The latest Wikileaks "scandal," a dump of over 250,000 US diplomatic cables and other documents, is alleged by many in the press and assumed by much of the public to be extremely revelatory and shocking. In fact, very, very little, if anything, in the leak, has surprised anyone who's been paying even a minimum of attention to international news over the past 8-12 months.
What in this leak is actually surprising news?
Knowledge that UK military operations in Helmand province in Afghanistan aren't satisfactory to the US? No.
That the State Department does intelligence work out of its embassies?
Corruption in the Afghan government?
Connections between the Russian government and organized crime?
That story, like pretty much everything in the cables, is months-old if not years-old news.
Fortunately, it appears that Wikileaks and the other outlets that intend to run these cables also intend to redact the names of the authors of the documents. Anonymity is important in cables like these, because it allows military and civilian operatives to write freely and pass on information that is as accurate and frank as possible without fear of losing their jobs or endangering their lives. It helps make our foreign and military services more effective, and better able to learn from mistakes and build on past experiences. The real danger of Wikileaks is that this anonymity and inclination to frankness in diplomatic cables, etc, could be lost.
The media firestorm and incessant social media buzz over the leaks represent couch potato foreign policy at its worst. If you needed the Wikileaks dump to learn about these news items, you obviously didn't care enough to find out about them when they actually were news. The problem is that when you try to explain to people, from Julian Assange all the way on down to the kids who've reposted this over and over on Facebook, the real way in which Wikileaks is damaging, and who exactly it is damaging to, they don't want to hear it. An accurate explanation of the situation sounds to them like an attempt to stifle the leaks which they, in their ignorance of foreign affairs, think to be so informative and scandalous.
Charlie, the whole wikileaks situation is, quite frankly, saddening for the reasons that you outlined above. I personally cringe at the idea that private diplomatic cables (even if they are so very benign!) be leaked to the public! As Henry Morgenthau explained - secrecy is needed if foreign policy is to be efficient.
ReplyDeleteI'm just going to point out some of the other issues the wikileaks debacle highlights.
1) freedom of speech and information and the ethics of limiting leaked information.
2) The legality of extraditing foreign citizens on the basis of broadcasting state information which is technically not a crime per say.
3) Whether Julian Assange (the broadcaster) is to blame or whether blame should lay with those in the state department that leaked this information.
4) Whether the quality of information leaked can affect the ability to arrest the broadcaster.
5) How to stop these wikileaks from creating a precedent for future leakages, especially of actually crucial information.
There's also a question of whether media outlets like the NYT are criminally responsible for disseminating this information.
ReplyDeleteSee also:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/15/sweep.wikileaks/index.html?hpt=C2