There are also classification levels ranging from "Unclassified" to "Top Secret. Many of the leaked documents are also marked "NOFORN," indicating that the information they contain is not to be shared with foreign governments. In an age of information openness, the secret diplomatic dispatch — the preferred tool of international statecraft for five centuries — may have become a liability. Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort.
To keep a record and advance their careers. By Joshua E. November 30, , AM. November 12, , AM. Trending 1. A Blueprint for Peace in Ethiopia. Immigration Reform Needs a New Strategy. Blame Brussels. Fiona Hill: U. They are usually exempt from access to information laws. And even the government in power has limited access. This allows ambassadors to write that rarest of things—the truth—in the comforting knowledge they are safe to do so.
In fact, they are not only safe to do so, the entire purpose of the job is explain to their governments the unvarnished reality of what is happening abroad. Which is exactly what Ambassador Darroch was doing. And, I can assure Canadians, what our embassy in Washington also does. There is no doubt our current ambassador, David MacNaughton, has sent back similar reports to Ottawa—as every other Canadian ambassador has done, from every foreign capital, for every previous government.
You can find cables in the National Archives describing in lurid detail inebriation, infidelity, idiocy, and incompetence, about all our allies and all our rivals. I even wrote a few myself. In fact, if you are ever in Ottawa, I would encourage you to stop by the archives and snoop about.
You will find it much more entertaining and informative than some of the local museums, Question Period, or, heaven help us, the tulips. Scott Gilmore is a former diplomat and social entrepreneur who works in and writes about the United States, Africa and Asia. Opinion The secret world of secret diplomatic cables Scott Gilmore: They may be the only documents in any government's archives worth reading—being disarmingly frank, entertainingly worded, often shocking, and occasionally even funny.
Joseph Communications uses cookies for personalization, to customize its online advertisements, and for other purposes. Not all cables provide explicit policy recommendations. In fact, those that do are in the minority, in this corpus at any rate. The cable feeds into a longer-term process of information gathering and analysis which serves to build up a picture of how countries think, feel and react as a basis for foreign policy decisions.
Although we find bracketed asides and analytical comment in both the US and the EU cables, there is a much clearer flagging up of analysis in the American set. Cables written by the EEAS tend to be more informative and contain less explicitly flagged analysis.
I would argue that this is because there is a more direct link between American diplomatic reporting and actual foreign policy decisions than is the case for EU diplomacy. The EEAS is responsible for negotiating international agreements and engaging with host governments through its delegations.
It is also heavily involved in crisis management operations, overseeing military and civilian missions, and works closely with the Commission on all areas of external EU competence. Finally, in addition to markers of doubt or certainty and metadiscursive devices that guide reader understanding, cable writers demonstrate subtle ways of communicating attitudes, feelings and value judgements, particularly through the use of positively or negatively connoted adjectives or adverbs.
A final recurring stylistic device revealing author stance is the use of short direct quotes. Through a close reading of these two sets of leaked cables, we can observe that diplomatic reporting is not clinical and coldly factual but contains numerous indications of author stance. These markers indicate how the reported information should best be interpreted, flag up the difference between facts and analysis and help shape future foreign policy decisions.
Interestingly, however, there are relatively few explicit recommendations or arguments in the cables, since the formulation of foreign policy is based on a substantial amount of information collected by embassies abroad, which does not always result in concrete actions or programmes, but helps build up a nuanced foreign policy position.
No effort by the hackers themselves was made to publish the documents. Conrad, S. In Hunston, S. Evaluation in Text. Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Furness, M. European Foreign Affairs Review , 18 1 , pp. Spence, D.
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