“When you are in that position – you represent the government and the policies of the day. You’re not able to free-think. You are the face of New Zealand,” he added.
You’re goddamn right. So why did you fire him?
Coz NZ elected right wing nut jobs to represent them.
Silencing those who talked about concerns publicly was also a thing back then.
Yeah I like how they basically proved his point.
“Hey guys it’s time to stand up for what’s right, we are losing our safety. There are clear parallels for how dangerous this is.”
“Whoa whoa whoa that sounds super dangerous. I mean talking about it. No talking about it. That might be dangerous.”
He had courage, which is apparently not something New Zealand has. Quite publicly, they wish us to know they don’t have it.
Ok, so there seems to be some confusion about diplomats and their roles.
A diplomat is a representative for a country and it’s government, this means that what they say can and should be taken as the will of the nation they represent.
This in turn means that while serving as a diplomat you can’t really express your own opinion about any political subject.
Diplomats have immunity against legal punishments, this is needed as some nations may not like what a diplomat says as they represent another nation.
This means that the only real punishment a nation can give to another nation’s diplomats is declaring them “persona non grata”, sn unwanted person, this means that the diplomat is required to leave the country.
This is an extreme reaction and doesn’t happen a lot between western countries.
This is due to the follow on effects, expelling diplomats will often be followed by that country expelling your own diplomats, now, both countries are normally allowed to replace the diplomats, but it causes a big disruption to their work, and can ruin contact networks, in short it is a mess for both parties.
Now, a country can choose to remove their diplomats from a country themselves instead, this is a signal that what the diplomat did was not acceptable and should not be seen as representing them as a nation, this causes way less disruption.
So what happened here is that while what the diplomat said is true, it harmed the relationship between NZ and US.
Now, sometimes the relationship needs to be harmed, simply because other relationships are worth more to the country.
Diplomacy is the art of working together, especially in difficult times, sometimes diplomats can negotiate conditions that goes against the leadership of the nations, but if the end result is better, the nations can and often do allow those conditions to stand.
What I mean is that diplomats have the power to work around the system in some cases, but if you harm the relationship between nations that is less likely to happen.
TD;DR:
What the diplomat said was true, but inconvenient.
What the diplomat said was true, but inconvenient.
Doesn’t sound very diplomatic
Which is fine if he had got permission, he did not so it wasn’t
I am pretty sure this decision by NZ will not age like milk at all…
