Radical transparency, WikiLeaks, and the global (dis)order: correcting geopolitical historiography
Creators: name: Lasa Briz, Victor
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 441004
subject: Social change

description: This thesis aims to evaluate the contribution of radical transparency, as articulated by WikiLeaks, to understanding information geopolitics, using the practice of US public diplomacy in the Middle East (2006) as a case study. The research assesses to what extent radical transparency activism represents a corrective to conventional diplomatic secrecy and how it contributes to a geopolitical historiographic understanding of the recent past.

The thesis makes an innovative contribution by framing the study of radical transparency activism within the information geopolitics discipline, providing a historiographic review of the Second Lebanon War using, for the first time, private information published by WikiLeaks Cablegate, and contributing to studying the correlation between public information management strategies and conflict resolution within the United Nations Security Council framework. Framed within the information geopolitics and transparency studies inter-disciplinary families, the study understands the US public diplomacy-based military supremacy strategy in the Middle East to have been affected by the 2010 WikiLeaks’ Cablegate non-state radical transparency action – the release of 251,287 US diplomatic cables. 

Cablegate’s impact on the academic field was significant but uneven – media and communications scholars seemed unsurprised by the arrival of radical transparency activism. International relations academics debated the action’s legal and ethical ambiguity, sometimes dismissing it as irrelevant in contributing to a better understanding of diplomacy and geopolitics. Nonetheless, most scholars have neglected to mention that we can use radical transparency to review the historiography of recent past events.

Conducted in two phases, the thesis uses historical, content, and discourse analysis on primary and secondary data, including US diplomatic cables released by Cablegate. First, to assess to what extent radical transparency activism represents a corrective to conventional diplomatic secrecy, the researcher delivers a macro analysis aiming to identify the relevance of WikiLeaks’ attempt at disrupting contemporary information environments. The corrective capacity of radical transparency refers to its contribution to enabling the general public to critically examine state actors and their motivations, potentially reducing their susceptibility to the prevailing public diplomacy discourse. Second, the study evaluates the specific historiographic relevance of such disruption to contribute to a better academic understanding of the past, researching at the micro-level what the information provided by Cablegate tells us about US public diplomacy strategies in recent Middle East crises like the 2006 Second Lebanon War and how they affected the UN Security Council capacity to resolve conflict crises. This thesis follows the premise that, even in our information age, the fight for infosphere supremacy is not so much about innovative communication technology as it is about communication content. It is a war of words to persuade public opinion. In the context of information geopolitics, the WikiLeaks Cablegate was a content-based information power action  against US public diplomacy (Lonsdale 1999). Instead of directly engaging in countering the US government’s public diplomacy and strategic narrative, WikiLeaks’ strategy consisted of expanding the civilian information environment, allowing access to information traditionally kept away from it by employing conventional diplomatic secrecy.

Nevertheless, for WikiLeaks, Cablegate was not only about the content but about discussing what areas of information should be available for public scrutiny. |I argue that their activism includes a dual strategy – making content available for an investigative journalistic approach to countering superpowers’ public diplomacy and arguing that the secrecy that protected that content before its illegal publication was not legitimate nor justified. Therefore, the purpose of this PhD research must also be dual, focusing both on the significance of WikiLeaks’ actions in contemporary information environments and the impact-by-historiographic-relevance of the content released. This PhD research assessed how valuable this contribution was – how impactful the use of radical transparency in applying information geopolitics, arguing that it acts as a corrective to conventional diplomatic secrecy and, in particular, that WikiLeaks’ Cablegate is relevant in the historiographic review of the US public diplomacy during the Second Lebanon War. 

The findings demonstrate that radical transparency represents a valuable geopolitical historiography method to better understand international relations and security. 

The material revealed by Cablegate suggests a strong alignment of US and Israel agendas during the Second Lebanon War beyond what US public diplomacy acknowledged. While the alignment of US and Israel security interests has been acknowledged, the WikiLeaks cables add a contemporary confirmation to this fact. This circumstance contributed to unnecessary delays in the UN Security Council’s capacity to produce a definitive ceasefire, leading to avoidable loss of life and the further deterioration of international security. 

These revelations contradict the US public diplomacy strategy during the Second Lebanon War, applied with the purpose of managing the conflict for the benefit of national interests instead of resolving it. Accordingly, the study concludes that Cablegate’s radical transparency represents a severe corrective to the US and others’ information supremacy strategies based on conventional diplomatic secrecy in the Middle East and internationally. Transparency contributes to increased legitimacy in the international public opinion arena.