International cities are organised in a cabal to euthanise the antiquated nation-states of the West along with the international Westphalian system.
One of the central features of the diplomatic career is the practice of temporary assignments. In the beginning, before the centralisation of governments and the professionalisation of diplomacy, inter-governmental contacts were left to third parties such as merchants or clergymen. The practice was eventually discontinued because, not only were diplomatic mercenaries biased, self-interested, and unreliable, but they often ‘went native.’ The tendency for diplomats to empathise more with the native government rather than their employer became so prevalent that rules had to be devised to mitigate the problem.
In the UK, so many diplomats were seduced by the exoticism of India that they became known as the ‘white Mughals.’ In Portugal, the author Venceslau de Morais took his duties of Consul in Kobe to the extreme of becoming a Japanese citizen, even marrying and dying in the Oriental nation.
