Away from the high-profile embassies, the longer, untold narrative of the WikiLeaks cables is often one of triviality, inconsequence, and moments of wry, Beckettian humour. The US runs 292 diplomatic missions across 175 countries, and many of them lie within a kind of diplomatic hinterland. Cables sent from the islands of the Pacific, or the steppes of Mongolia, generally reveal not the fast-paced interaction of a global superpower, but the loneliness of the long-distance diplomat.

Some busy embassies churn out hundreds of cables a year. But since 2007, successive US ambassadors to Samoa (pop: 179,000) have compiled just nine – all of them odes to banality. The post's only two dispatches in 2007 noted little more than the embassy's inability "to provide 'meet-and-greet' service at the airport" to state department officials.

It's a year before they have anything further to report. This time, though, the stakes are at least briefly higher: horror of horrors, some protesters have delivered a petition to embassy officials. "This is the first protest against the embassy since it opened 20 years ago," reports a breathless US chargé d'affaires, who must have been sorely tempted to add an exclamation mark. But we soon discover why he didn't: "Despite our lack of practice … all went well."

A cable from 2010 reveals officials' sense of their own lack of significance. Samoans feel, one diplomat writes, that "the Pacific, and Samoa in particular, are not really important to the United States … As the US representative on the ground in Samoa, I can't help but [agree]."

Some host countries seem so small and helpless that diplomats report nothing but their host's farcical obsequiousness. US envoys to Palau (pop: 20,000) wrote only seven cables between 2008 and 2010; three of them report effusive praise of America by Palauan politicians.

In one cable, Palau "expresses its deepest gratitude and appreciation to the Government of the United States of America for its invaluable contributions to the development of the Republic of Palau", calling the US "the Republic's most important partner, defender, and supporter.". Little wonder that Palau is – along with Israel and America – one of only three countries to vote against the UN resolution condemning the US embargo of Cuba.

Diplomats in these backwaters often also have a habit of writing in staggeringly minute detail about seemingly irrelevant events. In 2006, US diplomats in Mongolia (the world's most sparsely populated country) spent nearly 1,000 words describing how the Rolling Stones were not, after all, to play a gig in the capital. Officials apparently found it appropriate to tell Washington, at length, how the Mongolian trade and industry minister, Bazarsad Jargalsaikhan, had tried to persuade UK embassy staff to help him book the Stones for the 800th anniversary celebrations. But Mick Jagger wasn't kidding when he sang 'You Can't Always Get What You Want': negotiations with the Brits proved fruitless. Fortunately, the cable continued, the German embassy proved more obliging, helping line up a replacement: German rockers Scorpions, whose lyrics the cable then proceeds to quote. The decision proved very popular with several US embassy staff: a number of them, the cable-writer sees it fit to report, were present at the gig. One "dug out his 1984 Scorpions world tour T-shirt".

It is sometimestempting to conclude the diplomats in these minnow states have nothing more to do than wax lyrical and extensively about nothing much in particular. But while it's a mystery that diplomats have the time to write these lengthy missives, it's even more perplexing anyone in Washington would find the time to read them; something some diplomats are clearly aware of themselves. One cable, from the Italian embassy in 2002, barely disguises diplomats' anger at the way the state department has ignored previous requests for help. "IN THE ABSENCE OF THE GUIDANCE REPEATEDLY REQUESTED, WE WERE FORCED TO 'WING IT'," the cable reads, suggesting the life of the US diplomat, thousands of miles from home, is one of isolation and anonymity.