When Diplomacy Changes

In order to justify his website’s release of confidential U.S. State Department documents, founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange claims that transparent and open diplomacy is the best way to spread global peace.

Interestingly, many claim Assange’s reply is accurate and rightfully exposes a growing trend of American diplomats centered on corruption, hypocrisy, and arrogance. However, it is also clear that tapping into confidential U.N. communications and seeking personal information on leaders and heads of states are acts of espionage rather than diplomacy. Indeed, Assange was absolutely right when he clarified that diplomacy regards confidentiality as its core value when it aspires to achieve diplomatic solutions. For example, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl would not have brought about German unity if the discussions with the Russians, Americans, and Europeans were publicly conducted. In addition, the peace agreement the late Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat had with Israel would have been doomed to failure had the conditions of the negotiation process been dictated to the Arab media.

With such examples on historical record, it is obvious that such “leaks” can harm diplomatic work. It will convince diplomats from all corners of the world to be more reserved when expressing their opinions and less dependent on reliable sources. Predictably, they will be unwilling to give away what should be confidential information that could be used as blackmail by a third party. It will be harder to reach diplomatic agreements in a world packed with multiple competing parties and complications.

On the other hand, the warnings of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concerning the harm inflicted to American national security are greatly exaggerated. The leaked documents are important due to their sheer numbers, yet they did not reveal any destructive information per se, save for some embarrassing information about certain high-profile personalities and China’s attitude towards North Korea. Additionally, these documents were available for some million people before being released by WikiLeaks. As a result, these documents were subject to a considerable amount of effort from the conventional press who “screened” these documents in order to translate them into a digestible form.

What is important now is that the monster is out of the closet. The types of technology that made it easy to put a quarter million documents onto a single CD cannot be tamed. The arrest and prosecution of Assange will only lead to the gestation of others like him. Citizens will not be deterred from practicing their journalistic right to free speech and free press and will unabashedly cross those red lines. The traditional printed press also continues to have a role to play, though it does not have the courage to support websites in need of a spotlight when it comes to the matter of international decision- making.

Clearly, diplomatic work will remain decisive and will heal its wounds soon. However, the international diplomatic community must also realize that sheer secrecy is no longer possible. Rather, it must work under “fading” light, because the rules of the game will be forever changed.