On November 28, 2010, the Wikileaks whistle-blower website began publishing 251,287 leaked US diplomatic cables. At an average length of just over 1000 words per cable, the unauthorized release of more than 250 million words of classified diplomatic correspondence was, as an Australian journalist said, âthe political equivalent of an enormous improvised explosive device half-buried in the White House lawn.â 1 The US government immediately created a task force to contain the fallout. Personnel from the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other agencies were involved. The leaked diplomatic stockpile was an unprecedented revelation of the communications between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates around the world.
The United States has a global diplomatic presence. The leaked cables therefore contained information about almost every country on earth. They described confidential conversations with business executives, political insiders, religious leaders, human rights campaigners, and foreign leaders. They revealed how American diplomats perceived foreign leadersâ motives. They provided behind-the-scenes insights into political developments around the world. They disclosed what was said behind closed doors in negotiations on trade, arms control, border disputes and international treaties. American diplomats usually have excellent access to key figures in most countries. Their reports, revealed in the cables, thus provided valuable behind-the-scenes insights into the domestic politics of almost every country in the world.
They were one-sided versions of events, to be sure. They portrayed American diplomatsâ reports of meetings with foreign leaders, not those leadersâ versions of the same meetings. They depicted negotiations through the pens of American note-takers. They illustrated local dynamics as seen through US cultural assumptions; people who attributed US responsibility for a situation might be described as âemotionalâ and their assessments discounted by their gender, culture or âworldview.â Thus, an Iranian female professor speaking to an American diplomat in 1987 referred to âWestern interference in Iranian internal political affairs.â The US diplomatic cable reporting this conversation said she did so âduring one very emotional momentâ and added that âin the Iranian worldview there is always someone or something else to blame for oneâs misfortunes. This may be a ruler, a boss, the weather or fate in general.â 2
The American diplomat was surely familiar with his own countryâs record here: the United States overthrew Iranâs conservative nationalist parliamentary government in 1953, installed an autocratic leader who let American oil companies have 40% of Iranâs oil concessions, and supported him until his overthrow by a popular mass movement in 1979. 3 It then began backing Iraqâs Saddam Hussein, imposing costs on Iran by supporting Saddam in the IranâIraq War. And yet, the diplomat reporting this conversation could not accept the truth of âWestern interference in Iranian internal political affairsâ even to, or especially to, himself. He had to recast history in other terms.
With caveats such as these in mind, however, the leaked cables were valuable because of the privileged access US diplomats had in elite circles around the world. They permitted the public to read how US diplomats perceived key aspects of most countries: who held power and why, how did these people make key decisions, how could they be influenced, who was beholden to whom, and what the public thought about certain topics. Media organizations used the cables to report on the confidential conversations of political and business figures, and how their private views were sometimes quite different to their public utterances. The media also described what those diplomats really thought of the people who were talking to themâsometimes complimentary, sometimes harsh, but almost always frank. These aspects of the cables received extensive coverage.
But one crucial aspect of the cables has received less attention: what they reveal about the United States itself. Taken as a whole, the cables are a window into Americaâs global objectives. US diplomats make choices about what to write: they cover certain topics repeatedly and in great depth; they explain politics and economics in certain ways; and they share the same goals as the people theyâre writing toâtheir diplomatic colleagues. After prolonged immersion in the cables, the reader comes away with a grasp of US global objectives, strategies, and priorities. But prolonged immersion is a formidable task; the sheer volume of the cables can be daunting, and beyond the capabilities of journalists who have tight deadlines.
Understandably, then, the New York Timesâ book-length compilation of its stories based on the cables includes interesting material about virtually every major country on earth along with opinion essays by its leading writers, but a reverse-angle view of Americaâs integrated global objectivesâstrategic and commercialâis absent. 4 Similarly, a book by a group of writers generally sympathetic to Wikileaks also contains valuable assessments of a number of countries but not an overarching framework that shows the domestic economic considerations that motivate external policy. 5 This book, by contrast, weaves together Americaâs economic and strategic objectives to show that American diplomacy aims at an integrated global economy in which its corporations can operate with relative freedom. Strategic policy creates an enabling environment for these economic ambitions.
This book is structured along the following lines. Chapter 2 helps make sense of the cables by discussing the organization that produced themâthe United States Foreign Service. It shows how the 265 embassies and consulates around the world host officers of several federal agencies. It explains the relationship between these agencies and the United States State Department, which is the lead agency for conducting diplomacy. It describes the scope and limitations of the leaked cables. It then examines the reception of the leaked cables in Australia: the ways in which the media reacted to the revelations and the steps taken by the Australian government to deal with the fallout.
Chapter 3 continues the analysis by providing an historical comparison of the United States and Australia, two settler colonial countries that share much in common but also differ in crucial ways. It shows that Australia developed under the umbrella of British power whereas the United States developed by overthrowing it. It considers the differing roles of religion, the labor movement and political parties. It then traces the AustraliaâUS relationship from its inception after World War II and uses the leaked cables to shed light on how key Australian figures view the bilateral relationship. The cables written by American diplomats in Australia are a point of entry to their global ambitions because the two countries have a very close relationship in a number of spheres. This is not to say that the United States sees Australia as vital; the relationship is heavily asymmetrical, with Australia going out of its way to demonstrate relevance to the United States, ever anxious that it should be doing more. Only 1% of all the cables related to Australia. But they are valuable because Australia frequently goes along with US foreign policy objectives even in areas far from home, and American diplomats are quite candid when they talk to their Australian counterparts. Their conversations serve as a guide to which cables written by American diplomats in other countries are important.
Chapters 4 and 5 help the reader understand the strategic objectives of the United States in the wider world. It was necessary to spread this discussion across two chapters to improve readability. These chapters analyze cables about Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, North Korea, Israel, and other areas of the world. In many cases, the chapters show how Australian policymakers work closely with their American counterparts, aligning Australian foreign policy to suit American preferences. Strategic policy creates an enabling environment in which to pursue economic objectives.
Chapter 6 considers Americaâs commercial ambitions and the policies designed to achieve them. It lays bare the core enablers of American corporate power todayâcontrol over labor unions, defense of intellectual property rights, and favorable tax arrangements. American embassies around the world monitor these topics in considerable detail. Chapter 7 shows American diplomats working to contain negative public opinion in many parts of the world. This takes the form of Public Diplomacy, which involves talking directly to foreign publics, just as traditional diplomacy involves talking to foreign governments. It shows that quite often the problem is the policy, not the public diplomacy that tries to explain it.
Chapter 8 uses cables across a number of different subjects and regions in order to illustrate an instructive case study of Financial Sanctions against Terrorist Financing. It shows how US foreign policy tries to fight the âwar on terrorâ through the use of financial instruments of statecraft. Chapter 9, the final substantive chapter, covers the existential threat posed by climate change. It shows that fighting climate change appears to be a lower diplomatic priority than pursuing commercial objectives. Here, the cables show US diplomats at the United Nations in New York keeping tabs on climate change initiatives in order to deflect too intense a focus on action to counter it.
The major exception in this book relates to Latin America, and especially the Caribbean Basin, where Australian involvement is less obvious. US ambitions there are the same as they are everywhere elseâto make their resources available for the American economy in the manner desired by American corporations. But in Latin America and the Caribbean Basin, the United States has had the greatest influence for the longest period, and these regions deserve an in-depth, cable-based inquiry in their own right.
To help the reader locate the original cables, the citation style in this book uses the US Embassyâs original document identification as contained in the âCanonical I.D.â created by the Wikileaks group, and adds the date of the cable. The combination of the Canonical I.D. and date will allow the reader to find the cables. The full set of cables is available on the Wikileaks website and is also in informal circulation on other networks. The book deals with the material in the cables rather than the personalities involved in their disclosure. The latter topic has been covered with varying degrees of accuracy and emotion. This book treats the cables as if they were an advance release of archival information....