Nice smiles, lethal background

[Nik]

That diplomatic often means phony everybody knows, but each new show of hypocrisy kinda underlines it anew.
The recent data of China's dealing with CIA's informants, exposes the real dimension of clandestine confrontation between the countries: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-cana...
Yet, Xi's visit to Mar-a-lago was very cordial and not less smiley than selfies from the ME trip.
So are politics and international relations about keeping nice facade and doing nasty stuff behind the curtain?

[Ian]

Spying is like stealing information. Think of business deals. You might well strongly encourage open trade, but get really rough with thieves. Catching spies is an activity almost as old as civilisation, and the treatment has invariably been rough. I don't think the US hugs spies either.

[Nik]

It's just a grotesque of it, like Obama's eavesdropping on Merkel, almost like in a good couple relations, or intelligence working extra hours to collect data on pretended good friends.