We have just gone through another round of diplomatic expulsions. After Russia was accused of poisoning an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in the UK, many nations on the EU, NATO, and the US ‘punished’ Russia by expelling some of their diplomats and closing some consulates. In retaliation, Russia has expelled US diplomats and closed a US consulate in Russia. Such retaliatory moves are a sign that relations between the parties involved have reached a particularly low ebb.

The U.S., in tandem with the U.K., France, and Germany, previously issued a joint statement blaming Russia for the attack. Twenty-six countries expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning, with Washington kicking out a total of 60.

On Thursday, Russia responded by announcing it was kicking out 58 employees of the U.S. embassy in Moscow and two of the U.S. consulate in Yekaterinburg.

This kind of diplomatic tit for tat has occurred many, many times in the past following other events that caused tension and seems to be a standard way of showing displeasure. But one would think that by now there would be few people left to expel so the reason countries can still do so must be that after some time has elapsed and tempers have cooled, each country is allowed to expand its diplomatic presence once again and raise the numbers, until such time as they are expelled again.

So what’s the point? Sometimes it is alleged that the expelled people were engaged in espionage. It is standard practice that many people with diplomatic status who have seemingly innocuous titles are actually engaged in some form of espionage work. It seems clear that the host country is usually aware of who these people are and monitor their activities. They could thus have been expelled at any time but such an action seems to be reserved for occasions when their expulsion serves the purpose of publicly showing displeasure. But a few of the expelled people may well be people who are not engaged in espionage but just got caught up in the flow. This is more likely to be true in the case of retaliatory expulsions that seek to have a specific number to match the number of their own expelled people. What are the chances that the desired number actually matches the number of spies?

This whole exercise seems like kabuki theater to me and one wonders what’s the point of it, other than to satisfy domestic audiences who demand that Something Must Be Done in response to whatever is the outrage du jour.

(While writing this post, I became curious about the origins and meaning of the strange phrase ‘tit for tat’ and came across this article that gives an explanation.)