By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed?
Historians will argue that one for decades. However I've seen it claimed and argued by knowledgeable people that learning what the US thought about their local dictatorships was a major contributing factor that made the Arab Spring possible. Contributing to the freeing of over 100 million people from dictatorship is a pretty good counterbalance to the ways in which some dictatorships have been able to abuse the information released.
The point that the World Affairs Journal writer seems to be making is that it wasn't the content of the cables that was significant - everyone in Tunisia knew that the Ben Ali regime was corrupt - it was the fact that these cables came from an American source that was particularly humiliating.
I think that's a highly speculative argument. In many of these countries dissatisfaction with the government, social inequality and major unrest have been going on for decades. The kinds of issues that the writer talks about have been discussed very openly in the Arab world (take for example, the Egyptian book and film The Yacoubian Building). I think Wikileaks may have contributed to this milieu, but I don't think it was revelatory.
I acknowledged that it was not an open and shut theory when I said that historians will debate this for decades. However I first heard about it from Teri Gross' interview with Bill Keller, at the time the executive editor of The New York Times.
I have every reason to believe that his opinion was highly informed. Certainly it is more so than mine. And if he gives Wikileaks credit, then Wikileaks likely deserves some credit.
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By comparison, what have we learned from the leaks of the diplomatic cables that was worth people getting arrested by dictatorial regimes or getting killed?
Historians will argue that one for decades. However I've seen it claimed and argued by knowledgeable people that learning what the US thought about their local dictatorships was a major contributing factor that made the Arab Spring possible. Contributing to the freeing of over 100 million people from dictatorship is a pretty good counterbalance to the ways in which some dictatorships have been able to abuse the information released.
See http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/wikihistory-did-l... for information on how wikileaks contributed to starting the Arab Spring.
The point that the World Affairs Journal writer seems to be making is that it wasn't the content of the cables that was significant - everyone in Tunisia knew that the Ben Ali regime was corrupt - it was the fact that these cables came from an American source that was particularly humiliating.
I think that's a highly speculative argument. In many of these countries dissatisfaction with the government, social inequality and major unrest have been going on for decades. The kinds of issues that the writer talks about have been discussed very openly in the Arab world (take for example, the Egyptian book and film The Yacoubian Building). I think Wikileaks may have contributed to this milieu, but I don't think it was revelatory.
I acknowledged that it was not an open and shut theory when I said that historians will debate this for decades. However I first heard about it from Teri Gross' interview with Bill Keller, at the time the executive editor of The New York Times.
I have every reason to believe that his opinion was highly informed. Certainly it is more so than mine. And if he gives Wikileaks credit, then Wikileaks likely deserves some credit.
Amnesty also cited Wikileaks as a catalyst for the Arab Spring.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/13/amnesty-internat...