It will take a long time, perhaps many years, for the full impact of the WikiLeaks disclosure of thousands of US diplomatic cables to become known. Make no mistake: this is an event of historic importance -- for all governments, and not only the US.
As politicians of all sides bellow their condemnation of WikiLeaks, governments are with some desperation trying to pretend that it's business as usual. But the truth is that something very dramatic in the world of diplomacy has just taken place, and thus indeed in the way that the world runs its business. History may now be dated pre- or post-WikiLeaks.
The mainstream press has as usual missed the story, with their obsession with Iran or Qaddafi's voluptuous nurse or Karzai's corruption -- which, incidentally, is reported by US diplomats in excruciating detail. But this event carries a much deeper significance than merely the highly-embarrassing and in some cases dangerous revelations in the enormous trove of documents. No one, and neither the US State Department nor WikiLeaks, can say with any confidence whether the effects of this massive disclosure will be good or bad, for in truth no one can know. There will be many and long-lasting consequences. That is all that can be known with any certainty at this point.
The presumption that governments can conduct their business in secret with one another, out of sight of the populations they represent, died this week. Diplomats and officials around the world are slowly realizing that anything they say may now be one day published on the Internet. Governments are now frantically rushing to secure their data and hold it more tightly than ever, but the horse has bolted. If a government as technically sophisticated and well protected as the US can suffer a breach of this magnitude, no government is safe. Politicians can demand the prosecution of Julian Assange or -- absurdly -- that WikiLeaks be designated as a terrorist organization, but the bellows of anger are tacit admission that government's monopoly on its own information is now a thing of the past.
Hillary Clinton has described the WikiLeaks disclosures as an attack on the "international community." But in truth this is something else: an attack on the governments that make up the current international system of diplomacy. The deep-seated assumption, both among the public and political classes, that governments have business that they should conduct in secret with one another has been shattered. Pause, incidentally, to observe the politicians and commentators declaring the need for governments to operate in secrecy, when they don't even know what government is keeping secret. From this day forward, it will be ever more difficult for governments to claim one thing, and do another. For in making such claims, they are making themselves vulnerable to WikiLeaks of their own.
Why? Because the most damaging thing about the WikiLeaks disclosures is not the fact that they happened (though this is bad enough for the US government) but the revelation, long suspected but now proven, of the yawning discrepancy between US words and actions in that most contested area, the Middle East. Cable after cable details the extraordinarily intimate and co-dependent relations between the US and various despotic and unpleasant Arab regimes. One Arab intelligence chief plots with American officials to target Iranian groups, or confront Hezbollah. Another undemocratic Arab leader invites US bombers to attack targets in his own territory. It is this discrepancy -- between word and deed -- that will keep the wind in WikiLeaks' sails, and others like them, for long to come.
Governments around the world are this week telling each other that nothing has really changed and that if they restrict the circulation of those really sensitive telegrams and glue up all the USB slots in their computers, that this won't happen to them. But it will. There will be more such revelations, not about the US (which so far has been the main target of WikiLeaks' somewhat arbitrary attentions), but others -- British, Chinese? -- for the reality is that electronic data is formidably difficult to protect.
The reason is simple. In order to be effective as organizations, governments and foreign offices are required to circulate sensitive data, so that their officials and diplomats actually know what's going on. One reason why the UN is ineffective as an organization is because nothing is secret there, and as a result no one circulates anything sensitive. Don't buy the argument that the really important stuff is kept Top Secret and hasn't been compromised. Even a cursory perusal of the WikiLeaks archive reveals cables that are the very meat and drink of diplomacy -- what foreign leaders and governments really think, and what they really want in their relations with the US.
Governments are therefore confronted with an insoluble conundrum. If they restrict and protect the data, and perhaps even stop recording the most delicate information (as no doubt some diplomats are now considering), they will inevitably reduce their operational effectiveness. If they circulate the data widely, as the US did before WikiLeaks, they will risk compromise on this devastating scale.
There is in fact only one enduring solution to the WikiLeaks problem and this is perhaps the goal of WikiLeaks, though this is sometimes hard to discern. That is that governments must close the divide between what they say, and what they do. It is this divide that provokes WikiLeaks; it is this divide that will provide ample embarrassment for future leakers to exploit. The only way for governments to save their credibility is to end that divide and at last to do what they say, and vice versa, with the assumption that nothing they may do will remain secret for long. The implications of this shift are profound, and indeed historic.
Follow Carne Ross on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@carneross
Arianna Huffington: The WikiLeaks Cables: Small Revelations That May Cause a Big Idea to Take Hold
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: WikiLeaks: Getting Under Qaddafi's Skin
Josh Ruebner: WikiLeaks: Israel's Security Concerns Often Clash With U.S. Interests
Saad Khan: What's New About the AfPak Region in WikiLeaks?
is called the greater evil?
Recall the fate of many prophets... reviled in their own time,
"rehabilitated" long after their death (at the hands of those they
tried to save), the greater lesson expunged and the smaller one
made into a Sunday school story.
Now we see vividly the gulf between the forks of diplomatic tongues, and the ensuing loss of trust across the diplosphere should be of great concern.
Except to those who would prefer to shoot first, and ask questions later.
I'm not criticizing the fork, as the reality is that compromise, tolerance and tough choices are essential to achieving results through diplomatic means.
The administration needs to fix things.
There will always be situations when news publishers have an ethical obligation to make public things that governments would rather keep secret. Sometimes it's necessary to expose policy decisions based on falsehoods or the intentional misleading of the public. News organizations must weigh the benefits of disclosure against potential damage to national interests.
The dumping of information by WikiLeaks involves no such weighing. Many of the leaked cables have little news value but could damage the government's ability to gain future intelligence and even risk the lives of informants.
But in the Internet age, self-restraint is lacking and secrets harder to keep. Government officials must do a better job of controlling truly vital information.
Mike
"The dumping of information by WikiLeaks involves no such weighing"
um, baloney. 140 top international journalists worked with Wikileaks *and* involved the State Department in redacting the detail that represented the highest risk to individuals below senior rank.
and your laboring the rank of the young man of conscience who is alleged to be the primary whistle-blower just points up that again, you don't get the article's point.
in 2010, nobody but an authoritarian numbskull [still plenty of 'em, but most of them are already old] believes that using age or (social or military) rank as a criterion for determining who should or should not have access to information has any further credibility.
you're stuck in a pyramidal command-and-control mindset, when the present and the future are basically flat. are there downsides as well as upsides to having global ubiquitous free intercommunication between ~2 billion humans and rising? sure. but that isn't going to change the reality one damn iota.
need a post that explains why I'm wrong. Your post was honest & rare. I did a
little research & you are right. Shooting from the hip with my posts is a trademark
of mine. Plenty of times I feel that I'm right. Not this time. Take care.
Fanned & faved
Mike
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That will happen when husbands and wives freely share all their thoughts with one another - including the ones about their hot neighbors.
too bad for you. and him/her.
not binding on the rest of us, though, is it?
But seeing as the divorce rate hovers at around 50% (and that's for first marriages), I'd say you're living in the same sort of fantasy land as the blogger.
The fact is, humans are big on secrets. Even in the best marriages, couples don't share all their thoughts with one another. In fact, not a few successful long-term couples think that's actually one of their secrets of success.
To expect that in diplomacy, or in marriage, people will be willing and able to live without their secrets is naive in the extreme.
Of course, your relationship may be the exception that proves the rule. But I've got a hundred bucks that says otherwise.
with ~3,000,000 government employees having had Secret clearance, leaking has long been a statistical certainty.
I'm skeptical of his intent. To be above the law of nations and throw down thunderbolts is archaic, yet it is also effective none the less, which is why Mr. Assange must at the least be remarked upon judiciously. He somehow grew wings, but he is still only a human being after-all. He will have that day in court. I find it hard to place my trust in a person who can design his information release however he pleases, against any person, or nation, without reproach. To tyrannize a nation one must be of a nation. If he belongs to neither he is an enemy to the principle of government.
"As usurpation is the exercise of power which another hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to; and this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate advantage" ("Two Treatise of On Government", John Locke, Book 2: Chapter 18).
without reproach? without reproach?
have you counted how many people are baying for his execution, with or without (generally the latter) the benefit of trial?
in say, just any given 24hr period since release of the Iraqi war logs?
he's not "above the law", nor has he claimed to be.
but as a foreign national, publishing content outside the United States, US domestic law doesn't hold much sway, much as you'd like to believe otherwise.
Exactly. If this stuff was already common knowledge - for example, if the government had already issued a press release saying "we're not terribly fond of Country X, but we need their help with Issue Q" - then there would be no story at all. It's the massive gap between what is proclaimed and what is plotted that gives these kinds of "revelations" their sensationalistic appeal; were the government (etc.) to work to eliminate the gap ITSELF instead of just being more careful to remove evidence of the gap's existence, then we Americans might have more faith in our government's integrity.
Labelling Wikileaks a "terrorist organization" is akin to a music label advising its devotees to stop snitchin' ... and carries about as much gravitas.
In diplomacy, does the public really have the ability to tolerate the ambiguity of disapproving of Russia's trade policies but needing their help on Iran? Trying to get Pakistan to pressure it's extremist groups while understanding it cannot go too far without riots in the street? Even needing Iran's help on certain things, while trying to pressure it to give up nukes? Do we really want Saudi Arabia to have a foreign policy that is based on the paranoia of much of the Arab "street"? (granted, those govts have done their best to promote the paranoia at times) We show no ability to hold paradox. We must work with people we do not like, in compartmentalized ways. Like we work w/ people everyday that we may profoundly disagree with. Until populations realize that, things have to be kept secret or nobody will work together on anything. Otherwise complete openness would make uncontrolled war more likely, not less.
But as you state: that may be asking entirely too much of the American voter... or humans in general.
I sincerely hope we get there, and that we get to the point that we can 'handle the truth'. As our collective integrity declines, so will our freedoms.
That brilliantly-worded, and oh-so-true remark earned you a click on the "favorite" button.