"Cablegate": Much Ado About Nothing

Ghia Nodia, a professor of politics at Ilia State University, comments from Tbilisi on "Cablegate" at RFE/RL (12-20-10):

The main news to emerge from the huge WikiLeaks scandal so far is that there are no conspiracies and everything in the world actually is more or less what it seems. And that the diplomats of the democratic countries -- and of the United States in particular -- are amazingly honest. Not that they don't hide things. What would diplomacy be without that? But they hide specific things for perfectly respectable reasons.

There hasn't turned out to be any striking difference between what politicians and diplomats say publicly and what they are saying among themselves. Imagine: All the secrets of the U.S. State Department were exposed and not a single person had to resign! The scandalous founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, made the timid suggestion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has to go since she gave a politically incorrect order to spy on some officials at the United Nations. Shocking! Only Assange has found himself in trouble -- facing sexual-assault charges in Sweden. It is an embarrassing charge for a champion of free speech.

In the end, the shouts of the extreme anarchists of all countries to the effect that bold individuals have defeated repressive institutions and that the dark deeds of the mighty in this world (particularly those of the American imperialists) have finally been exposed for all to see turn out to be worthless. [See the full text.]