Julian Assange now sits securely in a small room inside the Embassy of Ecuador in London. He is safe, as Cardinal József Mindszenty was safe for many years inside the US Embassy in Communist-ruled Hungary. This is a benefit of the internationally-agreed Vienna Convention on sovereign immunity of diplomatic premises. The irony is exquisite.
He draws on the rich and frequently resorted to Latin American tradition of using secure diplomatic immunity to protect the lives of one another's dissidents or deposed political leaders.
Such embassy safe havens and agreed safe conducts are not just theoretical concepts in Latin America. They have saved many lives and avoided the savagery and mutual embarrassment of reprisal trials in the oft-repeated cycle of coups and counter-coups.
They provide a face-saving and humane way for all concerned to deal with the consequences of violent and unpredictable political transitions. If any part of the world has reason to cherish the ideal of diplomatic immunity and inviolability by the host government of sovereign embassy premises, it is Latin America.
Assange chose well with Ecuador. Paradoxically, it is small and unimportant enough to be able to stand up to the US in ways that would be more difficult for larger Latin American nations such as Argentina or Brazil. There is a less complex and opaque web of economic interconnections. Commercial sanctions exercised through US corporations would be more easily exposed and denounced.
If clumsy pressures were applied on Ecuador, a wave of Latin American solidarity against Yanqui bullying could be relied on. Ecuador is not in regionally doubtful odour like leftist Venezuela, Cuba or Bolivia. It is a decent little middle-of-the-road country.
The choice now before Britain is stark: to give Assange safe conduct to Ecuador or to let him become another highly visible prisoner of conscience — another Cardinal Mindszenty — in London.
The British government has no option of storming the Embassy or cutting off its electricity or water. As Geoffrey Robertson argued on ABC Radio on Friday, once it violated the principle of immunity of diplomatic premises, Britain would be at the mercy of such actions against its many thousands of diplomatically protected people and their families in many parts of the world.
Britain has so much more to lose here. It would be grossly irresponsible to violate the Ecuadorian Embassy's diplomatic immunity.
Yet Britain and Sweden will not negotiate any compromise with Assange now. The would lose too much face.
The wisest course for Britain would be to make the best of a bad job: to give Assange safe conduct to Ecuador as soon as possible. The longer he stays in the Embassy, from where he will be free to write, communicate, and broadcast in audio and video, the more harm and embarrassment he can cause to the Anglo-American national security interests he is challenging.
To be confined to the Embassy as a prisoner of conscience would make a wonderful pulpit for Assange. The media drama of television journalists entering a guarded embassy to hear his views would not fade quickly. London is a hub of world media networks which could not resist following the story — as this weekend has proved. Bad look for Britain, Sweden and by extension the US in an election year for Obama.
Far more sensible, then, to give Assange a safe conduct to Ecuador, under warnings that if he tries to leave Ecuador, including on an Ecuadorian passport, he will face British arrest and extradition to the UK for the crime of violating his bail conditions in going to the Ecuadorian Embassy. Most countries would honour such a request.
Effectively, Assange will have exchanged the small prison of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the much larger prison of Ecuador itself. He will find it harder to maintain an international following and a viable Wikileaks system from remote Ecuador. There would not be a large and prestigious foreign correspondents' media corps in Ecuador to broadcast and amplify his views and Wikileaks scoops to the world.
If I were advising the British Government, I would say, give him his safe conduct to Ecuador, and then wait for the dust to settle. As it eventually will.
Meanwhile I would advise Assange, once he reaches Ecuador, to learn good Spanish as quickly as he can, and immerse himself intellectually in Ibero-American history and culture. For the foreseeable future, he will effectively live as a political refugee from the Anglosphere, which will not forgive him for showing the world the truth of the its duplicity and the crimes it committed in Iraq.
What he did with Wikileaks was right and admirable. But he must pay for it with exile in Ecuador, possibly for many years. This is the way of the world we live in.
Assange — who reminds me more and more of the many Irish rebels exiled to Australia, if they were lucky enough not to be hanged by Britain — has chosen the best available option. Now, he must look forward.
Tony Kevin is is a retired Australian diplomat, having held the positions of Ambassador to Poland and Cambodia.