US embassy cables: A banquet of secrets

„My personal opinion of the state department has gone up several notches. In recent years, I have found the American foreign service to be somewhat underwhelming, reach-me-down, dandruffy, especially when compared with other, more confident arms of US government, such as the Pentagon and the treasury. But what we find here is often first rate. As readers will discover, the man who is now America's top-ranking professional diplomat, William Burns, contributed from Russia a highly entertaining account – almost worthy of Evelyn Waugh – of a wild Dagestani wedding attended by the gangsterish president of Chechnya, who danced clumsily with his gold-plated automatic stuck down the back of his jeans.

Burns's analyses of Russian politics are astute. So are his colleagues' reports from Berlin, Paris and London. In a 2008 dispatch from Berlin, the then grand coalition government of Christian and Social democrats in Germany is compared to the proverbial couple that hated each other but stay together for the sake of the children. From Paris, there is a hilarious pen portrait of the antics of Nicolas (and Carla) Sarkozy. And we the British would do well to take a look at our neurotic obsession with our so-called pecial relationship with Washington, as it appears in the unsentimental mirror of confidential dispatches from the US embassy in London. (...)

There is a genuine public interest in knowing these things. The Guardian, like the New York Times and other responsible news media, has tried to ensure that nothing we publish puts anyone at risk. We should all demand of WikiLeaks that it does the same. Yet one question remains. How can diplomacy be conducted under these conditions? A state department spokesman is surely right to say that the revelations are »going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world«. The conduct of government is already hampered by fear of leaks. An academic friend of mine who worked in the state department under Condoleezza Rice told me that he had once suggested writing a memo posing fundamental questions about US policy in Iraq. Don't even think of it, he was warned – because it would be sure to appear in the next day's New York Times.”