One of the regular criticisms of WikiLeaks when it and its media partners began releasing US diplomatic cables was of the “chilling effect” the release would have not merely on the willingness of people across the world to speak frankly with US diplomats, but on the very art of diplomacy itself. Foreign policy, we were told, is special, and different, and the practice of such a high art couldn’t be done transparently. Stopping wars, brokering treaties and handling the fine nuances of interstate relations needs to be done behind closed doors.
What WikiLeaks has done, however, is reveal foreign policy as no different to any other kind of bureaucratic game playing, and driven by the same tawdry commercial imperatives that drive so much domestic policy.
It is clear, for example, that the prosecution of the interests of American pharmaceutical companies was a key priority for the State Department. One analyst, James Love, has found literally hundreds of cables devoted to the issue of ensuring exclusivity for US drug company products, even when US diplomats themselves acknowledged that lower prices for pharamceuticals were important for access to life-saving medicine in developing countries. The lives and health of citizens in developing countries was clearly a lower priority than the commercial interests of US companies.
It is clear, too, that the State Department aggressively pushed the interests of the GM crops industry, particularly in developing countries, where “biotechnology outreach programs” were established to influence decision-makers in favour of US companies such as Monsanto. And in developed countries, particularly in Europe, diplomats aggressively responded to any perceived threats to GM crop companies, calling for “retaliation” to ensure the Europeans understood there were “real costs” in refusing to do things the Monsanto way.
The WikiLeaks material also confirms what was already apparent from the conduct of the US in trying to negotiate international treaties relating to copyright: it aggressively pushes the interests of the US copyright industry in trying to convince other countries to impose draconian restrictions on any perceived threats to the movie and music industries. The cables, for example, reveal that litigation against Australian ISP iiNet by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft was actually the beginning of a concerted campaign by the American copyright industry’s chief lobbying body, the MPAA (which wanted its involvement in the issue to be kept quiet). The campaign was to use a successful attack on iiNet to attack ISPs in a number of Commonwealth countries, with iiNet selected because the MPAA was intimidated by the size and legal resources of Telstra.
All three industries, it it known from other contexts, have strong links with the US government, with lobbyists and executives engaged in a revolving door between US government positions and industry positions.
WikiLeaks has in effect provided a Wizard of Oz moment, showing much diplomacy is anything but high-minded statecraft, ostensibly so delicate it can only be undertaken in private. Instead, it has demonstrated, in closely-written detail, the extent to which foreign policy is merely the grubbiest domestic policy given the gloss of international diplomacy.
It is editorials like this that make subscribing to Crikey worth it. I only wish your point of view was more widely spread and discussed in other media outlets. Diplomacy by governments is just a sham to push national interests behind the veil of secrecy and hoping no-one finds out. Citizens should know exactly what their government is saying and standing for in their name (but not necessarily know the means by which the message is sent) and we should know the responses as well. The war in Iraq was predicated on a lie and Bush should have been held accountable. No wonder the state of international affairs are in a mess. It could not be worse f everyone knew the truth about was bein said and done – and it would probably be very much better – but then “some people can’t handle the truth”. That should not stop the rest of us knowing it.
Excellent!
Kind of funny that iiNet have been winning. Imagine what Telstra might have done, with their resources… Let’s see the MPAA named in court as a friend of AFACT, with liability for costs included.
Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned. The last Eisenhower speech in 1961? warned us of the dangers of the growth of the American military industrial complex, how prescient. But we ignored him.
no longer do we laugh at those who said that the main object of US foreign policy is to make the world safe for its corporations. Al Qaeda has inflicted on the world nothing like the terror that has, and is, being practiced by US corporations under the guise of “spreading democracy”. That Wikileaks has revealed what was long suspected is to their credit. The question is, where do we go from here? The signing of the FTA was the final nail in the coffin for Australian independence, and no government, Labor or Liberal, appears able to change this.This makes our Australian political battles a mere inconsequential provincial sideshow, of no importance.
And look at how much all this “diplomacy” is costing us? Again it looks more like their biggest gripe is exposing just how “ordinary” they all are, on such salaries, we’re paying.
As for “armed forces/foreign policy” – didn’t the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans …. Britain use theirs to protect their commercial “edge”, too?