Soon, after the shock of the WikiLeaks leaks fades away in the media and international concern, and the astonishment wanes, the reality of the evidence and the public documentation of secret diplomacy will remain a meaningful event, at present and in the future. The publication of diplomatic correspondence documents will involve challenges not limited to the manner, freedom and secrecy in which non-public talks are held, but reaching decision-making itself. Indeed, what has so far been published of the WikiLeaks leaks involved nothing new and surprising, but it has made clear the features of several policies, which will drive their makers to make definite decisions and choices. These leaks have placed US President Barack Obama at the forefront of leaders who will have to make a clear choice between the option of diplomacy and the military option towards Iran. This in itself may lead to the Iranian leadership realizing that the space for its skillful political game has begun to shrink, and thus that it is time to go back on its escalation and replace it with doubling the chances of a political deal in order to ward off the military option, whether by a US decision or by Israel implicating the Obama Administration. Or the WikiLeaks documents could lead to speeding up a military strike against Iran due to what they have revealed in terms of Iran's tremendous progress in obtaining advanced capabilities in its military nuclear program with the help of North Korea. In other words, these documents could open up a new path for what is referred to as the “Grand Bargain”, while at the same time increasing pressures to decisively deal with the Iranian nuclear issue at the military level. Arab leaderships should therefore start thinking and delving deep into the strategies available after WikiLeaks, especially as these leaks could place Arab political discourse in a weaker position towards both Iran and Israel, for different reasons. Indeed, if there is a possibility of renewed talk of the elements of the “Grand Bargain”, or if there is a possibility of joint US-Israeli military action towards Iran, both developments would have consequences for Arab countries which it would be best to confront with a preemptive strategy. Such a strategy is also necessary because the WikiLeaks documents that have been published so far are only part of the thousands of documents that may hold in their folds something new and surprising. Indeed, we do not know if the newspapers that obtained the “scoop” of publishing the first wave of documents have exercised “self-censorship” and purposely withheld the more important and more dangerous documents. We do not know if the second set of documents will reveal, for example, secret diplomatic correspondence that exposes the Israeli side in the secret political game, after the first set focused on Arab stances towards Iran's nuclear armament. We know for certain that the WikiLeaks leaks documented only the secret diplomacy channeled with the United States, not the ones channeled with Russia or China, for example. And if there is a positive aspect to this scandal for the United States, it lies in the “transparency” of US policy, as what the documents held had already been leaked by US officials who had spoken to the media under the condition that their names not be mentioned. Unless what has not been published is the surprise that has been contained with amazing secret diplomacy. Perhaps one of the positive aspects of the WikiLeaks leaks is for leaderships to stop speaking a certain language with their popular base and a different, converse language with regional and international governments. Bringing the two together in a single discourse clearly has several benefits, after WikiLeaks has exposed the myth of secrecy in covert diplomacy. Indeed, it may stop the hemorrhage of lack of trust in those leaderships and put a stop to the deterioration of respect for them at the popular level. It may also be useful in building a relationship of partnership between governments and their people and in formulating stances that would surprise those who have always wagered on the triumph of Arab ambivalence. Indeed, those leaks provide the tools for establishing such a partnership. Israel being at ease with the publication of the WikiLeaks documents does not indicate the sincerity of the stances of Israeli leaders. What Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, describing Israeli society as open and stating that “usually there is a gap between what is said in public and what is said in private, but regarding Israel this gap is not large”, is the very embodiment of ambivalence. Indeed, Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, hides behind considerations of “national security” to conceal information, misrepresent facts and prevent the media from doing its work. It thereby purposely prevents its society and the world from being informed about what it is doing in terms of breaching and violating international law and human rights under the pretext of “Israel's national security”. The WikiLeaks leaks have radically challenged the practice of governments hiding behind the pretext of “national security”, as it has challenged the media to stop giving in as soon as a government waves that flag in its face. The founder of the WikiLeaks website, Julian Assange, is no constructive advocate and does not base himself on the principle of reforming governments or the media. According to one person close to him who participated in the Global Agenda Councils Summit organized by the Dubai government in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, Julian Assange fiercely hates and despises journalists and governments equally. His purpose is to reveal in order to expose and destroy, not to reveal in order to reform or rebuild. In spite of this, this “hunted” man and fugitive from the law has succeeded in forcing governments and the media to reconsider their relationship, to reexamine themselves, and to start thinking on new bases for different relations. This too may be one of the positive aspects of what the WikiLeaks leaks have done. Another example of a positive aspect may take the shape of leaderships ceasing to expend funds and efforts and to pretend that they respect and appreciate one another, instead crossing the distance directly towards a greater extent of honesty and sincerity, and exchanging views over diplomacy and available options. Certainly, a distinctive skill of politicians and of most heads of state is the use of roundabout means and the ability to hide cards in the game of politics and the art of negotiations. This will go on, but the level of the game might rise, not because state intelligence services did not imagine or did not know of the content of the diplomatic cables and correspondence, but rather because there is no need to pretend the opposite of what is traditionally well-known, after it has been revealed publicly. Thus political and diplomatic performance will perhaps rise to a higher level. Diplomats will not appreciate leaks that rob them of the instruments of the exciting diplomatic game, a game that nears that of espionage in the first place due to the extent of secrecy that surround stances most of the time, without there being a necessity or need for it. To gloat, US diplomacy has for many years taken upon itself to hide behind secrecy, either in order to control the media itself and not just information, or in order to purposely mislead by sometimes shamelessly making use of the media and of journalists. Also to gloat, a great many US media outlets have submitted to the new game with the US Administration and Congress, and have lost their moral compass and professional principles. The WikiLeaks leaks have not necessarily reformed it, but they might impose different rules on the media and on its relationship with the government, and vice versa. China – as well as Russia to a lesser degree – does not suffer from similar problems, in the government or in the media, because the government does not in the first place pretend to be democratic and to believe in the media's mission to enlighten people, to testify and to monitor the government so that people may hold it to account. That is not China's problem, nor is it the US Administration's problem with China. Its problem might reside in WikiLeaks revealing what South Korea had offered, according to a secret US cable, in terms of trade incentives in order to convince China to accept a unified Korea once the regime in Pyongyang collapses, while the US Ambassador in Seoul reported that the South Koreans believe that appropriate trade deals would help quell China's “concerns about living with a reunified Korea” and about the latter being bound to an alliance with the United States. Indeed, if China had previously been willing to respond to the instruments of enticement with trade deals and incentives, it is perhaps less willing to do so today, having been publicly embarrassed. That is one of the important outcomes of the WikiLeaks leaks. Furthermore, the documents also spoke of China agreeing to join the consensus of the five permanent members of the Security Council over the resolution to strengthen sanctions against Iran in exchange for tremendous incentives, pledges and rewards. Such a revelation could in turn affect the next round of negotiations between the five countries and Iran – negatively or positively – especially as the bilateral deals between the United States and Russia regarding the missile shield in Eastern Europe and other matters have resulted in what the WikiLeaks documents confirm to be Barack Obama's greatest political achievement: gathering the agreement of Russia and China over strengthening sanctions against Iran. The language of interests and the coupling of economic incentives with security considerations is nothing new in relations between countries. What is new is that laying bare diplomatic secrets will definitely influence the positioning of all countries to produce a different geopolitical map. It might be said that the WikiLeaks leaks have made it clear that the US is an “emperor with no clothes”. And it might be said that what is worse is that the likes of China and Russia continue to pretend that they are “emperors with clothes on” because the WikiLeaks website did not target them with scandals and embarrassment. The other sets of leaks might be contained, Julian Assange might have prepared for this in advance, and things will only get worse. Nevertheless, it is not enough for the leaderships of the world to show “solidarity” in opposing WikiLeaks or in hunting down Assange. Leaderships must learn from the lessons of WikiLeaks instead of burying their heads in the sand, while muttering “crime”, “conspiracy”, “trap”, “none of our concern” or “the danger” of revealing secrets. They must anticipate with lucid policies that make use of the in-depth analysis of what the secret cables reported, in order to avoid wars instead of being forced into them, and in order to intelligently position themselves in case the “Grand Bargain” were to take place, or in case of repercussions of what is referred to as this “trap” or “conspiracy”. At the Global Agenda Councils Summit, the World Economic Forum began building a “risk response network” aimed at gathering leading experts from different fields and different parts of the world together with decision-makers, in order to come up with solutions, define strategies and respond to urgent challenges and to dangerous global surprises. The WikiLeaks leaks have captured the imagination and interest of this exceptional group of leading experts, yet while waiting to clarify whether this was an unprecedented “storm in a teacup” or a radical event, one of which we will not know the dangers or the benefits until we examine the hundreds of thousands of secret documents that have not been published, which will perhaps require an unparalleled “response network”.
