WikiLeaks Harms Global Security

Julian Assange

Reckless transparency comes at a high price – Security.

In an extensive update on the WikiLeaks’ torrential release of State Department cables (login required to read whole article), Oxford Analytica, an international consulting firm providing geopolitical analysis of world events, concludes, darkly:

WikiLeaks’ assertion that absolute transparency will make citizens safer and governments more accountable is incorrect; its interventions will increase official secrecy and threaten security. Damaging as WikiLeaks is to Obama’s diplomatic strategy and US bilateral relations, its most negative impact will be on global anti-terror efforts and diplomacy aimed at reducing friction between major powers (such as Washington and Beijing).

Claims of WikiLeaks’ salutary effects gloss over reasons why democratic governments keep secrets. Among others:

Even highly transparent, democratically accountable governments must maintain relations (generally for trade and security reasons) with less accountable regimes. Since many of these governments maintain policies that are more favourable to Western interests than their populations support, preserving confidentiality is the only way to facilitate effective bilateral communication.

Although intelligence gathering about other states’ policies has an unsavoury public reputation, it abets diplomatic exchanges in preserving peace. This is because the most valuable intelligence — discerning a potential adversary’s true intentions or capabilities — helps to avoid misunderstandings, which can lead to arms races or wars.

Although governments have misused these sound diplomatic and security purposes for secrecy in order to cover up politically discomfiting disclosures, sub rosa treaty provisions or criminal wrongdoing, very little of the U.S. government data made public by WikiLeaks fits into these categories.

In weakening the post-9/11 “need-to-share” ethos – making non-U.S. diplomats and intelligence sources less willing to share information with the United States – the WikiLeaks outpouring of diplomatic exchanges damages not only U.S. interests but also global security. Given this nation’s place as the world’s leading military power, states Oxford Analytica, its “misperceptions of potential enemy intentions and capabilities can have serious consequences.” Notably, knowledge that Saddam Hussein was hyperbolizing the extent of his weapons of mass destruction might have prevented the Iraq war.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, the world is far, far more prey to lethal forces.