For the last few weeks the virtual organisation Wikileaks has been selectively making available classified US State Department reporting. They have been doing so to a small group of news outlets in the US, UK, Spain and elsewhere. At the time of writing just 1,618 of the 251,287 documents that they hold have been made public, suggesting that if every document were eventually to be published, and if anyone is by then still interested, this dubious event will be over in an another sixteen years.
From a Caribbean perspective what has so far been published is inconsequential. It has consisted of political and economic reporting from the US Interests Section in Havana; comments on the Haitian President; various reports from Europe on EU member states’ thinking on Cuban issues; indications in much longer cables that facilities located in some Caribbean nations are seen as having strategic importance to the US; and the suggestion, denied, that Jamaica could improve its real time co-operation with Cuba when it comes to the interdiction of narcotics traffickers.
Some time yet to come it is likely that there will be other cables relating specifically to Jamaica, Trinidad, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Guyana, St Kitts, Antigua, St Lucia, and Dominica. When or if this will happen and the likely subject matter has not yet been revealed. However, it is possible that some of these documents may contain allegations about Caribbean politicians and those with whom they are connected. Irrespective, for the most part it is unlikely that there will be anything in these cables that will surprise the average Caribbean citizen. Any shock that there may be will most probably come from seeing in print and the context of a formal report a commentary on what is usually known about at street level or has been suggested already by attentive journalists.
While much of the material that has so far been made public is interesting, it is hard not to find questionable the God-like attitude of those who believe that it is their duty to disseminate these documents. While the cables occasionally contain something that is shocking – the US Secretary of State’s request for diplomats to engage in clandestine personal information gathering against those from other nations accredited to the United Nations – the passing interest for the most part lies more in the thinking of the individual who is doing the reporting or whose views are being reported on.
Paradoxically, because Wikileaks is selectively releasing the documents to newspapers that seem to see only sensation in their content, rather than the continuum and context of diplomatic reporting, the cables can serve to confuse. For example, by now the reasons why two of Cuba’s most senior political figures resigned are well known and very different from the reasons suggested in the US reporting of the time.
Because the release of the cables is not sequential one can only conclude that they are aimed at creating headlines, damage and embarrassment rather than to provide information or enlightenment. For the most part what has been released presents a one-sided picture that does not amount to the full flow of information that will have been being received in Washington from many other sources. Moreover, their content rarely gives clues about any subsequent policy response or decisions taken by the administration as a result of the detailed exchanges that take place between government, legislative and other bodies.
If the leaked cables are damaging it is principally to the sources quoted and the reporting officers concerned, as the information largely recounts privileged conversations with politicians, other diplomats, businessmen and journalists who might reasonably expect their comments to be protected.
Amusingly the leaders of Russia, Iran, the Vatican, and Venezuela all see darkness and inaccuracy in their content. However, it would be interesting to see how they or indeed the US would react if their own ambassadors’ reporting were to be published.
For the most part the US cables confirm what any close reader of the quality media will already have been aware. They suggest that what is being said formally by the US in public is what largely is being said in private, and that there is no hidden agenda. It also confirms that for the most part the quality of US diplomatic reporting is high and well considered with the extraordinary Caribbean exception of the commentary from a former Head of the US Interests Section in Havana who from what has so far been published, lost all objectivity and seemed to revel in anti-Castro editorialising.
Beyond this, however, the cables raise interesting questions for the Caribbean about the nature of its own diplomatic reporting and its quality. They suggests the opportunity for glorious pre-Christmas party speculation about what for instance might happen if the media in the region suddenly became privy to the cable traffic between Caribbean ambassadors or high commissioners and their foreign ministries or their prime minister. Would the taxpayer be fascinated by the insights and feel they were doing a good job for their nation or be shocked by how few reports there were and how little there was to leak?
The reality is that one of the challenges of being a diplomat is obtaining the high level access and the ability to develop friends in and around a host government in order to be able to report home on issues of national significance.
So complicated is this for Caribbean diplomats, a good friend who served as a Caribbean ambassador in Washington resorted to a clever subterfuge to be able to ensure that he spoke at the rare official diplomatic parties that both he and the US Secretary of State attended. He worked out that there was a place in the room and a point at which an encounter could be engineered. The consequence was better recognition of his country, higher level access and better reporting.
Diplomatic reporting cables like journalism are for the most part early drafts of history. They need to be treated as such.
Previous columns can be found at www.caribbean-council.org
