Wikileaks and Foreign Policy

The Harkin article questions whether "Twitter [has] the power that is claimed for it"? As of late

we have witnessed the power of the media on organizing the protest in the middle east. What is

of interest to me is the connection between the Wikileaks and these subsequent uprisings.

From November 2009 to April 2010, Private First Class Bradley Manning allegedly downloaded tens of thousands of diplomatic cables to a CD-RW disc at an Army outpost in Iraq, and passed those electronic records on to self-described freedom-of-information activist Julian Assange and his website, WikiLeaks (Calabresi, 2010). On November 28^th, 2010 “Wikileaks” released the first of these cables, over 251,000 U.S. “secret” diplomatic documents. This marked the largest unauthorized release of contemporary classified information in history; containing 11,000 documents marked secret; the release of any one of them, by the U.S. government's definition, would cause "serious damage to national security" (Calabresi, 2010). Of these releases, some were also published in the New York Times, and the Guardian, among many other media sources. The release of these documents revealed various aspects of U.S. foreign policy throughout the world. Many of these releases have been embarrassing and possibly may have even jeopardized U.S. foreign relations.

The Wikileaks have been praised for their “unabashed morality” in arguing for transparency and shedding new light on the U.S. foreign affairs. But what are the repercussions for valuing transparency over privacy? While, the impacts of the Wikileaks are not yet fully understood; these leaks have been linked to a variety of recent events. In the U.S., the leak forced a clampdown on intelligence sharing between agencies and new measures to control electronically stored secrets (Calabresi, 2010). Diplomats from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the lowest political officers have worked to diminish the disclosures' impact on foreign counterparts (Calabresi, 2010). In the beginning of February 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, summoned more than 260 US ambassadors and envoys from around the world for a week of meetings in Washington. There are speculations that this meeting has been called in response to various diplomatic crises, likely at least exacerbated by the WikiLeaks.