Debates

Are WikiLeaks release of US diplomatic cables good for democracy and transparency?

WikiLeaks obtained in November of 2010 a trove of over 250,000 US diplomatic documents leaked by US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. The stated intention of the leaks was to reveal contradictions between public and private US international policies. But, the leaks have set-off an international debate on the value of transparency to democracy, whether such transparency jeopardizes diplomacy and even lives, whether the leaks expose illegal behaviour on the part of the United States, and whether Wikileak’s actions were legal. The White House came out strongly against the leak, as it did against the Afghanistan and Iraq War Log leaks earlier in the year, declaring: “Such disclosures put at risk diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the US for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals.” But others have come out in defence of the leaks, including the New York Times, which wrote: “the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.” These and other arguments and quotations are outlined below.

Arguments in favour of the releases:

• WikiLeaks aided transparency and accountability. Wikileaks has helped in revealing grand pretences about projecting freedom worldwide by US and on the other hand has kept most of the details of its actions away from the prying eyes of the public. WikiLeaks and its efforts have helped provide the information necessary so Americans can govern themselves in this supposedly self-governing society. WikiLeaks has helped demystify the inner workings of US government, sparking a much-needed debate over various U.S. policies across the world and reminded Americans that free societies depend on an informed citizenry.
• WikiLeaks served public by revealing actual US policy. The documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.
• WikiLeaks helped expose wasteful/equivocal top secret world. The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive, that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work. The result of this classification mania is the division of the public into two distinct groups: those who are privy to the actual conduct of American policy, but are forbidden to write or talk about it, and the uninformed public, which becomes easy prey for the official lies exposed in the Wikileaks documents. Like the failure of American counterinsurgency programs in Afghanistan.
• WikiLeaks helps journalists do job and check government. It is a fact of the current media landscape that the chilling effect of threatened legal action routinely stops reporters and editors from pursuing stories that might serve the public interest – and anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or lying. Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press.
• WikiLeaks release won’t have terrible diplomatic effects.  The long-term damage will be much more minimal than is presently ascribed by maybe the White House spokesperson. Leaks are not the problem; the lies they expose are.
• Cables reveal contradiction between US public and private statements. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a November 2010 statement: “reveals the contradictions between the U.S.’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors.
• Cables expose and counter US spying, missteps, and corruption. The cables show the U.S. spying on its allies and the U.N.; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in ‘client states’; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries and lobbying for U.S. corporations.”

Arguments against the releases:

• WikiLeaks leaks lack democratic principles of consent. One can hardly compare a society that is open by consent and by voluntary disclosure of the governed and the governing to vandals who forcibly pry open what is rightly closed. Like all the open source thugs, Wikileaks violates the principle of opt-in; and indeed there is not even an opt-out. Yes, most of all, what’s wrong with Wikileaks is that it is achieved by force, without consent and without knowledge. It’s Bolshevist, in that a group of people arrogantly usurp to themselves power, without democratic legitimacy, in the name of revolutionary expediency.
• WikiLeaks can be exploited by regimes unfriendly to democracy. The United States of America is surely a democratic country, respecting the freedom of reporting. However, the acts of WikiLeaks are not appropriate because it is revealing the national secrets to the world. This can cause serious problems around the globe because enemy countries, such as North Korea, can use the information from the WikiLeaks for their own benefits.
• WikiLeaks release is an assault on global democracy. It puts people’s lives in danger, threatens national security, and undermines efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems. In every country and in every region of the world, governments are working with partners to pursue these aims. So this disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests, it is an attack on the international community – the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations, that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.
• Transparency is important, but not in case of diplomacy. Transparency is fundamental in our society and its usually essential — but there are a few areas, including diplomacy, where it isn’t essential.
• WikiLeaks decreases diplomatic frankness, undermines public debate. If everything a government official says and writes is liable to become public the next moment, you will only have self-censorship, political correctness and worse, a greater tendency to avoid putting debates and decisions on record.
• WikiLeaks is not about transparency, but damaging US. There’s only the taunting slogan ‘We open governments.’ Except they don’t. They only open one government, pretty much, the U.S. The others only become displayed to the extent the U.S. engages with them, and much of the time, it’s unflattering and damaging to the U.S., not anyone else.
• WikiLeaks release is rooted in anarchist objectives. Like small children playing with fires, fascinated with their own power to destroy, Assange and company are setting the world aflame merely to watch it burn. They are not crusaders for a better society. They are nihilists. They are anarchists. And they are enemies of the United States.
• WikiLeaks has none of the transparency it espouses. People involved are mainly anonymous. They ask for donations by banking accounts – but one don’t know how much they raise or how much they spent, or on what. They don’t say what their aspirational goals are, or whether they have any creed or ideology — there’s only the taunting slogan “We open governments.”
• WikiLeaks undermines international trust and diplomacy. The key ingredient to all relationships is trust. With the release of the cables one could say that the trust that’s essential to diplomacy has been broken.
• WikiLeaks decreases frank intra-government dialogue. WikiLeaks release will shift specialized diplomats. Wikileaks release puts diplomats and officials at risk. Such disclosures put at risk diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government.
• Leaks undermine counter-terrorism intelligence sharing. Brakes will be applied in the trend towards sharing of information within government and across departmental silos. A process that began as a result of the US intelligence community’s failure to piece together data that could have led to the uncovering of the 9/11 plot—and was adopted by governments across the world, including in India—might come to an end with abuse of technological power by Wikileaks. ‘Information fusion’ within governments is likely to be the first casualty of Mr Assange’s war on responsibility.”
• Private cables are not US policy as WikiLeaks claims. People of good faith recognize that diplomats’ internal reports do not represent a government’s official foreign policy. They are one element out of many that shape policies, which are ultimately set by the Head of the state. And those policies are a matter of public record, the subject of thousands of pages of speeches, statements, white papers, and other documents that the US State Department makes freely available online and elsewhere.