NYT: The Decision to Publish Diplomatic Documents (obtained from wikileaks)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Keep voting this link up, as important to read as the release itself.
I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand it.
I don't get the publishing of diplomatic documents. I've not had time to read though the entire contents yet, but this just seems like it might CAUSE war, not end it.
I think there is a public interest in knowing how many government decisions are made, a public interest in knowing that (as per a source of the American embassy) the Chinese politburo was behind the attack on Google etc.
Having various other countries in the Middle East on the record as saying nasty things about Iran might severely damage intra-middle-east relations, perhaps making war less avoidable in the future. (It might, of course, have completely the opposite effect, but it's still analogous to firing bullets into a crowd at random and hoping they only hit bad guys.)
More to the point, this whole notion that the current Iranian regime would start a war for no other reason than because some other government said mean things about it is...not terribly well supported by evidence.
Ah, but diplomacy is so often less about who knows what and so often about who has plausible deniability.
Iran knows that the Saudis hate them. And the Saudis know that the Iranians know that they hate them and so forth. But to have it publicly acknowledged and on the record that they hate each other makes things more difficult if they ever need to cooperate.
For instance, now that the Saudis are officially on the record as saying the US should bomb Iran, we can rule out the possibility of using the Saudis as a go-between or an "honest broker" for some kind of negotiated settlement with the Iranians. Not that it was necessarily going to happen, but the possibility is pretty much ruled out due to the embarrassment it would cause all round.
It's not that Iran is going to attack Saudi Arabia because the King said mean things; it's just that the Saudis and the Iranians can no longer pretend publicly that they don't hate each other.
That's just one example, there's any number of other ways that bringing unpleasant truths to the surface can spoil already-weak relationships, as anyone who has ever been in a weak relationship can tell you.
Why not? Everyone with a brain already knew that the Saudi regime hate the Iranian regime. The cables do nothing to change that. And really, the fact is, Saudi Arabia's King's opinions on Iran have zero bearing on whether the US invades Iran.
I don't see what exactly distinguishes your claims about the probability of war increasing due to this "revelation" from magical thinking.
That's just one example, there's any number of other ways that bringing unpleasant truths to the surface can spoil already-weak relationships, as anyone who has ever been in a weak relationship can tell you.
I don't think that one's love life or startup business experience really equips the average person to correctly understand international diplomacy. You say this is just one example: OK, please list some more. Or flesh out this one to the point where it actually makes sense.
I'm sure the Iranian government and diplomatic corps know that Arab governments don't like them, even if those governments have been reluctant to say so publicly. It's not exactly a secret that Arab countries were financing Iraq in its war against Iran, for example.
I wonder how the journalists, editors and bosses of the NY Times would like it if a dump of their email server was released on The Pirate Bay. None of their emails are "noforn" or "secret".
I’m obviously very sure that you are aware that the New York Times is not part of the US government, my point was not that you do not know that, my point was that because of that fact you can’t really compare the two.