Warts and all

Diplomacy, as someone once remarked, is the art of doing and saying the nastiest thing in the nicest possible way. Or, as another aphorism has it, lying for your country.

The disclosure by the website Wikileaks of thousands of previously "secret" cables sent to Washington from the United States of America's embassies mostly between 2006 and 2009 has certainly caused much fluttering in the diplomatic dovecotes, and doubtless many a wry smile on the faces of those who have been subject to the routinely frank analysis by its diplomats.

Assessing actual and potential leaders, their characters, characteristics, weaknesses and strengths is a normal part of the game of tactical warfare that takes place, and has always taken place, beneath statecraft's veneer of truth and mutual respect.

What is so embarrassing about these disclosures is not the nature of the contents of the cables, but that they have been exposed for all to see.

And the emperor, naked, is not always a pretty sight.

Matching confidential diplomatic opinion with actual consequences will doubtless be a game played for years to come, and there is certainly much potential: key US allies in the Middle East pleading with Washington to take military action against Iran's nuclear programme; US officials warning the German Government not to arrest CIA officers suspected by Berlin of being involved in the "extraordinary rendition" abduction and internment of suspected terrorists; Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's characterisation as the "mouthpiece of Putin" in Europe; the gathering of personal, biometric and even the banking details about United Nations Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and others; of Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai - a US ally - "driven by paranoia"; German Chancellor Angela Merkel as "risk-averse and rarely creative"; Russian Prime Minister Putin, derided as "an alpha dog".

What is quite extraordinary about some of the cables are the apparent examples of breaches of the boundary between diplomatic statecraft and outright espionage, long thought to be an intolerable demand of envoys.

The aggressive reaction by Washington to the leaks is indicative of the level of mortification the US Government is experiencing and will continue to experience for some time to come. A considerable effort will have to be mounted to contain the damage to bilateral relations, and especially to US interests abroad generally.

American pressure has been placed on owners of web servers to shut down the Wikileaks sites, Interpol is said to have the individual largely responsible for engineering the leaks, the Australian Julian Assange, in its sights, and he has been vilified by the government of the country of his birth. Some want him charged with espionage.