Leaks and Reactions

As things stand right now, it seems to me that America is more likely to be hurt by her own reaction to the publication of the Wikileaks documents rather than by the documents themselves. When the Attorney General darkly intones that an investigation of a criminal nature is afoot targeting Assange for the unveiling of diplomatic secrets, not only is he on dubious legal ground, but -much worse- he is being stampeded by Palin and her ilk. This bodes ill for the administration and of course the world in the coming years.

If Assange broke US law with his leaks, then so did the NY Times. Assange did not steal the secrets himself, he just received the proceeds from an admittedly illegal act under US law (Manning is already in custody for the criminal side of this issue). He then acted as any other bona fide journalist would do and did, namely he decided that it was in the public interest to publish. He also deserves credit for waiting for the established news media to publish selected redacted documents, with information jeopardizing the safety of individuals excised, and then posting the same documents on his website. All these wild cries about putting a CIA hit squad on him etc. is just right wing extremism at its most odious. If this type of response prevails, then America will play into the hands of its worst enemies. Such hysteria would contradict and obscure America's glorious tradition of press freedom, which brought down a president after all back in the seventies. America ought to protest certainly; but in the name of the principle of diplomatic confidentiality which is of the essence in conducting international relations, a principle that all nations are interested in seeing upheld. For the rest, let the State Department put its own discombobulated house in order so that such a breach may not occur again.

That the Obama administration seems to be so easily cowed by the screeching and howling of the most reactionary right in a century is a symptom of a deep-going malaise. When Jimmy Carter in a misguided attempt to appear "tough" began his demagogic campaign against the presence of a "Russian brigade" on Cuba (a force that had been there since the early sixties and everyone knew about), this was a sure sign that his presidency had run out of steam and that he was throwing in the towel in the bout with Reagan. Could it be that Obama is mesmerized by the perverse charisma of that empty and stunted person, Palin, even though he says that he does not waste time thinking about her? Why are American liberals so complex-ridden in the face of that uncouth and hypocritical crowd of Tea Party Republicans, whose previous incarnation as the Bush neocons ran the American and the world economy to the ground and offered Iraq on a platter to Iran and Al Qaeda (forgetting for the moment the numerous human lives destroyed by that truly criminal enterprise)? And are the American people as a whole so uneducated and misinformed that they cannot perceive these facts? I believe that this is false. I believe that a serious political effort from the pulpit of the White House to broadcast the disaster that weirdo Republicanism has inflicted upon American society, and the texture of lies that is their present "policy", would easily overrun the defenses of that Neanderthal crowd. If Helmut Schmid can call the Budesbank and Angela Merkel a bunch of reactionaries, surely Obama can summon up some more fire from his political belly to underline the true cause of the American people's current economic suffering. In attacking the editorial and opinion pages of the NY Times as out of touch with ordinary people he is shooting himself in the foot. It just happens that Paul Krugman, for instance, is right on target precisely from an "ordinary people" perspective and Obama's advisors would do themselves a favor to heed some of his warnings.

With respect to the actual content of the published dispatches I do not think that America has anything to be ashamed of so far - with the exception of those stupid CIA instructions to America's UN diplomats to spy on their colleagues there. (Of course it is not to be doubted that their Russian and Chinese etc. counterparts returned the favor). As Neal Acherson cogently explained in the Guardian the other day, America's diplomats by and large emerge from Assange's disrobing as a crowd of sensible and well-meaning individuals, on the whole performing commendably the task allotted to them, namely to report the truth about local conditions and personalities and to manage the myriad crises thrown up in today's fragmented world with a view to maintaining peace and stability. Obama's handling of relations with Russia, what with the scrapping of Bush's missile shield in Poland so that Putin can be won over for sanctions against Iran, is a case in point.To be sure, this activity is conducted from a perspective of safeguarding America's predominant position internationally -but there is nothing new or astonishing in that. However, what does clearly emerge from the exchanges is the weakened imperial posture of the last superpower in the midst of numerous crosscurrents and shifts of power.

Whether one likes it or not, America's power is still the ultimate foundation of whatever coherence remains in the international system with reference to some residual legality and mutual recognition of legitimate interests. The way this power is wielded is, thus, of vital importance to all of us. And the classified cables clearly show that there is a world of difference between the Bush procedure of riding roughshod over the international landscape in the name of various half-baked ideologies of America's metaphysical mission and Obama's efforts to mediate in the name of a reasonable mutuality. That is why his possible overthrow by the crazed Palin crowd is such a nightmare.

Lastly a note of local interest. Among the Wikileaks documents there are about 1300 dispatches from the Athens embassy and the Thessalonica consulate. These have not yet been published. I desperately hope that nothing is contained in them that might fan the anti-American, anti-Western psychosis of the political and journalistic classes here. So far, the Wikileaks revelations have been greeted with the expected glee on account of the US embarrassment, as well as inane declarations, from certain numbskulls of the main opposition party no less, that Assange ought to be declared a "hero of humanity". Of course, if Greece had been the target of similar diplomatic exposure you would have seen a general hue and cry about an "imperialist attack" against the nations sacred rights. If, for instance, in the Greek dispatches there is as much as a veiled hint of a hint that Greece ought to compromise on Macedonia's name, you can safely expect an anti-American explosion, with ample invoking of the case of Purifoy and such instances from sixty years ago.

The fact that the Obama administration has been from the very start firmly on the side of Greece in its present travails, urging the Europeans to bail her out, declaring its willingness to contribute to this rescue through the IMF, opposing the bloody-minded deflationary and monetarist diktat of the Germans in the EU and generally following a neo-Keynesian economic course at home which if followed here would offer an escape for Europe from its present vicious spiral, has not registered on the defunct minds of our political and intellectuals leaders. Let's hope that Assange's, otherwise well-meaning, initiatives do not drag us deeper into this suicidal swamp.