system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What do ambassadors do? Why are countries removing Syria's ambassadors?

So obviously its a reaction to recent horrible events in Syria. But is this anything more than a token gesture or might the action of removing Syria's ambassadors have genuine results.

I don't really know what ambassadors do in the first place to comment on the effectiveness of kicking one of them out.
gpt
1. Ambassadors present in a country means that you have diplomatic relations of some sort with that country and can communicate directly with it via the ambassador. It generally signals a net positive relationship between two countries.

2. The building the ambassador resides in is considered to be sovereign territory of the ambassadors homeland.  So for instance, the german embassy in australia is technically on german soil.  This is why we have dissidents able to flee to an embassy of another country and not immediately get arrested by their own government - to do so would technically be an invasion of sovereign territory.

3. Embassies are used to help facilitate tourism by giving tourists a safe haven should something go wrong either legally or whatever.

4. If you pull your ambassador out of a target country, you are effectively saying that you are so pissed off that you wont even talk.  This is *sometimes* a prelude to war. Removing ambassadors for any reason is considered a very extreme act because it signals the end of all possible diplomatic discussion.

5. It is extremely rare for a country to kick out ambassadors, but it does happen.  Usually because the embassy was housing spies or doing some other action that was harmful to the target country.