Why China hasn't abandoned North Korea – and why Wikileaks is a work of flawed genius

The Daily Telegraph ^ | November 30th, 2010 | Richard Spencer

[sukhoi-30mki]

Why China hasn't abandoned North Korea – and why Wikileaks is a work of flawed genius

Richard Spencer

China has not abandoned North Korea and won’t any time soon. Nor is the country about to collapse.

That’s not what you’d think from reading coverage of Wikileaks today. But what we claim Wikileaks is saying is – probably – wrong on this point, and a lot else. And we shouldn’t be surprised at that.

This is the big flaw in the Wikileaks exercise, and not, as some of my colleagues have said, that it only confirms what we always suspected. We shouldn’t be surprised that there are no big state secrets in the revelations. These are diplomatic cables, and countries are not in the habit of giving away their most treasured secrets to each other at embassy drinks parties. When they do share secrets, they do it with a much higher security classification.

The documents are full of interest, however, particularly in the detail. Having just returned from Yemen, I found it important what the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi – a man who knows a thing or two about the Gulf – had to say. He was convinced that the Iranians were channelling arms to a Shia rebellion there. When this possibility has been raised with western diplomats in the past, they have rather poo-pooed the idea as lacking evidence: well, there is no smoking gun, but it’s useful to know that someone credible is convinced of it.

There are hundreds of such snippets in the documents – all adding to the sum of human knowledge. On the other hand, these documents are all – and

[Vendome]

China hasn’t abandoned N. Korea as they would lose a foil against American and a reunited Korea would have some 70 million people allied with the United States.

[wolf78]

Most of the information in the wikileaks are fabricated or they are half-truths. Julian Assange isn’t exactly an honest man.

I think that has nothing to do with Assange himself, but rather with the nature of unedited diplomatic cables. They are by definition a.) planted information fed to diplomats b.) gossip c.) embellishments (embassies need funding, too, so you have to look indispensable) and d.) half-truths.