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03 ■ DIPLOMACY FROM A1 WikiLeaks and American diplomacy


published). Like the previous releases of massive collections of military and security Afghan and Iraq war documents (in July and October, respectively), there has been little in the way of real surprise or revelation. This set of leaks has differed from those of the past. They have included not a single Top Secret report like the Pentagon Papers of 1971 that, despite the plural, were actually a single report comprising thousands of pages of analyses and thousands more of documentation organized into nearly 50 volumes. Each of these WikiLeaks releases has instead been of vast quantities of fairly low-level reports of lower levels of classification. Many of the military documents released in July and October were initial reports or impressions of “significant activi- ties”—SIGACTs, in the parlance—and are not even a definitive or complete account of a specific event. In war, secrecy is of paramount


importance. But the value and sensitivity of a secret that is truly actionable is often of a very short-lived nature (as opposed to the continued classification of material that is merely embarrassing). The trick with intelli- gence in war is that you can never quite know what tidbit of information your adversary might make useful. But perhaps the single most important and unambiguous lesson of the WikiLeaks releases of Iraq and Afghan war documents has not so much been a security problem (though obviously there was a very important one) but of how overloaded the classification system has become with information of marginal and short-term sensitivity. So many were accessing so much mundane, day-to-day information that no one noticed when something important (in this case enormous


■ GLOBAL FROM A1 WikiLeaks releases list of ‘vital’ sites


It lists undersea cables, key com- munications, ports, mineral re- sources and firms of strategic impor- tance in countries ranging from Aus- tria to New Zealand. One item men- tions smallpox vaccines in Denmark. According to the diplomatic ca-


ble, the request was aimed at updat- ing a list of “critical infrastructure and key resources located abroad,” notably so as “to prevent, deter, neu- tralize or mitigate the effects of de- liberate efforts by terrorists to de- stroy, incapacitate or exploit them.” Malcolm Rifkind, a former Brit- ish defense and foreign secretary, said in The Times of London that WikiLeaks had made no credible ef- fort to establish whether the list could assist extremists. “This is further evidence that they


have been generally irresponsible, bordering on criminal. This is the kind of information terrorists are interested in knowing,” he was quoted as saying.


The release will add to the politi- cal storm engulfing WikiLeaks and its 39-year-old founder Julian Assange, who broke cover on Friday to say in an online chat that he had boosted security after receiving death threats. The website is already battling to secure its avenues for financial do- nations online, and has been hop- scotching across servers and legal ju- risdictions to evade a total shutdown. Assange’s British lawyer, Mark Stephens, expressed concern on Sunday that a legal pursuit of Assange in Sweden had “politi-


■ CRITICAL FROM A1 WikiLeaks, US critical infrastructure


Media interest aside, STRATFOR does not see this document as of- fering much value to militant groups planning attacks against US targets abroad. The sites listed in the cable are either far too general, such as tin mines in China; are not high-profile enough to interest militants, such as undersea cables; or already represent well-known strategic vulnerabilities, such as the Strait of Malacca. STRATFOR has discussed how


many of the sorts of targets men- tioned in the cable do not necessar- ily lend themselves to successful ter- rorist attacks. Dams, 24 of which are mentioned in the cable, would re- quire more explosive power to dam- age significantly than a militant group reasonably could be expected to deploy. Ports, 15 of which are


mentioned in the cables, cover too much area to be significantly dis- rupted for long amounts of time by terrorist attacks.


Militants already are very much


aware of the vulnerabilities of the other targets, such as oil pipe- lines. And while attacking under- sea cable landings—mentioned 72 times in the cable, more than any other specific target—could disrupt global communication networks, redundant infrastruc- ture means attacking one node would not disrupt the network or leave any sizable population center isolated for a long period. (Previous damage to undersea ca- bles has been limited to tempo- rary Internet outages that are quickly repaired.)


Instead of an earth-shattering list


of sites vulnerable to terrorist at- tacks, the list leaked this week is re- ally a more revealing look at the in- ner bureaucracy and daily activities of the US security community and at how diplomats around the world contribute to assessing threats to US interests. This does not mean listed sites will not ever be attacked, but that experienced militants do not rely on DHS studies to provide tar- geting guidance.


(“WikiLeaks and US Critical Infrastructire” is republished with the express permission of STRATFOR and may not be repub- lished by any other parties without STRATFOR’s consent. To access STRATFOR’s original version, go to: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/ 20101207_wikileaks_and_us_critical_infrastructure.)


cal motivations.” Stephens, in comments to the BBC, also warned that WikiLeaks had secret material in reserve, which he likened to a “thermo-nuclear de- vice,” to be released if it needed to protect itself. Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, who is investigating allegations of rape and sexual assault against Assange, defended her prosecution in comments to Agence France-Presse. “This investigation has pro- ceeded perfectly normally without any political pressure of any kind,” said Ny, who successfully applied for an Interpol demand for police forces around the world to track Assange down.


WikiLeaks has been in the eye of a media and diplomatic storm since it started leaking US diplomatic ca- bles from a collection of some 250,000 it had obtained, embarrass- ing and infuriating Washington. Leading US lawmakers are calling for Assange’s arrest or even execu- tion. Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell slammed him Sunday as a “high-tech terrorist.”


Among the latest revelations: • One document said Saudi Ara-


bia was the key source of funding for radical Islamist groups includ- ing al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar- e-Taiba and Hamas. • Gulf states Qatar and Kuwait were said to be lax in pursuing locals who donated to the groups, according to the cable, an assessment from Clinton dated December 30, 2009. • Qatar is using the Arabic TV


news channel Al-Jazeera as a bar- gaining chip in negotiations with other countries, despite the broad- caster’s insistence that it is editori- ally independent. • Clinton views Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as a “be- hind-the-scenes puppeteer” who chafes at his role working alongside President Dmitry Medvedev. Potentially the most embarrass- ing for the United States and Aus- tralia were the details of a conversa- tion between Rudd, when he was Australia’s prime minister, and Clinton over a Washington lunch in March 2009.


The cable said Rudd—a Manda- rin-speaking former diplomat who was once posted to Beijing and is now Australia’s foreign minister— argued for “multilateral engagement with bilateral vigor” in China. He called for “integrating China


effectively into the international com- munity and allowing it to demon- strate greater responsibility, all while also preparing to deploy force if eve- rything goes wrong,” the cable stated. Commenting Monday, Rudd said


Australia had a robust relationship with China and that he had no intention of contacting Beijing over the cable. “The business of diplomacy is not to just roll over and have your tummy tickled from time to time by the Chi- nese or anyone else,” he said.


AFP


(See STRATFOR’S “WikiLeaks and US Critical Infrastructure” on Page A1 for another view on this subject.)


quantities of low-level sensitivity) was being accessed and moved inappropri- ately: the WikiLeaks releases are a symptom of a classification system that is broken—and not just because someone managed to leak so much. “Nothing that WikiLeaks has


released so far—about the Iraq and Afghan wars or American diplomacy— has changed geopolitics.” Interestingly, few of the more than 250,000 diplomatic cables are actually classified—though they were never intended for public consumption. But the real significant difference is the game that is being played: a diplo- matic rather than military one. In the practice of diplomacy, no one should be surprised that a country behaves one way and says another. When two leaders talk, their ability to speak in confidence is essential for moving beyond the pomp, circumstance and atmospherics that diplomacy has always entailed. Indeed, the very act of two leaders talking is the product of innumerable back-channel negotiations and confidential understandings. And even in supposedly more transparent democratic societies, the exigencies of foreign affairs dictate discretion and flexibility. Diplomacy not only requires compromise, but by its nature, it violates ideals and requires multiple layers of deception and manipulation. The issue that is raised in peace- time diplomacy is that the mutual understanding of confidence is publicly breached. In war, nothing important is going to change based on a SIGACT report from a squad-level patrol from two years ago. If some- thing needed to change, the exigen- cies of war saw it change long ago— at the company level, things may have changed as a result of the debrief


following that very patrol. Other than for the men and women who fought there that day and their families, it has become a matter for history. But what the sitting US ambassador to a country has been saying to Washing- ton for the last two years has the potential to matter for the functional relationships he has worked to cultivate and for how that country’s people perceive their government’s relationship with America—and therefore the constraints those leaders face moving forward. Everyone already knows this is how the game is played, and leaders in Washington and beyond have already demonstrated that countries with real problems to work on are not going to let a glimpse of what goes on behind closed doors interrupt important geopolitical relationships. With the release of these cables, everyone now knows what US diplomats think of Moammar Gadhafi. It may impact US- Libyan relations temporarily, but only if Libya was already in the market for an excuse to muck up the works. It would be far more problematic if the WikiLeaks revealed that the US State Department was working with an unrealistic political assessment of what a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was going to be like than the fact that what everyone reads in the tabloids also made it into a diplomatic cable. What’s more, the idea that WikiLeaks


could hurt diplomatic relationships between the United States and the rest of the world also assumes that the rest of the world conducts diplomacy in a more “honest” manner—it does not— or that it somehow does not fear that one day its own dispatches may be laid barren for all to see—it does. And given American intelligence capabili-


ties, there’s a good chance most countries do not want to gamble on whether the United States is already reading them. Nevertheless, this latest batch of


WikiLeaks has been more anticipated here at STRATFOR than the first two. The matters they discuss would have eventually made their way into history books if they mattered, but they offer an unprecedented sampling of what the current administration and the current State Department have said in confidence in recent years on a wide variety of issues. Nothing that WikiLeaks has released so far—about the Iraq and Afghan wars or American diplomacy—has been so revelatory and of such great consequence to spur entire nations to make significant alterations to their foreign policies, and so far the diplomatic impact has been minimal. But it is fascinating for those who detail the blow-by-blow of history for a living, and have to make estimates about what is going on behind those closed doors based on imperfect information. These cables provide a way to check not the accuracy of intelligence estimates—and not in a matter of years when they are proven right or wrong— but are based on a vast array of current data. We imagine STRATFOR is not the only one benefiting from getting a look at the answer sheet, incomplete and imperfect though it may be.


(“WikiLeaks and American Diplomacy” is


republished with the express permission of STRATFOR and may not be repub- lished by any other parties without STRATFOR’s consent. To access STRATFOR’s original version, go to: http://www.stratfor.com/ geopolitical_diary/


20101129_wikileaks_and_american_diplomacy.) ■SURVIVAL FROM A1


There is considerable interest in what his arrest will mean for his or- ganization. WikiLeaks organized a new method for an old practice— leaking confidential government information in an attempt to influ- ence politics. And while Assange’s arrest could disrupt the long-term viability of WikiLeaks, it will not stop the release of the current batch of diplomatic cables in the short term, nor will it stop similar future leaks via the Internet.


Leadership is extremely impor- tant in nongovernmental organiza- tions that have not institutionalized to the point where their dominant figures are replaceable and members can adapt to changing circumstance. From terrorist groups to charities, new organizations often rise and fall with their founders. Assange created WikiLeaks with himself as the only public face—he leads supporters, drives donations, gives interviews and faces the resulting criticism. There have been reports of inter- nal dissent and tensions, and in one interview with CNN, a discussion of the organization’s internal politics seemed to touch a nerve with Assange. If Assange were to face charges in Sweden for sexual assault or new charges in the United King- dom or the United States and was found guilty, WikiLeaks would still need someone to oversee it. Assange may have someone ready to fill the leadership void, but there has been no evidence of this.


In addition to having its leader- ship threatened, WikiLeaks has suf- fered logistically. As national gov- ernments put pressure on its infra- structure, its web server has been shut down, and most important, a major source of funding, PayPal, has closed WikiLeaks’ account (Visa and Mastercard have also banned payments from their cards to WikiLeaks). It is also possible the events of the past few months will deter other potential leakers from approaching WikiLeaks as opposed to other organizations (especially if they dislike or disagree with Assange). Moreover, this new set of documents has not been greeted with the reaction Assange expected—the US public is not angry at the State Department, but many are angry at Assange and his organization. Immediately following Assange’s arrest, a WikiLeaks spokesman said the arrest would not stop the group’s operations. Indeed, whether As- sange remains behind bars or not, it most likely will not stop the con- tinued release of the 250,000 US State Department cables, only a frac- tion of which have been released


04 11 17 38 50 14 15 22 24 32 38


A special report 2 The Sunday Times SUNDAY D e cember 12, 2010 ■ CABLES FROM A1


WikiLeaks cables release reshapes diplomatic landscape


But some have been upset, such


as Poland, which since the end of the Cold War has invested much in what it thought were warm ties with its US savior, only to find out through WikiLeaks the affection was not entirely mutual. “We have a really serious prob-


lem,” Polish Prime Minister Do- nald Tusk told reporters, after learning that the US has no plans for a permanent military garrison in Poland. “It’s the problem of losing illu-


sions over the character of relations between different states, including allies as close as the United States and Poland,” he said.


A senior European diplomatic source said he thought Poland would now concentrate more closely on its ties within Europe and spend less time courting Washington. Russian President Dmitry Med-


vedev said the leaks “show the entire extent of the cynicism of these evaluations, these judg- ments, that prevail” in United States policy.


The cables paint Medvedev as


playing Robin to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s Batman, while Putin himself is described as an “alpha dog” and a “behind the scenes puppeteer” dissatisfied with his role. So far, the US memos that have been published dress far from flat- tering pictures of several other lead- ers. But again, it will be some time before the repercussions for rela- tions between heads of state emerge, if ever.


German Chancellor Angela Merkel is deemed “risk averse and rarely creative,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy is “thin-skinned


and authoritarian,” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is “feckless, vain,” and British Prime Minister David Cameron is “lack- ing depth.” Turkish Prime Minister Recep


Tayyip Erdogan is guided by an “iron ring of sycophantic [but con- temptuous] advisors,” US diplo- mats wrote, while his Foreign Min- ister Ahmet Davutoglu is “excep- tionally dangerous.” Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi praised WikiLeaks for exposing US “hypocrisy,” saying the cables prove that “America is not what it has led allies and friends to believe it to be.” Kadhafi said the website’s role


was “very important in revealing the plots which are hatched behind the curtains against persons and peoples,” but warned it could lose credibility if it started “to damage people’s image.” Former South African President Thabo Mbeki, currently mediating an election crisis in the Ivory Coast on behalf of the African Union, does not escape the US diplomatic pen, being portrayed as “irrational” and “hypersensitive.”


And in the Middle East, where the leaked memos led to “misunder- standings,” they gave Arab leaders’ private words a rare public airing. Saudi and Bahraini leaders called for a US military strike on Iran over its controversial nuclear program, with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah asking Washington to “cut off the serpent’s head.”


Israel congratulated itself on what it said was the vindication of its own calls for action against Iran. Tehran told its Arab neighbors not to fall into the “trap” set by WikiLeaks, a “project of Irano-pho- bia and disunity.”


Assange arrest, WikiLeaks’ survival


■ Founder of whistleblowing website, “WikiLeaks,” Julian Assange, speaks to media after giving a press conference in London on July 26. The founder of a website which published tens of thousands of leaked military files about the war in Afghanistan said Monday they showed that the "course of the war needs to change." AFP PHOTO


thus far. It also will not shut down WikiLeaks, which still maintains its website—albeit currently on a Swiss server, after its initial US-hosted servers were deactivated—and the ability to collect information from leakers. So in the short term, WikiLeaks will persist. The question remains if Assange created a truly sustainable institution. If Assange is extradited to Sweden and tried on one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual mo- lestation and one count of rape, it is not clear to what degree the im- age of WikiLeaks will be damaged; thus far Assange has cultivated the site as an extension of his persona, and even without the assault charges he is not held in high repute. The extradition process could take months or even years, and he may try to use prison time to develop his image as a martyr for free speech, but this can backfire. If WikiLeaks, however, is not tied to his image, it will be much more sustainable as an organization. Western governments also fear whatever is contained in his “insur- ance” file, a 1.4-gigabyte computer file that has already been distributed to many thousands of people over the Internet. Assange has threatened to release the encryption password if something happens to him. As STRATFOR has stated before, WikiLeaks likely led with its most insightful documents, and thus those saved in the insurance file are probably less enlightening than they are damaging. The file may contain no new information at all, but sim-


ply the names and information on sources, diplomats, military and in- telligence officers not already dis- closed. Such a release could put these individuals’ jobs or even lives at risk. However, such a release ex- posing these individuals in a vindic- tive manner could further tarnish Assange and WikiLeaks in the eyes of the international public, to in- clude potential financial and infor- mation contributors. Beyond that, governments will almost certainly take stronger measures against WikiLeaks if it does release identi- ties of classified sources or officers. WikiLeaks is now facing a conun- drum that all new organizations face at some point—the ability to main- tain and transition leadership through adverse circumstances. Assange may be released quickly, but if he is not, WikiLeaks’ survival will be in question. However, even if WikiLeaks disappears, the or- ganizational concept will continue and leaks along with it. WikiLeaks has only demonstrated the ability new technology has created to transfer large quantities of docu- ments and there is no reason other organizations will not make use of the same technology.


(“The Assange arrest and Wikileaks’ survival” is republished by The Manila Times with the express permission of STRATFOR and may not be republished by any other parties without STRATFOR’s consent.


To access


STRATFOR’s original version, go to: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/ 20101207_assange_arrest_and_wikileaks_survival.)


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