Making your goals clear would be great in a perfect, honest world. However, in practice having your aims known seriously weakens your bargaining position.

well as it is governments lie to their public and the less power they have to do so the more likely they are to come to peaceful compromise - of course in my ideal world the same rules would apply to everyone and the wold would be flat - this is obviously not the case.

So i again admit that wikileaks can and will harm what the US government sees as it's "national interest" but that doesn't mean it will hurt the country, especially if transparency and democracy is improved.

Of course the government responce is likely to increase sensitivity of diplomatic information and to restrict communications rather than to encourage transparency, but in the medium term, those politicians who are in favour of increased transparency will see this as helping their cause - that sometimes information can't be kept secret is a great reason to make, some, information public to begin with - because if you know it's going to be public to start with you can be more careful about what you say (and i'm talking about internal government/political conversations NOT diplomatic/international conversations...)

mcbry, you wear your ignorance on your sleeve. Read up a bit on some international theory. You confuse rhetoric with reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_in_international_relations_theory

It's Wikipedia, but it's also suspiciously like my IR textbook from last year in parts.

Wikileaks = pure journalism

not anymore, sadly

@mcbry, plus it is two entirely different things to have a country suspect that you have a general goal of merging them when they collapse then to actually admit it. While China and North Korea both suspected the US had plans concerning them it hurts the countries reputation to have those ideas, even in rough email form, thrown around for the whole world to see. I personally feel with the last set of releases the site became a threat to the national security of the country.

That's the problem with you college boys, Invictus, every time you read a new essay it causes a new revolution in your little head and suddenly you're convinced you've found the new paradigm. Not that it is ever really yours. What you're lacking is enough perspective to realize you don't actually have a single opinion to call your own, you're just blowing in the wind. Of course, I don't hold that against you, its a phase most must get through. What bothers me is how quick you are to assume that because when whatever anyone else says doesn't conform with whatever is your latest adopted theory, they must be ignorant. But no worries, tomorrow you will realize what an imbecile you are today.
So tell me, what's the IR101 textbook tell you about what happens when there is an utter disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality?
Aside from that single question, I don't give a flying fuck about all the technocrats, think tanks, diplomats or other ranks of the civil service. The only thing I care about is making my government as transparent and accountable as possible because that's the only way to check a government's potential to abuse power. Get it? I'm not talking about

sry, sent that mid-edit. It's not even a question of IR, it's a question of internal organization from which comes the power and mandate of the technocrats to act.
@jmo, if it isn't sufficiently clear yet, I don't care what China and North Korea suspect or know. What I care about is how some technocrats from my country have decided that what's best for the Koreas is unification without consulting either the people from whom their power and madate derives or the Koreans themselves. Where does the authorization come from, what methods have been approved for use to this end, who will be held responsible if WE THE PEOPLE decide that wasn't at all what we wanted and why should it all be kept a secret if not to pursue an agenda that may or may not reflect the wishes of the citizenry?

@mcbry, the technocrats don't have to consult us. As you said, we gave them a mandate to power when we elected them or whomever appointed them. Yes, they still have to respond to the wishes of the populace, but how do you know that we the people don't want the Koreans to be united? How do you know that South Korea wouldn't rather have unification with the north? The fact is there will always be people on both sides, so the politicians have to make a decision based on what they view is best for the nation. What you are going after is that we are a democracy, that every government decision has to be approved by the people. That is not the case though, because we are a republic, and the government can do what it wants without asking us (though they will pay the price come election day)

yeah, I can see these concepts are kind of mindboggling for some of you. I didn't say we GAVE technocrats the power, I said whatever power they do have IS DERIVED FROM the citizenry. If the technocrats think Koreas should be unified, then they should let the citizens know about that thought. Obviously, the only way to know how we feel about it is to inform us and ask. And by inform I mean a full report complete with how much our efforts might cost and what are the expected benefits / possible repercussions, none of this bullshit like we saw in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, where the Pres and his cronies insinuated non-existent terrorist ties, phony intel on WMDs and even the completely debunked and bogus assertion that Iraq was actively seeking to acquire materials for atomic weapons, finishing up with a totally lame "Saddam was a bad man". It was all about geo-political balances, extending influence and controlling resources, none of which has really panned out any too good. And that's just one example because our history if full of examples of our Gov coming to a decision and then trying to figure out how to deceive the public into thinking its a good idea. This is NOT a satisfactory state of affairs. I'll settle for informing for the time being and we can figure out for ourselves how to let them know what we think of the idea. And why the hell we should have an opinion in the first place is beyond me, as the Koreans are the only populace that should have a say anyway. Or do you want foreign powers intervening in your politics? Well if you don't want it done to you, don't do it to others. Sound familiar?

mcbry, once again you merely demonstrate your ignorance. I've been interested in this sort of thing for years and years, not just from what was a pretty dumb class last semester. My opinions are completely my own, but they are based on a decent enough understanding of how state actors really behave in the international system. I can understand you disagreeing with my conclusions, but calling me an imbecile because I have a working knowledge of how the people who are actually running things and making decisions on the diplomatic level think is quite absurd.

Regardless of what you might think, this is PRECISELY a question of international relations. These are diplomatic cables for goodness sakes. It's not an audit of government expenses and its not an inquiry into corruption. It's the communications between embassies and the private opinions of world leaders on serious issues. This wasn't meant to be public for decades, if ever. This is how good bit of diplomacy functions, between the representatives of states in private settings. This way diplomats aren't just weather-vanes to public opinion. That's the way it's been for hundreds of years. This is the way the system works, and it's the predictability of this system that means that there are fewer wars than there could be. To quote Tony Stark, "That's how Dad did it, that's how America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far." The great irony here is that it's possible that the damage this leak does to diplomatic strategies will force the US (and other nations in the future) to resort to military action and other crude methods much sooner.

I sympathize with your desire to prevent abuses of power completely, but that's not what's going on here at all. Your failure to tell the difference between embassy employees sending cables back to Washington which are, well, too undiplomatic to be published in the media and something like Watergate is borders on the Palinesque. It's willfull ignorance on your part.

Also it was IR 302, jerk.

+1 Invictus
Where do you go to school? I'm at American and we're big on IR here

Goldfinger +1 (did, I, a 007 fan just give a villain a positive score?!)

thank you for pointing out that the US is a Republic, not a Democracy. We are a representative democracy or a republic, however you want to look at it, but not a full democracy and the people we elect to power need to be free to make decisions that affect us without worrying about getting the majorities approval. They can let the people have their say later in the elections and let history judge whether what they did was right without having everything decided by a full referendum.

that's cute, Invic. You took a 300 level class and you've been interested in this stuff for years and years. You've only been alive about 19 years. Did you come out of the womb reading Machiavelli? I didn't call you an imbecil because you have a clue (which you really kinda don't) I called you an imbecil because you seem to think that getting through a 300-level text book gives you the right to call anyone ignorant. that's right, you called me ignorant, in case you've forgotten, and now that my response has you sucking your thumb, it's plenty evident you can dish it out but you can't take it. Which means my part in this conversation is nearing an end.

Now, when I say it isn't a matter of International Relations, what I mean is that there is a more pressing and basic issue in question which must be resolved first before you can even conceive of International Relations, and that is who has the power to negotiate, on what authority, in the name of whom, accepting what responsibility. I think I have been sufficiently clear on this point. It's probably true that as a DESCRIPTION of how the international diplomatic scenario has unfolded, this has been going on for not hundreds but thousands of years, and by "this" I mean massive wholesale abuses of power disconnected completely from the very populace from whom the power presumably emanates. You and Tony Stark might think that's pretty cool, but it sure as hell doesn't count as a justification for me.

If you're not big enough to read between the lines on these embassy cables and see a huge long string of policy which has neither been submitted to nor approved by the citizens of the country for consideration, I really can't help you any further. If they don't want the cables released, they should do a better job of storing them. I for one am a little disappointed by the fact that I have to depend on some external organization like Wikileaks, whose own operations are anything but transparent, to get a glimpse at those policy decisions of which I should have been informed more directly by my own government.

@McBry - In principle I agree with you that everyone affected should have access to the information. and before the age of mass media and the internet and even before the US existed, when information flow could be controlled so that *only* the populace would know and not the other nations involved in the potential action, that would have been great. But today, transparency means being transparent to your potential allies and enemies and those discussions need to remain secret. After an operation is complete or well under way such that the enemy knowing the info would not cause harm to our citizens, be they soldier, diplomat, or civilian, then the financials and the official secret communiques should be made available. But even then, not every discussion between a field office and the home office needs to be released as it might cause embarassment or anger to our own allies and strain our relations. Diplomats need to be able to express their true gut feelings to our elected leadership to give that leadership the best possible intel.

To that end, the release of the personal documents should go through an independent counsel for sanitization with a view of what could still be damaging to relations while official orders and briefs that should not have anything but facts, real facts, should be released as is as soon as the situation involved in those briefs has been resolved to a reasonable level.

Note I said and independent counsel. This should be a non-political body made up of people from both (or neither) side of the aisle much like a jury is selected in a courtroom.

@figlesguide

"However, in practice having your aims known seriously weakens your bargaining position."

MLK would argue that it doesn't, so long as your aims are fair and righteous.

Dr. Kings argument was with regards to the populace of the nation, not with regards to international relations. If he were here today, he would agree that international relations are very different from the relations between peoples of the same government.

+1 MLK. That's exactly the point I'm trying to get across. And that's where you and I differ, Draug (it's pretty cool how you make him speak from the grave like that though). I believe it is simply not necessary to deceive anyone, whether in internal or external relations. You can tell your counterpart what you want and why if he asks and explain how it is you think he'll benefit or what recompense you will offer in exchange. And without question the people whose interests the diplomats presumably represent should be informed of what is at stake and why. If we can agree that this transparency is an ideal toward which we should constantly strive, then I'm satisfied. Wikileaks by it's very existence is a sort of incitement for these types of leaks to continue to occur, and I for one celebrate this incitement because it is a stress on a system which I believe survives on deception and lies and which to my mind is thoroughly ripe for change (hence my prescriptive analysis in spite of obvious impediments of "how things work and have always worked"). Obviously there is a tremendous risk of this site being used in a partisan or manipulative way for less-than-sterling motives, which perhaps will be one more argument in favour of dealing honestly, directly and in good faith in the future.

But wikileaks isn't doing it for change. They are doing it for the fame and don't care what damage they do. They are essentially no different from the celeb trashing magazines on the newsstand who'll do anything to get a story and print whatever makes them money regardless of the damage it does. If wikileaks were more responsible and did their own redactions and thought through what they were releasing, they'd have more support from a lot of people. It's the difference between responsible reporting and just dumping anything that will make a splash on the public.

"But wikileaks isn't doing it for change. They are doing it for the fame and don't care what damage they do."

And upon what basis are you making this claim?

It's interesting to see the objectives people attribute to wikileaks, without even reading what Julian Assange has written regarding the objectives of wikileaks. It's certainly not for the fame, as Draugnar says, and I don't think it's even in the name of pure transparency as mcbry would have it. I think Invictus has been pretty clear in his posts with regard to the possible consequences of the leaks, but I'm not sure if he realized that this might be exactly what Assange is setting out to do.

Here's a good article that discusses one of Assange's essays:
http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9 /#

I was almost put off by the use of the word conspiracy, because of my natural inclination to scoff in skepticism at the use of the word, but it is used in this article in a different manner than is classic, so I hope you'll bear through it, because I think it's worth reading.

It's that or they (not being an American group) are actually just anti-American, a sentiment found on here in certain people (*cough* mapleleaf *cough*) and don't give a rats ass who gets hurt as long as they damage the US's reputation.

Here's also the original essay:
http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

I would go as far as to say that as journalists it is their obligation to publish this no matter what. Maybe you can say that the system is built on lies, but it is also built on freedom of press and a freedom to pursuit those lies and uncover the true intentions

Maybe I misspoke in my estimation of wikileaks as a whole. Of course, I do support the freedom of the press. I just desire it's goals to be pure, not tainted by a political view as well. Unfortunately, I find that few, if any, news organizations can make that claim and keep the proverbial "straight face".

thanks Chris. For the record I wasn't suggesting that they were trying to provide transparency, I said they were trying to induce the system to be more transparent (and just, which is for me the same thing). Here is my most concise statement from my most recent post: "Wikileaks by it's very existence is a sort of incitement for these types of leaks to continue to occur, and I for one celebrate this incitement because it is a stress on a system which I believe survives on deception and lies and which to my mind is thoroughly ripe for change".

And here is what Julian says about the leaks:

"The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.

Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."

You be the judge, but as far as I'm concerned, it's practically an identical sentiment.

bump

Ordinary people don't care about international relations. This idea that everyone is entitled to know everything that is going has infected our politics. It's cheap populism. Foreign policy is best left to experts. Whenever popular opinion gets involved, it creates a mess.

Journalists do not care about the public interest, or at least haven't ever since news became for-profit. They care about selling their product. Wikileaks is tabloid journalism at best, treason at worst.