WikiLeaks Threat to America is Nothing for Europe to Snicker About
"These recent WikiLeaks revelations have led to a diminished capacity to correctly interpret what America means to our collective security. ... The revelations have diminished the U.S. and stirred amused small talk in Europe. This is a mistake - because the concerns of the United States must also be our concerns."
WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange has contracted a case of megalomania. He resembles the
villain Blofeld
from the James Bond films. "A new world will emerge, in which history will
be rewritten," he has proclaimed for some time now. This is a new version
of the "grab for world dominance," and it is being made by someone
who, from the moment his latest revelations were released, has boasted that he
would unmask the American "empire," for it to be pilloried and to expose its sinister
machinations. Seldom has someone's alleged attempt
to achieve "world happiness" been so
transparently unmasked as it has in this case. We're experiencing something
like the "Assange-Leak": the unmasking of the man and his transparent
attack on the "indispensable power" - America.
True, he relies on the fact
that this type of cheap voyeurism and tongue clucking about everything America
fails to achieve might have become fashionable here and in many parts of the
world, even as the capacity to assess current events further declines. There is a
growing addiction to trivializing ourselves and our friends from the other side
of the Atlantic. "You just wait and see what we think of you," is how
one unnamed foreign leader dismissed apologetic remarks made by Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton. One didn't have to "wait and see" for long. It's
easy enough to imagine - or read the relevant editorials. But these recent
WikiLeaks revelations are in line with developments that have led to a
diminished capacity to correctly interpret what America means to our
collective security.
U-Turn in the Self-Assessment of a Proud
Nation
Assange has recognized the
vulnerabilities of the U.S. and the West: this is no different from
international terrorism, which draws considerable strength from our collective
despair and defeatism. Assange understands America's psychology at the
beginning of the 21st century -and just how dramatically it has changed since
the terrorist attacks of 9/11. We are witnessing a massive U-turn in the self-assessment
of a proud nation and its sense of invulnerability, which prevailed in
practice until 2001, but has given way to goose bumps over this ubiquitous threat.
We've left behind the "American Century", which is how the great
publisher Henry Luce once
described the 20th, and find ourselves in the century of "Anything Goes,"
with new threats emerging around the world and unanswered questions about how
to reduce them. The old policy of "containment" worked
well and according to agreed-upon rules. The weapons used against technologically-savvy
terrorists have yet to be forged. The peaceful sleep of the unthreatened has
given way to the insomnia of the threatened.
The U.S. dispatches are
dominated by simmering concerns about the scourge of the moment, the terrorist
threat. "Security" is the thread of Ariadne. Nothing makes this more obvious than the
directives coming from the State Department, which more or less requires its
diplomatic services not to miss an opportunity to gather information, even
about credit card details and other personal data. Because any bit of data can
be critical in the fight against terror. Anything goes in the service of
maintaining the upper hand. To the question, "where is American homeland
security threatened from today?" Washington responds, "Everywhere on
earth." Bismarck
once said that a great power should be "disinterested nowhere." American
policy seems to reply: a world power should assume it is threatened everywhere.
Eisenhower: 'My Country Wants To Be
Constructive'
At this point, Assange
speculates on the well-known "disconnect," which is the point at
which we mentally decouple ourselves from America and take on the role of
disparaging spectator. This "spectator" must push aside this tua res agitur, [it is a matter
that concerns you - i.e.: it's your problem], with the knowledge that this isn't
solely about the U.S., but that American concerns should be our concerns. Once
again, there is a tendency in the Western mind to accord equivalence to the
source of the current threat and the power that seeks to thwart it. The U.S. has
experienced this "equivalence" once before, during the period of
nuclear stalemate between the superpowers. It was the era of mutually assured
destruction: due to its potential to inflict nuclear annihilation, the epitome
of totalitarianism in the guise of the old Soviet Union was regarded as "equally
dangerous" to peace.
This recurring difficulty in
assessing a fundamental handicap in American politics had already occurred to
President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower's famous U.N. Atoms
for Peace Speech of December 8, 1953, in which he offered Moscow the
peaceful use of nuclear energy, contains phrases of timeless relevance. "My
country wants to be constructive not destructive," proclaimed Eisenhower, "for
me to say that the retaliation capabilities of the United States are so great
that such an aggressor's land would be laid waste - all this, while fact, is
not the true expression of the purpose and the hope of the United States. … So
my country's purpose is to help us move out of the dark chamber of horrors into
the light, to find a way by which the minds of men, the hopes of men, the souls
of men everywhere, can move forward toward peace, happiness and well being."
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Woe To Those
Seduced By Voyeurism
Much of that hope has been
lost since the terrorist tried to elevate himself to dictator of history. And
yes, much more has been lost when the U.S. made mistakes in their assessments
of the risk, such as the threat emanating from Iraq, and in the process proved itself guilty of gross human rights violations. But it would
be to throw the baby out with the bathwater and to ignore our common ground
with America, just because the performance of the "indispensable power"
is open to criticism. Thank goodness that in some places at least, be it Saudi
Arabia or China, there is an understanding of just how much hinges on the
capacity of the U.S. to confront the challenges of the present and face down
those intent on sabotaging a peaceful world order. Woe to us if we become
seduced by Assange and WikiLeaks' voyeurism; if we lapse into the old habit of "equivalence"
and play into the anti-U.S. tongue clucking, VaeVictis [woe to the vanquished].
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