Illustration by Brad Holland, Vanity Fair
Envoys provide devastating truths, but world can admire Washington's patient mission to avert nuclear apocalypse
Dec. 5, 2010 (The Guardian) -- There's more to the WikiLeaks dispatches than leaks. Look behind them, at the writers, and you see the loyal rearguard of America: an imperial power in retreat.
There was a tradition in our Foreign Office that a retiring ambassador could blow off steam. In a final, exuberant telegram to Whitehall, he could say exactly what he thought of the country he was leaving, and of the folly of the Foreign Office in ignoring his advice.The best telegrams were treasured by young diplomats. But they began to leak into the press. And a few years ago this privilege was suppressed.
Now the WikiLeaks eruption has smothered the world with the secret thoughts of the state department's ambassadors. Tmorrow's Observer, focusing on China, reveals fascinating data about Chinese "muscle-flexing, triumphalism and assertiveness" (as the US ambassador put it). But with the cables comes a snapshot of the state department itself. It's a unique window on America's search -- with diminishing confidence -- for a coherent, inspiring account of what the United States trying to achieve in the world.
These diplomats who didn't want us to know their thoughts are not mere cogs in an imperial machine. Many emerge as wise, courageous, patient, likeable men and women -- especially the women, who lead so many U.S. embassies. Their view of their host countries is not rosy. You begin to absorb their vision, in which America is the only adult in a world of grasping, corrupt, unreliable teenagers who cannot be abandoned to their own weakness.
READ MORE: The Guardian