Wiki or Wicked?

Flash back to the year before I was born - 1951. Europe was still substantially in ruins, political unrest was rife, with extreme left or communist regimes springing up as a result of the manifest problems (although interestingly nowhere near as much as in 1917/8) everywhere.

One country above all, and a while before anti-communist paranoia peaked, saw the need for a strong independent Europe. That country, and its erstwhile leader Winston Churchill, realised it did not have the resources to do much more than look on and hope and instead turned its less limited diplomatic resources to slowly persuading the one country that did have the means and which was the only one to emerge stronger from World War Two - the USA - to abandon its initial Versailles-like instincts and to help rebuild Europe via the breathtaking scope of the Marshall Plan.

Critics have pointed out that the USA came out of WW2 stronger because of the scale of commercial activity that conflict presented to it - Lend/Lease was common but little was ever actually given to allies. It is also worth remembering that Germany was still paying reparations (not on the Versailles scale admittedly) until earlier this year. Gold reserves from allied countries were effectively confiscated as security for this help (including those of the UK) and there is therefore an argument that US activity was at least partly mercenary in nature.

Not one more word should leave this keyboard before presenting the other side of the case. WW2 is probably the nearest the world has ever come to a "just" war - and despite the odious right-wing and anti-Semitic views of the Kennedy and Ford clans, the USA did come to generally realise the evils being perpetrated by Germany at that time. Although entry into the war only came when its own self-interest was threatened by Japan, it is incontrovertible that a large number of brave Americans died in foreign theatres of war (what a horrible and misleading phrase that is!!) in pursuit of that conflict.

The problem with victory in any conflict is that it carries with it immense responsibilities towards the vanquished - as both Truman and Marshall nobly realised. Where I suspect they did not think forward enough was the effect on their own national psyche of coming to such power. The Cold War never seriously saw the military supremacy of the US or NATO challenged. The Russian threat had to be nuclear - their technologies and military structures would never have been able to sustain a conventional war and from this a misplaced sense of superiority arose, the ugly truth of which is now being trumpeted all over the world as a result of the Wikileaks fiasco.

Many years ago, in my University days at Oxford, I spent many long hours with friends from US universities, mainly Harvard and Princeton, that were close to tears because they had been unprepared for the much higher standards expected in the European system. Even now, the academic institution I remain associated with takes a much higher proportion of eastern European graduate students than Americans - for a number of reasons, none of which redound to the credit of the US educational system. What hurt my friends at Oxford most was the way they felt lied to - they really had been fed a daily diet of superiority. This is not a side-swipe but an observation about one of many ways that much of what is truly good and great about that country is lost to the need to tell each other daily how great they are, something that can only ultimately be born of insecurity.

One strange phenomenon gives me great hope - something seems to happen once Americans leave their shores. I would be fascinated to know what the democrat/republican split is among expatriates. My feeling is that the liberal/leftish tendency is much more heavily represented. Most also seem to feel that our standard of living in Europe is much higher - in which I concur, but that will inevitably be gainsaid by those deluded into believing it can be measured in mere money.

All of this is merely a background rumbling to my thoughts on the Wikileaks situation. The snake-oil salesman seems to have been revealed for what he is, and if one were to believe the world's press this morning, the borders are about to be shut up and the USA excommunicated from the communion of civilised societies. But is this fair or even reasonable?

Sir Thomas Gresham once defined a diplomat as an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country. Diplomacy is, by definition, a two-faced art. I should be proud the only exam I have ever failed in my life was the diplomatic service exam in that case! Of course the truth, or a version of it, is always going to be partly submerged in the demotic language and thoughts of those involved. In the dealing room of Lehmans in New York, Martin Luther King Day was referred to as "Some ****** died and we get a day off to go skiing" day. Yes the word had an "n" at the front and those responsible were not, to the best of my knowledge racist or bigots - it was the patois of the room, generally decent family men and women. Similarly I can see some of the comments revealed by Wikileaks being in the same vein - totally unacceptable, but only when released to the wider world.



Assange may have done nobody a service by these leaks - where do we go to express an unpopular view, where do we make the bad jokes? It was possible stupid to write some of the things being leaked, undoubtedly stupid not to keep them secure and horrifically stupid not to react with more humility when they did escape. Even so, I do not doubt that other security and diplomatic services have comparable skeletons in their cupboards. Anything that prevents anyone from expressing an honest opinion, no matter how distasteful, is to be deplored - and all the more so if that prevention takes the form of the opinion being expressed in carefully-redacted, politically correct new-speak, without passion or conviction.

Dum Spiro Spero