Wikileaks and American Diplomacy

Written By: Pat Buchanan  |  Posted: Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Not since Leon Trotsky began publishing the secrets of the Romanov archives in 1918 has there been a more devastating leak of diplomatic documents than this week's WikiLeaks dump. The Romanov files contained the secret treaties the imperial Allies had signed to carve up the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman empires after a war fought "to make the world safe for democracy."
It was to counter cynicism after revelation of these "secret treaties" that Woodrow Wilson called for "open covenants, openly arrived at."

In 1898, a leaked document inflamed America and infuriated President McKinley, who had not wanted to go to war with Spain. The Spanish minister in Washington, Enrique Dupuy De Lome, had written an indiscreet letter that was stolen by a sympathizer of the Cuban revolution and leaked to William Randolph Hearst's warmongering New York Journal. In the De Lome letter, the minister had said of McKinley that he is "weak, and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, besides being a ... politician who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party."
Six days later, the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor. Hearst's Journal screamed Spanish "treachery." And the war was on.

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