American politics

Democracy in America

Overseeing state secrecy

In defence of WikiLeaks

Nov 29th 2010, 23:27 by W.W. | IOWA CITY

WHILE fascinating in their own right, these WikiLeaks document dumps are also fascinating in the way they draw out fairly fundamental intuitions about the rights and privileges of the American state. Earlier today I attempted to draw up a taxonomy of different ideological/character types elicited by WikiLeaks, but quickly became mired in the complexity of it all. Rather than diagnose the world, I'll just diagnose myself in contrast to my colleague.

In this morning's post, my worldly co-blogger characterises the content of the tens of thousands classified diplomatic cables as mere "gossip", and maintains "that grabbing as many diplomatic cables as you can get your hands on and making them public is not a socially worthy activity". I strongly disagree.

Greg Mitchell's catalogue of reactions to the leaked cables is a trove of substantive information. For example, drawing on the documents made available by WikiLeaks, the ACLU reports that the Bush administration "pressured Germany not to prosecute CIA officers responsible for the kidnapping, extraordinary rendition and torture of German national Khaled El-Masri", a terrorism suspect dumped in Albania once the CIA determined it had nabbed a nobody. I consider kidnapping and torture serious crimes, and I think it's interesting indeed if the United States government applied pressure to foreign governments to ensure complicity in the cover-up of it agents' abuses. In any case, I don't consider this gossip. 

I think we all understand that the work of even the most decent governments is made more difficult when they cannot be sure their communications will be read by those for whom they were not intended. That said, there is no reason to assume that the United States government is always up to good. To get at the value of WikiLeaks, I think it's important to distinguish between the government—the temporary, elected authors of national policy—and the state—the permanent bureaucratic and military apparatus superficially but not fully controlled by the reigning government. The careerists scattered about the world in America's intelligence agencies, military, and consular offices largely operate behind a veil of secrecy executing policy which is itself largely secret. American citizens mostly have no idea what they are doing, or whether what they are doing is working out well. The actually-existing structure and strategy of the American empire remains a near-total mystery to those who foot the bill and whose children fight its wars. And that is the way the elite of America's unelected permanent state, perhaps the most powerful class of people on Earth, like it.

As Scott Shane, the New York Times' national security reporter, puts it: "American taxpayers, American citizens pay for all these diplomatic operations overseas and you know, it is not a bad thing when Americans actually have a better understanding of those negotiations". Mr Shane goes on to suggest that

Perhaps if we had had more information on these secret internal deliberations of governments prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we would have had a better understanding of the quality of the evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

I'd say providing that information certainly would have been a socially worthy activity, even if it came as part of a more-or-less indiscriminate dump of illegally obtained documents. I'm glad to see that the quality of discussion over possible US efforts to stymie Iran's nuclear ambitions has already become more sophisticated and, well, better-informed due to the information provided by WikiLeaks.  

If secrecy is necessary for national security and effective diplomacy, it is also inevitable that the prerogative of secrecy will be used to hide the misdeeds of the permanent state and its privileged agents. I suspect that there is no scheme of government oversight that will not eventually come under the indirect control of the generals, spies, and foreign-service officers it is meant to oversee. Organisations such as WikiLeaks, which are philosophically opposed to state secrecy and which operate as much as is possible outside the global nation-state system, may be the best we can hope for in the way of promoting the climate of transparency and accountability necessary for authentically liberal democracy. Some folks ask, "Who elected Julian Assange?" The answer is nobody did, which is, ironically, why WikiLeaks is able to improve the quality of our democracy. Of course, those jealously protective of the privileges of unaccountable state power will tell us that people will die if we can read their email, but so what? Different people, maybe more people, will die if we can't.

(Photo credit: AFP)

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Tzimisces wrote:
Nov 29th 2010 11:40 GMT

What I'm most worried about is that our inability to keep the confidence of foreign officials will ultimately push diplomacy even further back into smoke filled rooms. No longer will foreign officials speak to the State Department frankly trusting the department to exercise restraint. Rather, they'll come to increasingly rely on individuals that they see as discrete enough to keep confidence about what is said from both their government as well as the public. While leaking these documents as a one off event isn't necessarily a bad thing, provided documents from other governments are eventually leaked as well, if this becomes a more frequent occurrence I see more, not less secrecy as a result. And a massive power shift in favor of careerists that can develop "relationships" over those that are more professional about their jobs.

A secondary effect that I'm afraid of is that this will further shift our international affairs in favor of the military over civilian bureaucracy. Effective diplomacy requires the confidence of foreign governments. Military might does not require this confidence.

cognate wrote:
Nov 29th 2010 11:41 GMT

A fine piece, W.W.

forsize wrote:
Nov 29th 2010 11:49 GMT

the world will have its secrets one way or another. if the US is a seive incapable of keeping those secrets they just won't bother to tell us any of them.

Wayne Bernard wrote:
Nov 29th 2010 11:56 GMT

From what those of us who form the sweaty masses can see so far, there seems to be a rather unseemly amount of "tabloid-like" commentary on various individuals around the world including the British Royal family and others. As stated here, the greatest problem with the release of this information is the embarrassment that various diplomats around the world must be feeling now:

http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2010/11/wikileaks-tarnishing-depart...

It's like your mother said, "Don't say anything bad about anyone behind their back that you wouldn't say to their face.". In the case of the diplomatic world, at least don't put it in writing!

Danny Ferry wrote:
Nov 29th 2010 11:58 GMT

Forsize, you do realize that WikiLeaks is not a uniquely American phenomenon, right? Every government, indeed every powerful institution of any kind, has to deal with having their secrets spilled.

So your argument is invalid.

forsize wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:06 GMT

indeed danny I imagine any government incapable of keeping wikileaks out of the picture could have its diplomatic functionality in many spheres reduced to zero. or maybe as tzi implicated more practically have to turn to alternative foreign relations methods.

that being said, it appears america is #1 so far in its failure to not get pwnt as it were by wikileaks.

I happen to think america won't get shutout realistically, if the american state had to emulate putin's russia to keep wikileaks out it would probably do so. or if the state department had to become a vestigal organisation that no one said anything meaningful to and all diplomacy had to go through the CIA or high military that would probably also happen.

at any rate though your objection is crap, please insert some creative insult.

bampbs wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:06 GMT

Has anyone considered the possibility that this is intentional, that these documents allow the government to make public more that is useful to us than harmful ? Or that bushels of disinformation is included ?

Rbt. S. wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:16 GMT

One thing that is lost in this is that Julian Assange and his associates persuaded a 22 year-old young man to break U.S. law, and that young man is now likely to spend a very long time in prison while Mr. Assange and wikileaks become famous worldwide, and probably rich as well. The virtues of putting this information into the public domain are for debate, but Mr. Assange used a young man for his own purposes. That young man's life is now in shambles, and I don't see Mr. Assange and others at wikileaks who benefited from this stepping up to help that young man. Mr. Assange is no more than a celebrity seeker like, say, Sarah Palin.

Nov 30th 2010 12:18 GMT

Really stimulating piece.
Finally the Economist is publishing on the CONTENT of the cables not just on the fact that they were leaked.

So... wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:19 GMT

No, bampbs, that's what they want you to think!

BTW, it's reported that the next leak will be on a US bank during the fiasco. I'm salivating over that one.

Jacques Six wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:19 GMT

As far as I can tell, and I haven't really tried very hard, the latest WikiLeak doesn't really reveal anything that a person who is aware of the world might not already know. It does reveal some gossipy tidbits, but really nothing new. Perhaps its biggest accomplishment is to bring world events to the attention of people who might not otherwise bother with such things . . .

Lucano wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:20 GMT

The Leaks comfort me in the knowledge that the CURRENT American administration are the relative goodguys in a globe filled with dictators, oligarchs, & megalomaniacs.

James Sultan wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:30 GMT

WW: Is it not reasonable to suggest that transparency would make the state's apparatus unwilling to provide such candid, clear and raw information to policy makers? Either the information would become increasingly "processed" by non-democratic actors (rather than democratic actors at present) or worse, the information would simply be filtered and not be transmitted.

Fortunately, this probably won't happen as a result of this incident; reasonable individuals would expect the information to be protected as it has been in the past. If expectations changed however, then you can be sure that the quality of information would change.

While state transparency might improve the information those of us outside of the state have to inform our opinions, reduction in overall quality of information has no benefit to anybody, and that undermines quality of democracy just as much.

anindividual wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:35 GMT

This is one of the better opinions I have read in the Economist for a while, both in principal and articulation.

The truly powerful have no reason to fear transparency. Only despotic leaders and unprofessional hacks should have something to hide from those they supposedly serve. Could this be the sixth estate?

Yuuki wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:40 GMT

Is what Wikileaks is doing actually illegal? It sounds like they are wiretapping, which is of course illegal in the US without a warrant. But private individuals and organizations cannot obtain warrants, while government (easily) can. A system where private citizens can never legally listen in on their government, no matter the degree of probable cause, is dangerous.

happyfish18 wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:46 GMT

There is this inexorable trend of centralise power in the hands of a few oligarchs by all means - fair and foul, not just in Authoritarian regimes but also in the so-called Democratic regimes of all stripes around the world. In time of stress like today, these oligarchs could easily whipped up ethnic, tribal, religious, caste, regional etc. tensions in the name of Nationalism, thus laying the foundation for the return of proto-fascism in the violent New Age.

Nov 30th 2010 12:48 GMT

truly a brilliant article..a strong apologia for all the extra freedom that has brought Internet...new weapons to fight new evils good will prevail,

Doug Pascover wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:51 GMT

I also only read DiA.

kxbxo wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 12:54 GMT

I have yet to see or hear of anything that has been leaked that is truly harmful to the interests of the United States. A lot of the supposedly more damaging stuff is actually to America's advantage.

There seems to be a lot of material (perhaps most of it?) that shouldn't have been classified as having any level of confidentiality.

Maybe that's the real lesson.

shaun39 wrote:
Nov 30th 2010 1:00 GMT

Notice the cables that are receiving all the attention?

They fall into two categories:
1) The use of inappropriate language to mock various prominent political figures. The writing of such cables is puerile and serves no value to society. The threat of exposure of such messages will not change the practice of diplomacy (except insofar as fewer contemptuous jokes are passed by email).

2) Genuine scandals, where governments have practiced deliberate hypocrisy/ acted without regard to norms of human rights and liberal-democratic values. Along with the hypocrisy of Arab states in advocating assaults on Iran, this category includes the cases of torture, espionage and circumventing the legal system.

In this latter set of reports, there isn't a single case that compromises "national security" interests (among liberal democracies, at least). Instead, the threat of future such leaks only applies pressure for governments to uphold the rule of law, defend human rights, pursue the goals they declare before their own citizens, and wage fewer wars.

What part of the wiki-leaks could possibly pose any kind of threat to liberal democracy? I second the author in declaring the opposite; that accountability created through wiki-leaks (and the prospect of countless future outings) is an essential development in institutional progress - necessary for the defense of democracy.

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