Wikileaks show diplomats as corporate salesmen
A developing theme in the Wikileaks cables is the extent to which the world's diplomats are merely corporate salesmen who get to wear striped pants and go to state dinners every once in a while. Check out The Guardian's story on intense pressure from Libya to release the Lockerbie bomber before he died and the consternation it caused among British diplomats. Kadifi threatened to cut off "all UK commercial activity" in Libya if the killer wasn't released, and the British ambassador to Tripoli "expressed relief" according to the U.S. cable, when that happened. Of course BP British Petroleum has huge interests in Libya.
U.S. diplomats spent enormous amounts of energy a few years ago trying to make sure Norway bought Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter. (Norway did, spurning a Swedish plane.) This has prompted cackling from Democrats about "the way the Bush administration turned our Foreign Service into salesmen for Lockheed Martin."
Dude, every administration, Republican and Democrat, is a branch of the Fortune 500 sales force. Here's another story from The Guardian, this one on the Obama administration:
The US lobbied Russia this year on behalf of Visa and MasterCard in an attempt to ensure the payment companies were not "adversely affected" by new legislation, according to American diplomats in Moscow.A state department cable released this afternoon by WikiLeaks reveals that US diplomats intervened to try to amend a draft law going through Russia's Duma. Their explicit aim was to ensure the new law did not "disadvantage" the two US firms, the cable states.
Comments
Ah ... so this is why Visa and Mastercard both caved so quickly and shut down donations to the organization.
I was wondering about that.
wikileaks.ch still appears to be going strong in their fight for free speech, so it doesn't seem to have hurt them much.
Posted by: Dustin | December 8, 2010 10:39 AM
Well should not surprise people.
Diplomats have always said when they are accused of something.
"those accusations are absurd and I am surprised that a respective person like that would go so low"
Well they have proved that those people who have gone so low did in fact not go so low.
Posted by: sigthor jonsson | December 8, 2010 3:36 PM
Once upon a time international relations required a diplomatic presence in distant lands and a Naval presence in their harbors.
Modern communication and international flights make what is residual of the old and then needed role little more than window dressing and of course as cover for other reasons to be there.
Posted by: MrRational | December 8, 2010 7:22 PM
Other news media online seems afraid to mention this mastercard and visa cable, but they are quick to mention the attacks on mastercard and visa like they don't deserve it. Mainstream media is controlling the public by failing to publish stories without a drastic spin on them and the media is suppressing the facts or just plain not reporting issues involving large corporations and questionable government activities. Yahoo is replacing article comments with their own view points which is unethical behavior in my opinion. I'm glad to see a writer do the right thing and mention this topic; I hope you get web traffic to show it pays to do the ethical thing and present the truth and leave it to us to decided. Also, I know about the write up on the Gaurdian's website, but you are one of the only other people mentioning it.
Posted by: smartasacalibear | December 8, 2010 10:50 PM
The best book I have found to expand on this idea of politicians as glorified salespeople is "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Really eye-opening, although I'm not sure how much I can truly buy. Even if only a third of it is the god's honest, however, it's pretty hard-hitting stuff.
These days, you're a wacko if you think something's going on and a naive fool if you don't.
Posted by: John J. Walters | December 9, 2010 11:13 AM
are we that stupid that we need leaked documents to think other wise.
Look at Bush and Haliburten
Posted by: xapns5oh | December 9, 2010 2:05 PM