When Wikileaks released the censored videotape of US gunners killing unarmed journalists, my reaction, aside from the initial visceral disgust and anger over the careless taking of life, was that of support for the leaks. The gunners were not rogue agents. Death from above like an all-too-real parody of a well-known video game, was in fact the rule of engagement. The video put a real face to the war that the government and the media had largely censored up to that point. Call me a heretic in these growingly-Orwellian times, but I don't think you can be a believer in democracy and articulate a compelling argument against that leak.

The leak of the diplomatic cables, though, is a bit different. I, like most people, don't fully understand how international diplomacy works, and when governments report that the leaks could seriously jeopardize their function, it seems like they might actually have a point. So are these leaks really a net benefit to society?

The answer, I think, is dependent on one question: is covert international diplomacy a zero-sum game? Otherwise put, assuming each nation is after some "good", for example marbles (though better examples would be peace, oil, or environmental health), does hiding diplomatic dealings increase the supply of marbles or just determine how they're distributed?

Diplomacy is often referred to as a grand game of poker, which ironically is a zero sum game. If this is the case, then a transparent diplomatic system doesn't really change anything in the long term. It changes the rules of the game and arguably makes the outcome more equitable, but doesn't fundamentally change the supply of "goodness" in the system - only its distribution.

If however, an opaque (vs. transparent) diplomatic system actually increases the shared good, then there's a reason to be wary of these leaks, and more importantly the shift in information transparency that technology might just make inevitable.

There is a third answer to the question I've ignored until now, and it's that opaque diplomacy actually reduces the supply of goodness. Or put otherwise, is a race to the bottom. 

While in reality, the answer differs depending on what "good" you're talking about - whether it be peace, jobs, or something else, I think considering what we've seen of the cables thus far, there's a strong reason to believe it might actually be a race to the bottom.

For example, we learned that the US and China worked jointly to sabotage the Copenhagen climate summit. While the outcome was (arguably) positive for those two countries, unless you don't believe in man-made climate change, the outcome to the system was overwhelmingly negative. We also learned that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had called Iran a threat and encouraged the US government to attack Iran, which is no friend of its neighboring Arab states. Before I continue, for full-disclosure's sake, I'm an Iranian born Canadian. A poll of the Saudi population asking what they thought was the biggest threat to their Country came up with 90% answering Israel and 70% answering the US, with only 10% answering Iran. An attack never happened, bur these cables highlight how diplomats and governments can so overwhelmingly defy public interest, or as Noam Chomsky hyperbolically put it, “[the leaked cables reveal] America's profound hatred for democracy”.

Here’s a more abstract argument. With or without transparency, the job of a diplomat is to represent the interests of his or her country on the international stage – not to increase the good in the system. There is a strong analogy to the classic prisoner dilemma game. I’m hoping most readers are familiar with this game. If there is secrecy in the system, where your actions are not known to other players, there is no “learning” from successive iterations, and so each player will assume everyone else is willing to screw them, and will in turn do the same. However, in a game with transparency, where each player can see the moves of the other, after multiple turns, players begin to cooperate and the total good in the system rises. 

Even with all this postulating, it’s impossible to really know what the outcome of a fully transparent state would be.  But here’s a thought. If the American government believed there was a good chance their efforts to sabotage the Copenhagen talks would be made public, the outcome could have been very different. And while you can argue it might not have been a win for the US, it would probably have been a win for democracy.