WikiLeaks: nobody is all that shocked by the revelations

Panting at the heels of one of the biggest international security stories in recent years, a dogged news hound has discovered that New Zealand is mentioned in dispatches after all.

Phew! For a moment there it looked as if we might have been bypassed by the biggest diplomatic scandal to have embarrassed the United States and its friends and acquaintances in many years.

And, as the old saying goes, if there's one thing worse than being talked about, it's not being talked about.

Thus the news that we do feature on the security radar of the United States - even if it only in relation to an undersea cable - must come as a welcome relief to those whose sense of self-esteem and national identity rests on the extent to which Godzone features in the drawing-room conversations of the Washington diplomatic elite.

And if it's not really all that exciting - no spicy name-calling, at least not yet, not even a stray "gone-by-lunchtime" remark to sex up the relationship - then at least we haven't suffered the ultimate ignominy of being completely ignored.

The WikiLeaks phenomenon raises some awkward issues - pertaining to freedom of speech, the language and posture of international diplomacy, and the shadowy world of "security". But whether it is quite the extreme matter of life and death that some have portrayed it as is another matter.

And how those libertarian right-wing commentators in the US, who have made careers, and personal fortunes, out of routinely debasing facts, history and objective reality in favour of a variety of ideologically driven fictions, while at the same time claiming allegiance to the fundamental freedoms of expression enshrined in the US constitution - how one or two of the more mouthy among them, and others including Canadian academic Tom Flanagan, can call for the assassination of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange for essentially telling "the truth" is an interesting conundrum.

Could they be guilty of perhaps peddling the merest over-reaction?

After all, nobody is very shocked by the revelations contained in the sample so far released of the estimated 250,000 or so United States diplomatic cables.

Mostly they contain just the sort of thing you would expect the diplomats to say - only not in public. Benjamin Franklin said "diplomacy is seduction in another guise", and, it might be added, as fraught with complication, complexity and betrayal as are affairs of the human heart.

The dictionary of quotations is full of dictums loaded with similar import: "a diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip"; "a real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbour's throat without having his neighbour notice it" - and so on.

Diplomats play roles - usually advancing the interests of their own state but in such a manner as to have their audience believe otherwise. Here they've been caught pants down in the dressing room of realpolitik.

Some, such as former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, are unapologetic.

In the frame over a leaked cable in which he warned US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the US ought to be prepared to use force against China "if everything goes wrong", Mr Rudd this week insisted the relationship between his country and China was as it had always been.

"It's a robust relationship and diplomacy is a robust business.

"The business of diplomacy is not just to roll over and have your tummy tickled from time to time by the Chinese or anybody else," he said.

In exposing the fragility of "security" in the digital age, arguably Julian Assange has done governments a favour. Nothing is secret or sacred and those in the business of conducting legitimate state business, but which would be unhelpful or dangerous to have revealed, will have to revisit how they record that business.

By all means prosecute to the letter of the law the leaker of the diplomatic cables. But threats against Mr Assange are extravagant. What about the editors of such august newspapers as the Guardian in the UK and the New York Times, who, in conjunction with WikiLeaks, published much of the information. Should they be hunted down as well? And what crime has the WikiLeaks founder actually committed?

While outraged authorities in various jurisdictions are chewing over those questions and making arrangements to transfer and replace diplomats whose frank analyses of their host governments make their tenure no longer suitable, the diplomatic cocktail circuit will doubtless be agog.

- Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.

 

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