WikiLeaks 3: Diplomatic Disaster or Snoozefest?

(Nov. 29) -- How bad is it?

Julian Assange's international media organization, WikiLeaks, stirred up controversy once again on Sunday by making public nearly a quarter-million previously confidential American diplomatic documents. The latest release raises concerns over the breadth of American diplomatic efforts and the Arab world, as well as critical philosophical issues surrounding the role of media and protection of government documents.

WikiLeaks released the classified documents -- a collection of correspondences between the State Department and diplomatic outposts around the world -- to select publications including The New York Times, the U.K.'s The Guardian and Germany's Der Spiegel. Many of the cables are conversations dating back over the past three years.

American political figures are already weighing in about the new leaks. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, argued that the release put "American lives at risk all over the world."

"This is worse even than a physical attack on Americans, it's worse than a military attack," King said.

Given that 250,000 formerly confidential cables on a wide variety of subjects were made public, there has been no shortage of opinion as to the potential impact. Surge Desk compiles WikiLeaks reactions from opinion-makers across the Web:

WikiLeaks takes aim at American diplomatic power, as Politico's Ben Smith explained:

The main effect of the many details of American diplomacy revealed in the thousands of documents obtained and released by WikiLeaks was to deepen the damage to their intended targets: U.S. foreign policy, prestige and power. ...

But the WikiLeaks fiasco crystallizes for Obama a new challenge: Restoring the sense that the United States can effectively project its power. The third tranche of documents from WikiLeaks caps a series of failures whose common theme isn't American arrogance or humility, imperial overreach or defeatism, but a more basic inability to deliver.

No surprises for American foreign policy, but what about the Arab world? Foreign Policy's Marc Lynch concluded:

The real impact may well be in the Arab world, where rulers go to great lengths to keep such things secret. The Arab media thus far is clearly struggling to figure out how to report them, something I'll be following over the next week. One of the points which I've made over and over again is that Arab leaders routinely say different things in private and in public, but that their public rhetoric is often a better guide to what they will actually do since that reflects their calculation of what they can get away with politically. Arab leaders urged the U.S. to go after Saddam privately for years, but wouldn't back it publicly for fear of the public reaction. It's the same thing with Iran over the last few years, or with their views of the Palestinian factions and Israel. But now those private conversations are being made public, undeniably and with names attached.

You call these secrets? asked Politics Daily's Walter Shapiro:

The embarrassing release of more than a quarter million confidential U.S. diplomatic cables Sunday by WikiLeaks is certain to spawn a hand-wringing national debate over why America cannot keep its secrets. Inevitably there will be strident calls for draconian new laws, more exhaustive security procedures and more invasive background investigations into the staggering 3 million Americans with security clearances.

That is the American way dating back to the earliest days of the Cold War -- respond to every security breach with a new slam-the-barn-door crackdown. But this bureaucratic reflex obscures the larger truth that for decades America has been unable to tell the difference between real secrets (nuclear codes, the names of Iranian spies, war plans on how to respond to a North Korean military offensive) and routine memos stamped "secret."

"The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment," The Guardian's Simon Jenkins argued:

If American spies are breaking United Nations rules by seeking the DNA biometrics of the U.N. director general, he is entitled to hear of it. British voters should know what Afghan leaders thought of British troops. American (and British) taxpayers might question, too, how most of the billions of dollars going in aid to Afghanistan simply exits the country at Kabul airport.

No harm is done by high-class chatter about President Nicolas Sarkozy's vulgarity and lack of house-training, or about the British royal family. What the American embassy in London thinks about the coalition suggests not an alliance at risk but an embassy with a talent problem.

WikiLeaks is a threat to candid democratic dialogue, The Weekly Standard's Philip Terzian countered:

The greatest danger of episodes like this is not the "damage" that might be done to foreign policy -- which is minimal, since everybody knows that friendly governments gossip about one another, have occasional spats and negotiate on many fronts -- but to free and unfettered communication on matters of war and peace, life and death. If an ambassador or military officer knows that his honest answers to questions from superiors will soon be in the public domain, he will begin to furnish dishonest answers -- or no answers at all. How any news organization can conclude that this is in the public interest is beyond me.

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