Friday, December 03, 2010

Imagination Is Funny

I am pleased to note that of the two major modern examples of successful "secret" diplomacy cited by the some-old-professor that the Times exhumed to criticize wikileaks, one of them is the Treaty of Versailles. Oh, man, yeah, that really worked out well for everyone.

Posted by IOZ at 10:49 AM | email »
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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, but at least it's an ethos.

11:16 AM
mushr00m said...

Obviously information must be controlled by responsible parties. The Ems dispatch a prime example. How else can we get the Communards?

11:38 AM
Justin said...

and...
"Consider how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger cut off all but their inner circle of advisers after the Pentagon Papers were published."

Another example is of the Pentagon Papers, which, no matter how far into the shadows Kissinger and Nixon retreated, still helped reveal the truth about the Vietnam War and hastened the end of our involvement and led to the downfall of the Nixon administration, which in turn led to many of the reforms of the 1970s from the Church commission.

11:38 AM
Anonymous said...

Henry Kissinger's existence outside of a prison cell is proof that God loves Obama and wants him to secretly bomb the neighbor of a country the US military is occupying. It's true. A guy who has been living in Israel for the last couple of decades told me it was true.

11:52 AM
BizarroMike said...

I like the analogy in the article. Wikileaks disclosure of these documents is

"...like the work of irresponsible amateurs using dynamite to expand a tunnel that also contains, say, a city’s electrical lines. The leaks will probably not cause war or even a serious crisis, but they will badly damage America’s diplomatic machinery, processes and reputation."


Except Wikileaks isn't a US organization based on advancing US causes. Why should they care about how "America's diplomatic machinery," a veiled penis reference, is damaged by this? It isn't exactly obvious that the State Department even acts with the interest of most US citizens at heart. Reading over the documents, it looks more like a corrupt, venal mess. I always suspected, but thanks to Wikileaks, now I know.

Looking at the examples given of secret diplomacy's success, it doesn't really give me heart that this has ever produced anything good for the common man. The example of Bismarck's forgery and selective leakery is telling: The Franco-Prussian war did little for the people of France or Prussia. Moreover, it was accomplished by the sort of leak that we know well today: some source spreads some rumor to a trusted journalist. The journalist reprints it, happy to have access and be so important. Wikileaks is different from that, that's for sure.

12:20 PM
la Rana said...

His whole thesis is fucked. The remainder is an assertion that the cold war ended by agreement, rather than the collapse of the Russian economy and subsequent implosion of the ruling oligarchy, and a bunch of terrible metaphors. Its as convincing as that heelarious billboard in NYC: You know its true!

12:33 PM
Myles SG said...

However, counterpoint(s): Nixon-in-China, and Congress of Vienna 1815.

1:36 PM
dr. fugsley farnsburrow billingsworth, professor emeritus said...

The op-ed pages of major newspapers will publish anything, any shit at all, under two conditions:

1.) The writer is famous, or has a reliable-sounding title, or both, and...

2.) The piece makes a pitch for sober rule by experts, decrying "amateur" involvement in important affairs (and its resultant failures of civility or reason).

ANY SHIT AT ALL. Just type a well-known name at the top, preferably with the name of a university. The editors will never notice if everything that follows is incoherent, bizarre, insane, laugh-out-loud stupid, whatever. Be famous, be a professor, or be a famous professor.

The NYT could replace its op-ed editors with a name and title algorithm, and no one would ever know.

1:44 PM
Ed said...

Good points above, but one more amusing aspect of this is that a version of the Wikileaks scandal happened around the time of the Treaty of Versailles, when the Soviets published the secret diplomatic correspondence from the last years of the Tsarist era.

12:03 AM
NutellaonToast said...

Godwin!

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