Soon after the new hoard of secret documents were made public by Wikileaks, Andrew Sullivan, an Atlantic senior editor and a political commentator wrote:
“One reason I am not as alarmed by Wikileaks as some others - although I do see the damage they have done to the very possibility of frank and discreet governing and diplomacy. They have helped expose for real the US government's attempt to protect itself and its agents from the rule of law with respect to the torture and abuse of prisoners. Without the Internet - in which digital photos can be spread far and wide - we would also have no idea of the graphic horror of the Bush-Cheney torture regime.”
He went on to ask his readers:
“So what do you prefer? Old-fashioned secrecy or our own governments getting away literally with murder and torture? Since Bill Keller won't even call it torture, doesn't Julian Assange merit some praise for helping expose it in full?”
Although I am yet to see a convincing account of how Wikileaks’ recent releases did harm to “the very possibility of frank and discreet governing and diplomacy,” I have been trying to use Sullivan’s well-put questions to converse with many of my American friends. Nearly all American’s I have talked to are (at least slightly) disturbed by the fact that the American government’s cozy corner of secrecy and backroom deals is disturbed. There is a consensus, especially among those familiar with the idea of diplomacy, that what America has been doing is precisely diplomacy. What surprises me most about this comment is not that smart, well-educated and well-traveled American’s are aware that this is the type of diplomacy US is conducting and yet they don’t do much about it. But rather that they have accepted it as the definition of diplomacy.
Having faced this sad deference, I posed a question to this group of friends who all happened to have gone to one of the most prestigious schools of international affairs in the US: “so United States of America taking control of the handling of judicial processes in Spain and Germany through its diplomatic services in those countries—at times making such decisions as to which judge to appoint for specific cases—is diplomacy?” Silence: “Yes,” nearly everyone agreed. And then the justification followed: “all other powers do the same. They are just not as powerful as the U.S. and therefore the extent of their diplomacy is not as expansive.” What a relief, I felt. Now that all powers or even non-powers do it, the US can feel free to continue.
Later in the discussions, when we were talking about the concept of secrecy; what it means for the very notion of democracy; and whether or not it should be a respected rule of the game, a friend made an interesting remark in reference to our previous discussion (above). She said: “even if it was not done in secret, the reality is that a majority of Americans would have praised their government for manipulating the judicial system of another country for the sake of ‘American interest’.” I had nothing to say to that, as I tended to agree with that sad and disappointing reality.
However unfortunate, the realities of the American society do not change my views on secrecy as a rule of the game in the dealings of nation states. Secrecy, I believe, should only be accepted as an exception in diplomatic dealings and domestic governance. Such secret dealings should become public in a very short time span—much shorter than the 30 years that the US Freedom of Information Act of 1966 mandates or the 20 years as the new Freedom of Information Act in the UK dictates. In addition to the short life span for secret dealings, government employees should only be allowed to employ secrecy in matters of public interest (mind you, I refrain from using the term “national interest” as it has grown to “secretly” mean the interest of individuals and corporations rather than the public). How can we know if something is a matter of public interest? Easy: if the secret gets known to the public, the parties involved should not feel ashamed in the eyes of the public of what they did in the name of “public interest.” It is only under rigorous scrutiny of the public that secrecy can be considered (as Andrew Sullivan put it) a “frank and discreet governing and diplomacy.”
I am aware that there is a seeming conflict of definitions here: secrecy =/= public scrutiny. But with a well-defined and public-centered Freedom of Information Act that reflects the realities of information and information sharing in today’s world (and not that of 1960s), these terms will not fundamentally contradict each other in the realm of diplomacy and governance.
So most of the leaked "secrets" were legit secrets meant to be kept confidential, since they mostly fall into your definition of public interest:
ReplyDelete"if the secret gets known to the public, the parties involved should not feel ashamed".
In fact not only the parties involved do not feel ashamed (Mr. W is on book tours advertising his Decision Points), but also (and as you mention), the reality is that a majority of Americans praise their government for taking such actions!!!