and, often, spies.
- Consular couriers - diplomatically immune staff who transport diplomatic bags - this will be addressed in the diplomatic immunity section.
- Technical staff - IT guys, network administrators, vehicle drivers
- Service staff - often locally employed foreign nationals, they may include cleaners, gardeners, receptionists, or mechanics. They typically have the same level of diplomatic immunity as Honorary Consuls and in my own Embassy Program, I include them as one level of staff.
- Other staff - other staff or contractors as needed who typically lack diplomatic immunity.
In the next section we will explore diplomatic laws and customs, including diplomatic immunity and inviolability.
