Diplomatic secrecy and imperialist crimes

[Joanne98]

The release by WikiLeaks of the first of some quarter of a million classified US embassy cables from around the world has provoked expressions of outrage and demands for retribution from Washington and its allies.

The release by WikiLeaks of the first of some quarter of a million classified US embassy cables from around the world has provoked expressions of outrage and demands for retribution from Washington and its allies.

This perverse attempt to equate state secrecy with freedom and democracy—and exposure of secrets to the public as antidemocratic and totalitarian—speaks volumes about the fraudulent character of “democracy” in the US and the rest of the capitalist world as well as the rabidly reactionary character of the attacks on WikiLeaks.

It is in the interests of working people in the United States and all over the world that these secrets be laid bare.

In the media’s coverage of the WikiLeaks, its massive exposure of classified material is almost invariably described as “unprecedented.” In reality, there is one historical precedent. It accompanied the conquest of state power by the Russian working class in October 1917.

One of the first acts of the new workers’ government was to publish the secret treaties and diplomatic documents that had fallen into its hands. These treaties laid bare the predatory war aims of Britain, France and Tsarist Russia in World War I, which included the redrawing of national boundaries and re-division of the colonial world. In exposing them, Russia’s new revolutionary workers’ government sought to advance its program of an immediate armistice to end the slaughter.

Leon Trotsky, then People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, explained the principles underlying the exposure of these state secrets. “Secret diplomacy,” he wrote, “is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests. Imperialism, with its dark plans of conquest and its robber alliances and deals, developed the system of secret diplomacy to the highest level. The struggle against imperialism, which is exhausting and destroying the peoples of Europe, is at the same time a struggle against capitalist diplomacy, which has cause enough to fear the light of day.”

Ninety-three years later, these words stand the test of time. Underlying the outraged denunciations of the Obama administration and the Republicans over WikiLeaks’ undermining of US “national security” is the anger of a ruling financial aristocracy that must pursue its own predatory and reactionary interests in secret because they are opposed to the needs and aspirations of working people in the US and around the world.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/pers-n30.shtml

[Citizen Worker]

1. Around the time of Oliver Stone's movie, JFK, I had a conversation with my daughter-in-law's father

about the film and the appeal at the end to contact congress and ask that all documents relating to JFK's assassination be released. Richard, a scientist by training, pooh poohed the idea of releasing the documents arguing that there were national security interests that needed to be protected. I countered with, how can we represent ourselves to the rest of the world as a democracy yet withhold information on one of history's most significant events? There was no response. Democracy is an illusion behind an iron curtain of state secrecy.