By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 3rd, 2010 
WikiLeaks, Fictoids, and Plutocracy
Starting today, on Friday afternoons, I will present reflections on the deliberate considerations of the past week.
 The discussion about WikiLeaks at DC suggested the importance of looking at other dimensions of the problem, not only the issue of whether the release of official secrets serves or undermines immediate political interests, but also what it suggests about fundamental social problems, about the relationship between public and private in diplomacy, and in everyday life, and about what it means for “the big picture,” concerning the prospects for war and peace, and the success or failure of democratic transition from dictatorship and democracy.
I understand and anticipated the critical responses to the conclusion of my post. “I believe WikiLeaks’ disclosures present a clear and present danger to world peace.”
Esther expressed concern that the boldness of my judgment suggested a need to constrain the media. She, Scott and Alias agreed that the danger of the WikiLeaks “dump” was not great. Scott judged that “it’s rather unfair to assume that the US is the only country whose diplomacy can be duplicitous and shady.” And he criticized Alias’s summary judgment, based on the predictability of the revelations, “Oh well.” Scott noted that there are detailed reasons for not being so blasé and cites the possible complications in Afghanistan.
Perhaps I exaggerated, but only a little. Making public what is meant to be private undermines social interaction, whether it be in a family or in diplomacy or anywhere else. I understand why for specific reasons one would want to do that in a targeted way, if the family is dysfunctional and abusive, if the diplomacy is sustaining an injustice. But to reveal secrets just because they are secret makes little sense, since there are necessarily secrets everywhere. That is whistle blowing gone wild. It generally undermines the practice of diplomacy. Not a good thing, because the alternative to diplomacy in solving international conflict is war. And in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, as Elzbieta Matynia considered earlier today, transparency would have insured failure, i.e. the continuation of dictatorship, a violent revolutionary . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review
By Elzbieta Matynia, December 3rd, 2010 
The ambivalence around the WikiLeaks mission and especially its recent disclosures are understandable (see Jeff’s previous post). On the one hand, it does make us feel that we no longer have to live in a fog called the diplomatic game, that we need no longer be treated like children who for their own protection are excluded from family secrets, and that we the citizens of the world deserve not to be patronized and paternalized by our own governments, and need not concede so much discretionary power to our government officials.
On the other hand, as someone who is living at this moment in post-apartheid South Africa, and works in the archives (of which only a small part is available to the broader public), and who has studied the processes that led to the dismantling of Soviet-style autocracy in Central and Eastern Europe, an apparently widespread schadenfreude about exposing everything to everybody brings shivers. Two very different, but in both cases repressive, regimes in Poland and in South Africa, would not have ended peacefully as they did, if not for lengthy and secret conversations that laid the groundwork for the official public negotiations. Imagine that the secret meetings between Church officials, leaders of the outlawed Solidarity movement, and General Jaruzelski’s government in Poland had been exposed in 1987…….Or that the “talks about talks”, and the meetings between exiled leaders of the ANC and certain members of the ruling nationalist party, had been exposed by WikiLeaks.
Nelson Mandela in 1937
In each case, the negotiations that led to fundamental systemic change and the launching of democratic rule were preceded by an overture, made of many secret meetings. The South African overture began roughly with a meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, where most of the ANC leaders lived, and was followed by twelve clandestine gatherings in England, gradually building a fragile trust between the key enlightened Afrikaner intellectuals and ANC leaders. . . .
Read more: Privacy and Progress
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 30th, 2010 
Last night in my course on the sociology of Erving Goffman, we discussed the release of classified documents by WikiLeaks. The students generally agreed with me that the publication was inappropriate and politically problematic. I think actually only one person dissented from the consensus. Given the general political orientation of the students and faculty of the New School, this was surprising. We are far to the left of the general public opinion, to the left, in fact, of the political center of the American academic community. Our first position is to be critical of the powers that be.
Why not disclose the inner workings of the global super power? Why not “out” American and foreign diplomats for their hypocrisy? We did indeed learn a lot about the world as it is through the WikiLeak disclosures. On the one hand, Netanyahu apparently is actually for a two state solution, and on the other Arab governments are just as warlike in their approach to Iran as Israel. China is not as steadfast in its support of North Korea and not as opposed to a unified Korea through an extension of South Korean sovereignty as is usually assumed. And the Obama administration has been tough minded in coordinating international sanctions against Iran, as it has been unsteady with a series of awkward failures in closing Guantanamo Prison.
And, of course, The New York Times, yesterday justified publication, mostly in the name of the public’s right to know about the foibles of its government, and also noted today how the leaks reveal the wisdom and diplomatic success of the Obama administration.
Most of the opposition to the release is very specific. It will hurt the prospects of peace in the Middle East. It shows our hand to enemies, as it embarrasses friends. But my concern, shared with my students is that as it undermines diplomacy, it increases the prospects for diplomacy’s alternatives.
In fact, given the social theorist we have been studying, Goffman, it actually is not that unexpected that my students and I share a concern about the latest from WikiLeaks. Goffman studied social . . .
Read more: WikiLeaks, Front Stage/Back Stage
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