12:38 AM
It is premature to determine the ultimate winners and losers from the most
recent WikiLeaks episode. That said, here in Washington jumping to conclusions
is very often the only exercise we get. So, here goes.
Winners:
1. The United States of America
How do you go from being the targeted victim of an unprecedented information
attack to being the victor? Simple: Be revealed to have been working hard
behind the scenes to do the right thing. The United States is as imperfect as
any nation and guilty of countless missteps as the past decade has shown with
great clarity. But if there is one over-arching message to the Wiki-spill it is
that for the most part, in most places U.S. diplomats and senior officials have
been doing an admirable job. For more on this, see the estimable and wise Les
Gelb's piece
yesterday for The Daily Beast.
2. American Diplomats
The United States' first diplomat, Thomas Jefferson, said that he
"never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for
a private man." Diplomacy necessarily involves secrets and deceptions, but
an acid test of diplomacy and diplomats is whether what is done privately
stands up to public scrutiny. So far the leaked cables for the most part show
professional diplomats doing their job with intelligence, wisdom, candor and
even humor. Bill Burns wrote
incisively wherever he was stationed. Anne Patterson spoke truth
to power while at the center of what may be the world's toughest diplomatic
assignment.
3. The Newspapers Who Published the WikiLeaks
Ka-ching. WikiLeaks is not only the gift that keeps on giving, it could go
on giving for a long time. Release 250 or so cables a day and they could keep
going for 3 years. But guess what, it's not just good business, it's actually
good journalism. Provided they behave responsibly as, for example, The New York
Times
and the Guardian
seem to have done, this is a coup for ink-stained wretches everywhere.
[[BREAK]]
4. Advocates for Intelligence Reform
Let's see: If a 22-year-old moon-faced Army private with a blank Lady Gaga
CD in his hand can download
a mountain of classified documents and make them public, I wonder how many
other slightly more sophisticated actors have been siphoning out more important
secrets more discretely over the past several years. The custodians of the U.S.
system of document classification and its intelligence knowledge management
system has got to be more embarrassed by this fiasco than Muammar Qaddafi's
plastic surgeon. In fact the custodians, like Qaddafi's Botox man, have all got
to be asking themselves: Is that really the best you can do?
5. Realists
So, who knew, when Thomas Hobbes wrote that life was "nasty, brutish
and short" that he was also describing the best State Department cables? Perhaps
the reason is that in a nasty, brutish world, a certain clear-eyed realism is
required. I'm not talking about the chardonnay-sipping academics who
characterize themselves as realists to dress up their impulse toward appeasing
bad guys (or worse). I mean realists who recognize that in a world as corrupt
and double-dealing and dangerous as the one described in these cables, you need
actors who behind the scenes are demonstrating that they know the score and are
going to do what it takes to protect national interests. Ideally, those actors
are also going to help make the world a safer place in the process and as far
as that is concerned, see points one and two above. (Speaking of realists,
maybe Barack Obama has more realist in him than we knew. He sure doesn't seem
to be too starry-eyed about the likelihood his own "engagement"
rhetoric was going to work.)
6. Voluptuous Blonde Ukrainian Nurses
Botox aside, Qaddafi seems to be doing something right. Perhaps being a
ruthless dictator isn't so bad after all. Actually, let's be honest, we all
have within us a ruthless dictator yearning to be set free ... so as to be able
to hire phalanxes of buxom blonde attendants to cater to our every need. (Choose
your own demographic, you get the point.)
And the Losers:
1. Julian Assange
The wikiweasel-in-chief is now on the lam. Interpol wants him not because he
is trafficking in stolen classified document or because he is recklessly
putting lives at risk, but because he is wanted
for sex crimes. Meanwhile, the champion of openness is giving interviews
from secret locations calling for Hillary Clinton to resign while inadvertently
revealing the tireless efforts of the U.S. State Department to actually try to
solve world problems while other "great powers" do little or make
them worse. So, let's tally it up: The WikiLeaks mission is a fraud (it's not
about openness, it's about attacking the United States) and it's a failure
(he's actually making the United States look better) and the sleazebag
mastermind is going to end up in the slammer. All in all, a pretty bad week for
Assange ... who will be well played in the movie by Paul Bettany (once they get
around to making the movie.)
2. America's Non-Ally Allies
See today's New York Times story
on Pakistan, see the leaks
on the Karzai brothers, our one-two punch of AfPak frenemies comes out of this
document dump looking scarier than ever. Not that this should come as a big
shock. But it leaves one wondering: If we know we can't count on the people we
are counting on ... er, what's Plan B? Is this all going to come down to
swallowing hard and accepting military rule in Pakistan ... perhaps with a thin
veneer of democracy... and some thugocracy in Kabul ... so long as they promise
to keep their problems local?
3. China
China wants to sit at the big table of international leadership but doesn't
want to do any of the hard work to get there. If North Korean missile parts are
making their way to Iran via China, if the Chinese are using Iranian sanctions
negotiations to cash in for themselves while simultaneously actually reducing
pressure on Iran, they are revealing themselves not leaders but free-riders
within the international system. Not only do they want the benefits of
participating in the global economy without the responsibility for helping to
preserve it or the international community, but they seem to think it's okay to
stir up trouble and play footsy with rogue states just like they did when they
were a middle-tier power on the way up. The message: So long as they are not
part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
4. Embarrassed Foreign Officials ... and
Candor
Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Qaddafi, Kadyrov, Merkel, Cameron, the list of foreign
leaders who are stung by State Department snark is a long one and getting
longer every day. But as awkward as it must be this week to deal with the
tittering classes, there's a silver lining. U.S. diplomats are sure to be a
little more cautious in their cables for some time to come. Their days doing
the Zagat's ratings of international dignitaries have been brought to an
unceremonious close. Or at least, that's the conventional wisdom. My sense is
that since candid takes on who's who is essential for diplomacy, they'll
continue via one back channel or another.
5. The U.S. Department of Defense
DOD has always looked down its nose at the way the State Department handled
secrets. So all this is a bit, um, awkward. State's computers simply wouldn't
allow the kind of siphoning off of classified material that the military system
seemingly invited. They've also taken months to actually step it up and fix
security...though they are moving double-time now to make up for lost time.
6. Senator John Kerry
You know those aspirations to someday be secretary of state? Well, they've
been dealt a double blow. Not only has the WikiLeaks blowback made Hillary
Clinton's State Department look better (the U.N. assertions are a
red-herring ... all diplomats throughout history have always tried to find out as
much as they could about their counterparts...and which is why the initiative
to do so predates this administration) ... but when you offered
up the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem during a trip to Qatar and endorse
the notion of Hamas as a peacemaker, you probably made it a little tough for
yourself come possible nomination time. Not that you didn't mean well. It's
just, well, it's going to be a politically awkward. You know what I mean?
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