The second oldest profession

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

The New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks lays out many of the central issues in the debate over whether WikiLeaks is doing the public service or harm in publishing previously inaccessible military and diplomatic communications (including more than 1,200 cables sent by the U.S. Embassy in Prague). While critical of WikiLeaks decision to release such documents, he defends the the NYT’s decision to publish some of the leaks in a valid, though self-serving, defense of traditional media in a column published yesterday.

But while Brooks does lay out many of the central issues,  his arguments are occasionally half-baked — though one may chalk this up to the 700-word limit on his column.

Here is a look at some Brooks’ main points, with a few counterpoints:

He writes: “The fact that we live our lives amid order and not chaos is the great achievement of civilization. This order should not be taken for granted.”

This is undoubtedly true and also undoubtedly vague. As inhabitants of a civilization we sacrifice certain personal freedoms for the greater good, and that is essentially the whole point. One cannot, for example, drive at 100 kilometers per hour in the Prague city center. There is some tacit agreement across a wide spectrum of society that personal freedom is worth limiting in this case for the good of others, and most are willing to give up the ability to drive as fast as they want for the cause.  This helps create order, and most would agree is a good and reasonable thing. Speed limits first came about in 19th Century England on the railways and were developed by something at least resembling a democratically elected government. The public recognized a threat to public safety and willingly sacrificed something small in order to create this bigger benefit. If a similar debate were to be re-staged today, there is little doubt there would be genuine public support for speed limits.

But the concept of international diplomacy does not fit into any sort of similar dynamic. The basic infrastructure of diplomacy (embassies, ambassadors, etc) was developed during the Italian Renaissance, and the posts went to noblemen and their families, who alternately  started or ended wars in meetings with other noblemen. The universally recognized contemporary diplomatic system (with rankings… ambassador, first secretary, embassy, consulate, etc)  was created at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Following the defeat of Napoleon, that meeting of reactionaries from Europe’s biggest powers  carved up the continent to their own benefit, laying the foundations for the nationalist sparks that would ignite the First World War. This is the system that has been in place ever since.

One wonders if there was a public debate staged today whether citizens from the United States (for example) would support the need for an ambassador to Burkina Faso (for example), nevermind that ambassador’s license to keep information hidden from the public eye. In other words, the secretive nature of “high level” diplomacy is ostensibly a holdover from the days of absolute monarchies. Never has there been a public debate on whether this is the best system for maintaining international order by or among democracies. It has merely perpetuated as the status quo for better for worse.

Brooks writes that: “The quality of the [diplomatic] conversation is damaged by exposure, just as our relationships with our neighbors would be damaged if every private assessment were brought to the light of day.”

Here Brooks is comparing apples to oranges. While diplomats may have private conversations, they aren’t serving a private function, they are serving a public function. When I talk to my neighbor I am not doing so on behalf of anyone else, a diplomat is, and in case of the United States on behalf of 300 million people. Furthermore, the latest leaks to be published are not secret wire taps from backyard conversation between diplomats, they are official government communications. Government is by definition (or at least should be) public.

He writes: “Assange seems to be an old-fashioned anarchist who believes that all ruling institutions are corrupt and public pronouncements are lies.”

I don’t know if that is what Assange believes. I think what he rightly believes is that all ruling instutions are succeptible to corruption and lies. And if those institutions are not corrupt or lying then they should have no problem with people seeing what is going on inside them. This later belief is at its core the same argument that justifies the need for independent media generally.

In defending the NYT’s decision to publish some of the leaks Brooks writes: “As journalists, they have a professional obligation to share information that might help people make informed decisions. That means asking questions like: How does the U.S. government lobby allies? What is the real nature of our relationship with Pakistani intelligence? At the same time, as humans and citizens, my colleagues know they have a moral obligation not to endanger lives or national security.”

This argument is one that is difficult to disagree with, but fails to contend with the fact that the journalists at the NYT would not have the chance to contend with these questions in such a direct way save for WikiLeaks. It is also based on the assumption that not releasing information is more likely to save lives than releasing information is. Isn’t it possible that keeping information secret can also cost lives?

Take for example some of the more formalized revelations that have come via WikiLeaks about Pakistani intelligence or the nature of certain Afghani government officials. Doesn’t the public benefit from knowing as much as they can about that in making an informed decision about whether to support a war that continues to cost scores of lives? Living in ignorance, or perhaps more accurately with the impression of duplicity by certain Central Asian government officials but no concrete evidence, certainly makes a citizen less likely to strongly oppose the war. If leaks help signify the intractability of war in Afghanistan to the public, doesn’t this help save lives?

In conclusion:

While he stops short of openly backing the blanket claims of the U.S. government that these leaks endanger lives, Brooks runs close to advocating such a position. He is right to point out the essential role of journalists to put these leaks in context and make informed choices about what is and isn’t necessary. But journalists main function is to aid in informing and explaining complex issues to the public not impede the flow of information. The role of the journalist in this is to contextualize the leaks as well as make decisions about what are the most urgent pieces of information that need to be transmitted to a public that is unlikely to have the time or desire to sift through 250,000 documents one by one.

Brooks seems to assume that the NYT and others have been sucessfully filling this role. If that were the case they wouldn’t need to access and publish the leaks released by WikiLeaks. And one wonders how he feels about the NYT’s decision to publish this story today, which releases cables from the U.S. Ambassdor to France that are occasionally condemnatory about how Nicolas Sarkozy runs his government in France. Doesn’t publishing and making public something like this risk harming U.S.-French relations? And for what cause other than to gossip about Sarkozy? Would this story convince an American citizen that cooperating with France is not a good idea?

Brooks is right that blanket releases of information have the possibility of endangering lives, but so does blanket secrecy. It is unfortunate that the first risk needs to be taken in order open up larger debates like: Is the current international diplomatic system the ideal one for serving the public good? But how many more centuries are we willing to wait to have such a debate? And how many more deaths need their be for a public debate about what does and doesn’t need to be secret? Much is made about the relatively unspectacular revelations that are coming from many of these cables, but that leads one to ask why they were secretive to begin with?

Without WikiLeaks these larger questions would not be asked, and while the NYT’s is a participant in this debate now, its failure to probe questions like this in the past is what has led to the birth of a group like WikiLeaks. The paper’s cooperation with WikiLeaks is a tacit endorsement that these larger debates are ones worth having.