Leaked U.S. cables insult everyone

The WikiLeaks dump of secret diplomatic cables has “catapulted” the U.S. into “a worldwide diplomatic crisis,” said David Leigh in the London Guardian. More than a quarter-million confidential documents reveal what American envoys really think about the foreign governments they deal with—and the unvarnished truth isn’t pretty. The Afghan leadership is called “paranoid” and corrupt, and Pakistan is seen as a huge risk for nuclear weapons smuggling. One cable revealed Britain’s Prince Andrew to be “rude” and anti-American. The diplomat wrote that the prince “reacted with almost neuralgic patriotism whenever any comparison between the U.S. and U.K. came up.” But the most shocking revelation is that “the U.S. uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network,” with diplomats instructed to obtain personal information about foreign officials, in some cases “even DNA material.”

For Italy, the recurring theme in the cables is that the U.S. sees Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as a pawn of Moscow, said Franco Venturini in Italy’s Corriere della Sera. Yet that’s hardly news. Back when Berlusconi was prime minister the first time around, in 1994, he suggested that Russia join the EU—so Europe could acquire all its nuclear weapons “and be able to talk to the United States as equals.” The U.S. hated the idea and, as the leaked cables make clear, it is still suspicious of Berlusconi’s “constant flow of praise” for Russia’s authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin. It certainly looks as if “America is slightly jealous” of Italy’s relationship with Russia. The Americans don’t want any European country to have clout with the Kremlin.

Or maybe they just don’t like us—or anybody, said Jan Friedmann in Germany’s Der Spiegel. The cables show little but criticism for German politicians. Chancellor Angela Merkel is seen as “risk averse,” while Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is “a wild card” and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is a “neurotic” who “sees enemies everywhere.” But even more stinging than the insults is the revelation that the U.S. has “informants in the upper levels of German politics.” During the delicate negotiations among German parties to form a new government last year, “the U.S. was a fly on the wall.” Now that we know this, what can we do? The only thing for sure is that “German-American relations will never be the same.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Get over it, said former Irish diplomat Eamon Delaney in The Irish Times. Is anyone honestly appalled to find out that “what officials and politicians really think is quite different from what they say”? Here’s a news flash: Allies spy on one another all the time. And even your closest friends find some things about you annoying. The leaked cables are not going to derail any urgent U.S. policies. When all is said and done, they amount to “high-grade gossip.” I, for one, find them “human and interesting.”