WikiLeaks, Fictoids, and Plutocracy
Starting today, on Friday afternoons, I will present reflections on the deliberate considerations of the past week.
The discussion about WikiLeaks at DC suggested the importance of looking at other dimensions of the problem, not only the issue of whether the release of official secrets serves or undermines immediate political interests, but also what it suggests about fundamental social problems, about the relationship between public and private in diplomacy, and in everyday life, and about what it means for “the big picture,” concerning the prospects for war and peace, and the success or failure of democratic transition from dictatorship and democracy.
I understand and anticipated the critical responses to the conclusion of my post. “I believe WikiLeaks’ disclosures present a clear and present danger to world peace.”
Esther expressed concern that the boldness of my judgment suggested a need to constrain the media. She, Scott and Alias agreed that the danger of the WikiLeaks “dump” was not great. Scott judged that “it’s rather unfair to assume that the US is the only country whose diplomacy can be duplicitous and shady.” And he criticized Alias’s summary judgment, based on the predictability of the revelations, “Oh well.” Scott noted that there are detailed reasons for not being so blasé and cites the possible complications in Afghanistan.
Perhaps I exaggerated, but only a little. Making public what is meant to be private undermines social interaction, whether it be in a family or in diplomacy or anywhere else. I understand why for specific reasons one would want to do that in a targeted way, if the family is dysfunctional and abusive, if the diplomacy is sustaining an injustice. But to reveal secrets just because they are secret makes little sense, since there are necessarily secrets everywhere. That is whistle blowing gone wild. It generally undermines the practice of diplomacy. Not a good thing, because the alternative to diplomacy in solving international conflict is war. And in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, as Elzbieta Matynia considered earlier today, transparency would have insured failure, i.e. the continuation of dictatorship, a violent revolutionary change, or civil war, each a path to human misery and injustice.
But I should be clear, once the information is public, I understand why news organizations need to report it and try to do so as responsibly as possible. I think The New York Times did just that, although I find their explanations for their decisions to be strained.
As far as strains go, Esther Kreider-Verhalle underscored this week the dangers Fictiods present to American democracy in her post. Hers is an ironic but critical observation: what first appears as farce, later appears as tragedy (to turn Marx on his head). It seems amusing that a Chinese journalist mistook a satirical article in the Onion for real reporting, but it is deeply disturbing that Fox news did the same thing. Disturbingly funny for those of us who don’t take Fox seriously, although we, (I, along with Esther, and probably DC readers), are deeply concerned that many of our compatriots do. To struggle against this, we will organize a continuing fictoid watch at DC, starting next week, reporting on fictoids and critically analyzing the dangers they pose. I hope this is not just an intra pillar activity, to use Esther’s imagery . Our challenge, keeping in mind Martin Plot’s earlier post on opposition and truth, is to make this activity visible to those who take Fox nation seriously. Is there anything that can be done?
Reading Martin Plot’s posts this week, I think, leads to pessimism, or at least a very critical appraisal of the prospects for democracy in America. I am not so pessimistic, not quite as critical. In my next post, I am going to consider his analysis of American politics, media and the leadership of President Obama. My basic argument – Obama never was a leftist but an imaginative centrist, and the limits of that imagination may not be as exhausted and the general prospects for creative democratic action may not be as constricted as Plot thinks.
Jeff,
While I might agree that many cables being released by WikiLeaks do not add any value to the public debate on world politics, the assertion that they endanger world peace is grossly exaggerated. On the contrary, the publications reveal a cynical world view and the need for diplomacy to change itself.
Russia is highly corrupt and politicians there have links with the maffia, Sarkozy is a bit of an authoritarian guy and Merkel is a bit boring and risk-adversive … Any news to be discovered here? No. Publicly, the US diplomats have been praised for the quality of their prose. Rightfully perhaps, but on the other hand such a big and resourceful apparatus that cannot reveal many more than is already known publicly first of all raises the question of its cost-effectiveness.
Does it harm peaceful diplomacy? Little to none. Of course there will be embarrasement, but will the diplomatic ties with France be hindered because of a description of Sarkozy? No. Relations with Turkey will definitely be worsened. But this is hardly a consequence of WikiLeaks. And US relations with Iran and North-Korea are as healthy as ever. The ‘danger-to-world-peace’ claim is merely based on the false ‘what if’ idea if diplomacy never would regain its privacy anymore. But there is no basis for this idea. The WikiLeaks documents are a one-time dump, it would be impossible – and indeed indesirable – to continuously publish each and every diplomatic gossip. Seen as a one-off dump, the WikiLeaks documents become very interesting from the perspective of democratic theory.
Documents that reveal Mrs. Clinton instructing to spy on foreign UN diplomats, that reveal that the US is not pushing too much to deter the terrorist financing coming out of Saudi Arabia due to other interests, that reveal that the Spanish government is pretty much OK with illegal CIA flights, that the Dutch government doesn’t want to admit that there are nuclear weapons on its soil ARE undeniable fit to print. Citizens have a right to know about the strategic decisions their governments are making on the international level.
Unfortunately, politics continues to be very much an elite enterprise. If the WikiLeaks documents reveal anything, it is foremost the hypocrisy of the average government and the impossibility of the average citizen to do anything about it. But the world is changing and WikiLeaks is only one example of this. In line with De Tocqueville some time ago we can say that this change – to more openness, to the downfall of elitist practices – is inevitable, the only thing we can do is to bend it to something beneficial or to let it turn into a catastrophy. Public trust in politics is at an all-time low. Right now, this is internationally leading to a surge in populism. However, it might be good to seriously consider institutional alternatives that give citizens a broader influence than only to vote every 3-6 years.
OK. Perhaps WikiLeaks should have published the 1000 most important documents instaed of all 250.000. The point is that – if you see the publication as a one-off dump – this all doesn’t matter. It is the diplomatic hypocrisy that is being attacked by giving it a public image. And not without success, even the attacks on WikiLeaks and its frontman are evidence of this. In this context, to accuse WikiLeaks of being a danger to world-peace is something absurd. If WikiLeaks would have published documents on US diplomatic ‘fact engineering’ prior to the Iraq war, it might even have deterred this war of G W Bush. To dig down in an obvious point that to come to diplomatic solutions you need some secrecy is to be pretty comfortable with the status quo and not seeing through the trees the wood anymore. To deny the obvious benefits of the WikiLeaks documents against government oppression is remarkable for everybody who says to believe in democracy.
Hi Jeff and other participants in the discussion on Wikileaks,
As a first-time contributor, let me just pose a few questions: What are your thoughts on the possible connections between the release of documents by Wikileaks and the current insurgencies in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere? Aren’t “people’s movements” like these the most promising (and potentially constructive) collective forces for peace and social justice, and against totalitarianism? Isn’t this an important (yet probably unexpected) positive outcome of the release of “secret” documents by Wikileaks?
Sean