Depending on where you sit:
It is a high crime, it is cowardly crime, it is a loss of face, it is a loss of faith, it is fun, it is voyeurism, it is damage control, it is "what about me", it is "I can't believe they said that about me", and "who is the miserable informant?"
From my point of view: all of the above are right, but for the fallout, except for some unhealthy excitement as the leaks are dripping, there is not much about this thing long term. However get Teddy Roosevelt to walk around with a big stick.
1. Wikileaks and the US
Of course the Cablegate is embarrassing, the failure of a whole chain of command to adequately guaranty the security of communications, deemed to be secret. What is embarrassing too, is that the worldwide public opinion gets the sense, that the US superpower is not capable to prevent the leaks on Wikileaks. This should be cyberwar.
Also, the perpetrators there feel more and more comfortable that they get away with their criminal activity. They are basking in the limelight that well established news outlets such as the New York Times, Le Monde and Der Spiegel didn't hesitate to shine on them. What was their reason: the public's right to know, the superficial vanity to be still considered by the leakers to be leading news outlets, or the need to sell more copies? Were they not aware that they were reselling looted property? So everyone in the great scheme seems to get away with it, but no one of those "everyones" hasn't yet tried to publish, let's say Russian or Chinese equivalents of the US leaks. How interesting!
No doubt a high crime has been committed in stealing the documents, and a similar crime is committed as they are published. They need to be prosecuted now. What are the other remedies? First, fix the vulnerable diplomatic communication system. How come a breach was so simple? Second stop the leaks here and now, if it is still possible. Maybe Embassies in Moscow or Beijing could be helpful in sending a cable with local recipes for stopping undesirable events.
2. Wikileaks and Luxembourg: Wikileaksembourg.
This is of course a relevant outside perspective. Let's use it as an example of how the world might see the leaks, half with concern and half with fun and Schadenfreude. Indeed outside the crimes, which must be addressed, this is a case study on how the outside world might react.
Luxembourg? "We may be small, but we don't think that way" says one of our slogans. Given our supersized ambitions, it is extremely frustrating that we are not well positioned with only 168 "cables". What the heck are cables anyway? The number 168 puts us far back on the list, into the lowest category of US attention, even after Burkina Faso (though someone compared Luxembourg with Ouagadougou), Bhutan, Togo, Mauritius but a tad before Micronesia, Tristan da Cunha and the Cocos Islands. Next time I meet someone from the Embassy, maybe Cinthia , we make it clear: we are craving for more attention, and that is the way we think.
The Luxembourg public is of course driven by an unhealthy voyeurism as documented by the Luxembourg Press. To their disappointment, there was no leak yet published about cables originated from Luxembourg. Now everyone is watching with great expectations, and the main papers published all the relevant online links, such as:
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/
http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/tags/Country
http://www.tageblatt.lu/index.php/international/47666.html
http://www.wort.lu/wort/web/letzebuerg/artikel/2010/11/128273/168-depeschen-aus-luxemburg.php
Everybody seems to be impatient. Is any cable saying anything about members of the government? Will cables talk about the at least zero prisoners from Gitmo we are taking, or about Mister Euro, editing videos, why not the tripartite, revising a constitution? Because we "don't think that way", are there explanations for our ambitions to rule the UN Security Council and why not NATO? What about Schleck and Armstrong?
Let me tell you, there is a lot of angst, as the leaks are dripping. And then you'll see the unhappy faces of those who thought they deserved to get mentioned and didn't, or those who did and are not happy about what was said. They need to find out who that bastard, who said that, really is. And when the 168 leaks have come dripping down, there will be disappointment: nothing much more than what we already knew is there. We however don't put our gossip into unsafe cables: we ask our friends to keep it to themselves. So everyone knows.
3. The aftermath
Depending on the US stance in the coming days, this thing will go away or it will go away. This is not misspoken. Whether something spectacular stops the leaks, or nothing is done, as the past weeks seem to indicate, the last drip won't even be heard. So someone wants to bomb Iran, another guy is shallow, another one is Hitler and another one undecided? What else is new? We knew all that, and as this trickles down, people will yawn.
The only thing that is for sure: it will happen again, if nothing dramatic happens now to stop the dripping. Luxembourg knows: our cablegate is the banking CD gate. It will happen again.
And eventually, when the whole world is yawning, some guy will come up with a conspiracy theory like this: it was all a setup to further a US agenda for more transparency. The Administration sacrificed a bunch of meaningless diplomatic blabber to get the world started on straight talk and expose everybody's hidden agendas. To the relief of the cable guys, the diplomats, who are otherwise honest people but paid by a government to go and lie to people abroad. They no longer have to stamp as "classified" documents where they tell the truth. From now on it is the naked TRUTH, to the tone of some of those leaked cables: "Oh hello Excellency, my dear friend, you seem pretty drunk tonight". "Oh Excellency, thank you so much, I'm afraid so are you. But it doesn't seem to keep you from womanizing."
We are awakening to a new world, a transparent world, quite direct with no need to classify the message anymore.
