Julian Assange's Motives

Here is a fabulous discussion of Assange's political philosophy, motives and goals as presented in two essays he wrote in 2006. The analysis itself is a more extended discussion based of a previous one found here. Sorry but yes, I am still fascinated by Wikileaks. I think it is likely to be more a political revolution than anything that happened with Twitter during the Iranian riots.

Previously I speculated that there was something libertarian-anarchist about Wikileak's motives. It seemed that we have a pretty common case of two views. 1. availability of information is good in itself and 2. the chaos caused by such availability only causes justified harm.

However, the thoughtful investigations I have just posted suggest that Assange's views and motives are more subtle (though arguably still naive) than I had suspected. As the first article, at a point quoting the second, puts Assange's idea:

Assange’s strategy starts from the premise that authoritarian governments--among which he includes the U.S. and other major and semimajor world powers--are, at root, conspiracies. Diagnosing authoritarian governments as conspiracies allows Assange, ever the hacker, to put secrecy at the heart of his political philosophy. He sees the secret (or “conspiratorial interaction”) not only as the sine qua non of the conspiracy but as the actual source of the conspiracy's power:

Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite not merely for preferment or favor within the regime but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.

From here it is not hard to see how the leak--the anti-secret--fits in. Bady’s summary is better than the texts they paraphrase:

[Assange] decides…that the most effective way to attack this kind of organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment…. The idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire.

This is actually a fairly clever position especially insofar as its desired effect corresponds nicely with the feared effect that Assange's critics claim the leaks may have. Specifically, the leaks will make it so that foreign governments will be unwilling to work with America in secret for fear of this cooperation getting out to their people who may resist such cooperation. I have in mind here, for example, the willingness of many Middle Eastern nations to express support in secret to America in resisting Iran's nuclear ambitions. If countries don't trust American secrecy diplomacy in general becomes much harder and an entire level of cooperation, specifically secret cooperation, has been effectively removed from the international playing field. A very good friend of mine suggested precisely this as the danger of Assange's actions.

This fits, however, nicely into Assange's stated goals. The only difference is the changing of one basic assumption, and it does make all the difference. Assange assumes that American diplomacy is in the service of an authoritarian government with the fundamental structure of a conspiracy. The predicted breakdown in diplomacy translates, then, into a weakened international influence (precisely as my friend feared) but on the part of an authoritarian force which is seen to be dominating the world partially through military and capitalistic might and partly through diplomatic conspiracy. This breakdown is therefor a good thing and leaves more space for others, a country's actually citizens for example, to influence their own country's actions (I have in mind here the rage of many Spanish citizens when they found out that Spain was working with America to keep American military officers responsible for the shelling and killing of Spanish reporters in Iraq from being prosecuted).

However, change Assange's assumption to another one and the same precise situation looks radically different. Assume that American diplomacy is the in service of the American citizens and aims, ultimately, to keep America safe by ensuring international stability and peace. Suddenly the breakdown in diplomacy is a breakdown in global stability not global domination.

Of course the likely reality is a bit of each. One can certainly not assume that American diplomacy is fully a force for stability. It also seeks to empower cues for the sake of violent regime change and sometimes ferment wars. Certainly this may be in the ultimate goal of greater stability due to something like a world of democratic nations but even this philosophy, founded on Kant's claim that democratic societies do not go to war with one another, is called into question by our government's willingness to seek to topple democratically elected leaders they dislike and even entire democracies. It is very possible to have consolidation of power in view and to paste over it the vague promise of world stability and peace.

But it is also, in my opinion, unlikely that many and perhaps most diplomacy is not done with the avoidance of bloodshed and the well-being of the world's peoples in general in mind. It may be that when push comes to shove what the good diplomats are doing doesn't really measure up to what the C.I.A. is doing behind them, but it is certainly possible to have too cynical a view of world politics.