More WikiLeaks damage

All empires were hated by their competitors but tolerated because they imposed an order on anarchic world.

There is more damage to the US coming from the latest secret information released by WikiLeaks, the website that apparently obtained millions of secret ‘diplomatic’ messages downloaded by an anti-war US soldier. In October, much unsavoury information was revealed through 400,000 messages put out by Swedish WikiLeaks owner Julian Assange. Sensing that what the anti-war crusader might have in the shape of these diplomatic cables would be seven times more in volume and may contain more content embarrassing to the US, the Obama administration has swung into action.

In order to foreclose the imminent airing of US diplomacy, the Obama administration has called the leaks illegal, but that hardly matters since secrecy laws all over the world are now more observed in breach than in obedience — they don’t apply in the US except to officials from whose possession the information has leaked. But Mr Assange has taken the precaution of approaching US officials with the even more discomfiting request that it should point out the damaging items. It seems there is nothing the Obama administration can do but to approach all the governments on whom its diplomats were sending ‘frank’ secret assessments and beg them to ignore the revelations. This effort too will come to nothing.

The earlier batch of WikiLeaks had already embarrassed American diplomats trying to keep the US-Pakistan relations on an even keel. The lack of trust among the Americans dealing with Pakistan reflected Pakistan’s own ambiguities and strengthened the quarters in Islamabad that wanted the double-dealing to end in favour of a clear-cut anti-American policy articulation. The leaks further intensified the anti-US feeling in Pakistan born of the perception that America was in Afghanistan to nurture the Indian hegemonic designs in the region as a counterforce to the growing Chinese influence in Asia. They had also affirmed the scholarly studies made in the US about Pakistan’s concealed dealings with the Afghan Taliban.

The latest leaks focus on the Saudi king who dislikes President Asif Ali Zardari and wants the US to attack Iran to defeat its designs in Iraq which the king wants saved from the Iraqi leader Nouri al Maliki, whom he considers an Iranian proxy. There is confirmation in the leaks that terrorism in Pakistan is funded by Arab donors and that Qatar, where the Americans have their military-strategic headquarters, leads in this activity. The dispatches included in the leaks are embassy assessments of local leaders and their involvement in corruption. They also reveal lack of agreement with policies ostensibly followed by the host countries, which might affect relations currently based on expressions of trust. For instance, the leaks call in question the frequent American announcement that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are safe and under no threat of acquisition by the terrorists.

American secrets are never kept. There are two kinds of ‘unbuttoning’ that goes in the United States. There is the ‘instant bestseller’ source that is a kind of running commentary on pronounced policy telling us what the policymakers actually think. It happened to former US president Bush while he was busy fighting the Iraq war; it has happened to President Obama while he fights his ‘wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then there is the second kind of ‘airing’ of secrets carried out by insiders of all sorts in the form of bestselling ‘memoirs’ while safely in retirement. This is how ‘open government’ is achieved in America after a ‘not-so-open government’ has handled world affairs and caused events to take place in distant lands.

Pax Americana has unfolded in our times in the midst of an unceasing stream of ‘illegal’ and damaging information. America has survived disclosures in the past; it actually may have benefited from them. It has learned to disavow and even apologise. Will it survive the current unprecedented virtual Niagara of information? Working on the basis of realism, the world will roll with the punch and allow America to bounce back too. All empires were hated by their competitors but tolerated because they imposed an order on an otherwise anarchic world. Till the hegemon was replaced by another.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2010.