WikiLeaks: So What?

It’s not the end of diplomacy; it’s the end of WikiLeaks.

“The end of diplomacy as we know it.” That’s what they’re calling the latest WikiLeaks revelations. Feel free to doubt that. Politicians and journalists condemn the leaks as “irresponsible.” At the same time, it’s not big news that Guido Westerwelle isn’t an especially accomplished politician, nor that Horst Seehofer is “limited,” and Angela Merkel is “seldom creative.” German newspapers have been saying the same for months, and it’s good to know that people in the United States can see them as they really are as well.

The really big news is not the things WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disclosed. It’s really his self-serving PR that is colored, if I may say so, with a very sensationalist tone. The things he revealed about German politics are more laughable than they are shocking. The opinions of some politicians about their foreign counterparts may in some cases be more serious than the documents leaked by WikiLeaks previously, but, in contrast, they are much less interesting and quantity alone can’t make up for that.

There’s no comparison with the revelations of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq made by WikiLeaks earlier. With those, the question arises why the U.S. government didn’t bother to investigate the allegations contained in their own classified documents before they had a chance to be leaked. But the U.S. didn’t investigate, crimes were covered up, and the truth about the war was altered. To that extent, the leaks were justified, even if they constituted a betrayal of state secrets. There’s still a need for courageous informants willing to do that and to do it in a way that is least dangerous to their own safety.

The ability to leak such secrets anonymously remains necessary. The principle behind WikiLeaks has a future, but the WikiLeaks we see today does not. These latest leaks are little more than gossip and vulgarity. One gets the impression that Julian Assange and the few collaborators who still work for him are firing their ammunition blindly just to attract more attention before their whole project goes belly-up. Many other new WikiLeaks-type projects will follow in their footsteps. This latest revelation isn’t the end of diplomacy but rather the beginning of the end for WikiLeaks. It’s also the beginning of a new, more transparent and more honest democracy.