Weighing up wikileaks

I'm not ready to argue a position on this yet. Emotionally, I love the leaks: rationally, I have all sorts of concerns. For now, I'm just capturing unconnected thoughts...

First of all, Noam Chomsky is finally absolutely definitely wrong. Newspapers do act against the interests of the powerful. He really can't argue that anyone in any government or big industry wanted this.

In terms of the leaks themselves, a lot of it is old news, especially for the UK. Brown was feeble. Cameron and Osbourne are cynical and lack depth. Prince Andrew's not very bright. I suppose it's nice to see that clever US diplomats agree.

It's the corruption that shocks me most. The level of theft from Afghanistan is a tragedy. I can only imagine how frustrating it is to see first hand. Russia and Italy though, are not failed or rebuilding states - they sit in the G20 and purport to direct the future of the world.

I had always assumed that big country corruption was a little more subtle... like favouring friendly firms while in office then getting a nice job on departure. The sort of thing that could be plausibly denied. When people talked about blatant bribery I assumed they were getting a bit caught up in conspiracy. Now it looks like I have to accept it as an empirical fact.

When the game starts out so uneven though, I guess it's a lot easier to cheat than try to catch up.

Perhaps the most depressing corruption though, is the fact that the Chinese politburo allows a senior member to instigate a battle with google because they came across criticism of themselves. It's petty and pathetic and just a bit childish.

In fact, that's my overwhelming impression: global politics is dirtier and less principled than any business I've ever worked in. On the one hand, well done companies. On the other, it does rather make you wonder who can hold them to account..?

As revealing as all this is, I suppose the big question is how the leaks will change international relations in the future. If we accept that electronic documents are not secure [they're not] governments have a choice to make: they can keep having the same plans but not write them down; or, somewhat more radically, they could start having plans that they wouldn't be embarrassed for other people to find out about. Now, there's a thought...

Finally, in a similar vein, do leaks like this make national interest harder to defend and make global government more likely? I think I hope so.