Christmas Dinner at the Assange house

I don’t really understand how people can think there is a justification for Wikileaks releasing thousands of diplomatic exchanges, and letting the fallout, um, fall where it will.  I mean, I know that there is an initial pleasure of hearing secrets, and having nation’s real assessments of their friends and neighbours made perfectly clear, but surely it doesn’t take much reflection to realise that international diplomacy is very similar to ordinary personal relationships writ large.   Just as it doesn’t pay to always be upfront about your feelings and assessments when you’re, say, having Christmas lunch with a relative whose company you don’t particularly relish, there are reasons why nations says things between themselves that are best kept secret.

I was happy to see that this was brought out in a recent Q&A in the Guardian when Julian Assange was asked:

I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without discretion and the protection of sources.

In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails.
My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.

To which the boy of many hair styles  non-answers:

Julian Assange:
If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.

Maybe Julian is all high-minded and a devotee of Kant at his most idealistic, who argued there was never any room for lies, ever.  If so, I hope Assange is consistent, and has Christmas days like this:

Mother:  Julian, so nice that you could make it.  Look, your brother George and his new partner Andrea are here.

Julian:  George!   Yet another woman who’s moved in with you?  Let’s see if it can last more than a year this time; they usually suss you out before then, don’t they?   I hope you’ve had the chlamydia you caught from the last one treated.  (Yes, guess which department the last leak came from.)  And don’t worry, the string of bastard children you’ve left behind you are on the public record already; it’s not like they’re a secret from anyone.