Similarly, forcing the US military and the State Department to become more secretive might well hamper their effectiveness. But it seems most likely to hamper their effectiveness at things like nation-building and community outreach, where you need a broad, decentralized effort.

Among the revelations in the Wikileaks documents is this: Inside many a foreign service officer lurks a frustrated novelist. While most of the State Department cables engage in dry analysis of geopolitical issues, some are polished narrative gems crafted with an ear for dialogue and an eye to catching the attention of bureaucratic higher-ups. At times, it feels like tabloid diplomacy.

The Pentagon's role in public diplomacy was strongly endorsed by panelists at a Heritage Foundation forum here yesterday. “Influencing the enemy’s will to fight is as old as warfare,” argued Colonel Matt Venhaus of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. “Sending teams out to embassies to support public diplomacy is one way we do that.”

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon's role in public diplomacy was strongly endorsed by panelists at a Heritage Foundation forum here yesterday.

“Influencing the enemy’s will to fight is as old as warfare,” argued Colonel Matt Venhaus of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. “Sending teams out to embassies to support public diplomacy is one way we do that.”

A remarkably broad consensus has formed that WikiLeaks' latest data dump is a diplomatic disaster for the U.S. While there are debates over how the Obama Administration should respond, everyone agrees that the revelations have weakened America. But have they?

The State Department isn’t happy about having its confidential, top-secret cables blasted across the Internet by Wikileaks, but there’s no going back now, so it should embrace its new transparency...let’s look at the upside of this forced transparency. Cablegate may be for the State Department what Top Gun was for the Air Force — a great recruitment tool.

In the past three years Anne W. Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan until October, has dealt with a weak civilian government, a recalcitrant military, a stockpile of not very strictly guarded highly enriched uranium (as per the latest release of ambassadors’ cables by WikiLeaks), the Taliban, a war in the country on the west, and regular flare ups with the neighbor on the east.

Secrets are as old as states, and so are enemies’, critics’ and busybodies’ efforts to uncover them. But the impact and scale of the latest disclosures by WikiLeaks, a secretive and autocratic outfit that campaigns for openness, are on a new level.