In a New Atlanticist piece titled “WikiLeaks Show American Diplomats in Good Light,” I rounded up some analysis showing that the recently leaked diplomatic cables showed an American foreign service that is highly professional and insightful and argued that, to the extent the private and public diplomacy differed, it was necessary.

As some of the more interesting of the WikiLeaked State Department documents show, that is a question that two consecutive U.S. administrations have struggled with. During eight years of rule by the mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party, Turkey has become something of a model of the tricky 21st-century relationships the United States will have to manage.

There’s still considerable anxiety that the North, determined not to lose the three-quarters of the country’s oil that lies in the South, will find one means or another to block the vote or deny its legitimacy — and that the result will be the world’s worst war in 2011. That’s where George Clooney comes in.

Clinton, who has embarked on a damage-control trip around the world, sharply condemned the publication of the embassy cables by the website WikiLeaks, calling it a "very irresponsible, thoughtless act that put at risk the lives of innocent people all over the world."

Let us remember that open and transparent diplomacy was the rallying cry of President Woodrow Wilson when he railed against the secret covenants of Europe's balance of power diplomacy...President Wilson offered us instead 'public diplomacy.'

So does Wikileaks' publication of masses of secret and confidential reports from U.S. missions abroad really matter? The publication of these cables is certainly a major embarrassment for the U.S. State Department.

The diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks have, among other things, fed the notion that America's partners in the Middle East would support a forceful, perhaps even military, response against the nuclear efforts of Iran.

Afghans are more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident in the ability of the United States and its allies to provide security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than they were a year ago, according to a new poll conducted in all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.