How Wikileaks Changes Things For Us All

9:25 AM Wednesday December 1, 2010
by Carne Ross   Comments (6View)

The massive disclosure of classified US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks is an event of historic, if not seismic, significance. So great is the number of cables, and so sensitive is much of the information they divulge, that the consequences will be profound, long-lasting, and manifold. No one — neither Wikileaks nor the U.S. government — can know whether the effects will be good or bad. They will undoubtedly be both. We can be sure only that they will be many and unpredictable.

Governments are no doubt rushing to secure their data and hold it more tightly than ever, but the horse has bolted. If a government as professional, technically sophisticated, and well-protected as the U.S. can suffer a breach of this magnitude, no government is safe. Politicians can roar their demands for the prosecution of Julian Assange or — absurdly — that Wikileaks be designated as a terrorist organization, but the rage is in truth a tacit admission that government’s monopoly on its own information is now a thing of the past.

Diplomacy will be changed forever. The presumption that governments can conduct their business in secret with one another, away from the prying eyes of the public, died this week. Diplomats and officials around the world will now realize that anything they say may now hit the public sphere.

More immediately, there will be profound embarrassment, if not worse, among the many governments and officials named in these documents, much as they may now be desperately pretending that it’s business as usual. It is acutely embarrassing for Mubarak’s regime in Egypt that his intelligence chief has been recorded in excruciating detail plotting with Americans against Iranian cells in Egypt, and on how to defeat Hamas and Hezbollah. Popular anger against the Mubarak government will intensify, spawning political opposition and even, likely, violent revolt (Al Qaeda traces one of its roots to Egypt). And this is just one of the many very sensitive telegrams in the Wikileaks haul. There are tens of thousands still to come.

While the political consequences of this dramatic event will play out for years to come, the major lesson is already clear. The disclosures are embarrassing and dangerous because they tell a story about the real dealings of government that is at odds with its public account.

In the Middle East, this discrepancy is most acute. U.S. administrations for years have portrayed themselves as supporters of democracy, freedom, and human rights. The telegrams tell a different story of intimate and co-dependent relationships with unpleasant and repressive regimes in Riyadh, Cairo, and Rabat. This may have been suspected by many, but it is an entirely different matter to see these relations spelled out in the cool, precise prose of a diplomatic record. (The cables, by the way, are largely very well drafted, belying the mediocre reputation of the State Department.) That Egyptian intelligence chief, for example, is responsible for the torture and imprisonment without trial of thousands of Mubarak’s political opponents. In recording the conversation with him, the U.S. cable has no mention of the words democracy, human rights, or fair trials.

And here is the obvious implication, which reaches beyond governments to companies and even to individuals. Thanks to Wikileaks, you can now expect that day to come when your most private and candid communications will appear for all to peruse. In preparation for that moment, you better make sure that your private dealings match your public declarations, if not perfectly then at least pretty close.

For companies and individuals as much as for governments, deeds will henceforward have to match words. If they don’t, you can assume you will suffer a Wikileaks crisis of your own, for it is from that discrepancy (or hypocrisy, read another way) that Wikileaks finds its energy — and other leakers will in the future. Like it or not, what has happened this week is of profound importance, and its lessons are profoundly important too.

Carne Ross resigned from the British foreign service over the Iraq war. He founded and now runs Independent Diplomat, the world’s first non-profit diplomatic advisory group. Follow his ongoing analysis of the Wikileaks disclosures on Twitter.