wikileaks
Ben Barber's recent Salon article, "WikiLeaks and the sham of 'public diplomacy': Our diplomats spout jingoistic nonsense about American supremacy -- instead of engaging with the rest of the world," shows his heart in the right place but his history way out in left field.
Everyone who has represented the U.S. abroad knows what it’s like to be among fellow Americans who haven’t the foggiest notion of what the State Department does or, for that matter, what on earth diplomacy is good for. Julian Assange and Wikileaks may have lifted the veil. That's not entirely to the bad.
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.
The latest round of WikiLeaks carried some bad news for Qatari public diplomacy, in the form of US embassy cables stating that the Qatari government is using Al Jazeera as a political bargaining tool. The leaked cables, from 2009, claim that Qatar has offered to stop Al Jazeera broadcasts in Egypt in return for Egypt’s cooperation in reaching a “settlement for the Palestinians”.
Rio Doce, a publication for Sinaloa, Mexico, interviewed CPD Director Philip Seib about the recent release of cables by WikiLeaks and its effect on the relationship between Mexico and the U.S.
The latest round of WikiLeaks carried some bad news for Qatari public diplomacy, in the form of US embassy cables stating that the Qatari government is using Al Jazeera as a political bargaining tool.
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."