THE LESS SECRECY THE BETTER

All the attention currently directed towards purloined presidential documents raises a larger question. Why are they secret in the first place and how is this determined?   Few terms have been abused more than “top secret,” often for ulterior motives and obscure, unexplained reasons. Secrecy frequently gives unchecked power to faceless bureaucrats without any accountability. That kind of power is easily subject to abuse that is devoid of any consequences. Many people have been apprehended for violating secrecy, but has anyone ever been held to account for designating something secret improperly, withholding or distorting information, to the detriment of truthful deliberation? This security umbrella has enabled our intelligence institutions to become politicized, and weaponized into hitherto unthinkable abuses. Meanwhile most of the media that once might have raised loud objections and alarms about this have instead ignored, or more inexcusably, collaborated in suppressing the truth for ideological reasons. Secrecy excesses have provided much convenient cover and the whole subject now desperately needs some serious reconsideration. 

 

Secrecy is what has enabled one administration after another to lie to us, make disastrous and costly mistakes, while concurrently spinning the narrative to evade responsibility. But often enough it blows up on them, and worse, terrible damage occurs that could have been avoided had there been full disclosure in the first place. Further, secrecy is fundamentally at odds with the notion of a free and open society.  But that only works when there is a media that sets aside partisan considerations instead of participating in them.

 

Moreover, it is no “secret” that secrecy is something we are not particularly good at. Our government leaks at a greater rate than a pot full of holes, whether intentional or not. Washington is simply terrible at keeping secrets. The reality is that our officials are simply unable maintain much secrecy for long. It is also quite likely that our adversaries know more of our “secrets” than we do, given how porous our institutions are. This should also put to rest any notion about some nefarious hidden trove of information about aliens, assassinations or anything else consequential. It simply isn’t there or it certainly would have leaked. Otherwise, you would have to believe that every president since Harry Truman through Joe Biden were part of some great conspiracy suppressing the truth, or that Donald Trump would not have blown the lid off if anything were there.

 

Leaks involve intent on the part of someone to pass information out publicly. They are more embarrassing than damaging. What is far worse is when secrecy is maintained on false premises in order to protect the powerful, to cover up and lie on their behalf, prevent the revelation of avoidable mistakes, and distort or suppress the truth. Withholding information is more egregious than exposing it, even when ill-advised. 

 

There is only one possible justification for government secrecy and that is national security. But that being case it can also be stretched to unjustifiably transform something trivial into something consequential enough to be secret, or to cover up ineptitude. The temptation for abuse is hard to avoid when something is inconvenient, embarrassing, violates accepted assumptions, etc. none of which can possibly justify secrecy. As with anything that is overdone it ultimately trivializes and diminishes what otherwise might be important. 

 

There is obviously a need for secrecy in military affairs. It is also justified to a lesser extent, with diplomacy and intelligence services, but there is always a downside. The more something is secret the less it is open to scrutiny, alternative interpretation, alteration, or critical questioning that comes from open and free discussion. We have stumbled into disasters too often in recent times due to “faulty intelligence,” which usually means any serious questioning or consideration of any contrary evidence or alternative views. For that matter if diplomacy prior to World War I had been more open, the bumbling uncertainty that unleashed a terrible war and all the disasters which followed in the last century could have been avoided.

 

This has always been the great weakness of repressive regimes as information is unreliably skewed and eventually undermines the worst kind of state. That is why free societies have been able to triumph in the end, despite all their untidiness. The more things are out in the open the less chance there is of miscalculation, or worse, being fed lies to suppress some inconvenient truths and mislead the public. The more we emulate our adversaries the more likely we are to share their eventual fate. Experience has shown us that secrecy has too often been pointless or counterproductive.

 

Fortunately. perceptions have changed. When Ellsberg lifted the Pentagon Papers many of us reacted angrily at the time at what we perceived to be an act of disloyalty rather than to the substance of what was being revealed. But by the time of Snowden and Assange or the Iraq war things became more nuanced. It no longer is all that clear as to who the bad guys really are. However, the high level of institutional distrust the public currently maintains is also not healthy. This could easily be assuaged with much less secrecy, and more plain truth. The less politicians lie the better they will sleep at night and the more effective they will be during the day.

 

Now that the secrecy canard has come back to bite two presidents, we must wonder just how critically secret many of these documents really are. We really need new standards that provide a clear rationale and justification before anything is blacked out by secrecy. This should be stringent, minimal, and subject to review, both initially as well as subsequently. Secrecy of any kind is at odds with the tenets of a free society, frequently suppresses the truth, or makes things worse and ought to be sparsely applied. For history has clearly shown that the more things are out in the open and subject to scrutiny the less chance there is for avoidable mistakes. By now one thing should be very clear- the less secrecy the better. 

 

  

WRONG TIMING ON CHINA

There is a near-universal chorus shouting “We can’t back down now,” in the face of threats and aggression, but in the case of Nancy Pelosi’s planned trip to Taiwan it is lunacy to tempt fate with a conflict that we are currently ill-prepared for. Even the Pentagon knows this. We have a lamentable pattern in this country of stumbling into war without fully thinking out the consequences. We are ever prone to short-term thinking in long-term situations. 

The Chinese do not suffer this handicap. They pursue long-range strategies with careful consideration, while we tend to react precipitously. Thus the Chinese Communists have long planned to bypass the USA in terms of world power, and further, to undermine us at every possible opportunity, which we have yet to fully grasp. All this time, and especially since the rise of the current leadership in China, they have in fact been engaged in a subtle, low-intensity war against this country. They have penetrated and compromised many of our institutions, including universities, corporations, and and politicians themselves, the extent to which we still barely recognize. In fact, the next big scandal to erupt in this country’s likely to be “the great betrayal;” i.e. degree to which we have been seriously compromised by an inept, greedy, and rotten elite. 

The Chinese Communists know a lot more about us and our vulnerabilities than we do in reverse. This is a result of chronically short-sighted leadership across the board, and a near total inability to develop and maintain a long-term strategy about anything. This has been brought about by the ephemeral nature of our politics; ever shifting and always subordinate to the “issues of the day.” 

With regard to Taiwan we have put ourselves in an untenable position.  We have, all along maintained that it is part of China, which of course is the Chinese position, which puts us on shaky ground in any potential conflict. At the same time it is true that Taiwan has been democratically self-governing long enough to have developed into an advanced democracy, with an increasing identity of its own, just as Ukraine has developed over the space of a few decades a comparable identity, or sadly, the way Kabul had changed in Afghanistan before they were shamefully abandoned. 

Furthermore we are currently in a position where we and the western world are have become dependent on Taiwan for some advanced technology and can ill afford to see that gone before it has been relocated, duplicated, or otherwise secured. Furthermore the acquisition of Taiwan will certainly put China on top in short order as things currently stand. These are hard-core, amoral realpolitik concerns. At the same time there is the basic reality that an island this close to home is clearly much more in the core interests of the Chinese, and they will go after it in total while we will at best be half-hearted about a place on the other side of the globe. The smart move would have been to simply arm the Taiwanese to the point where they could act in their own self-defense; but not enough has been done.

The problem is that we are currently woefully  ill-prepared for any sort of military conflict with China. It is one thing to not “back down” when you have the advantage, and another to do so from a weakened position. That doing so would send a bad signal to allies is just short-sighted, because it would only be temporary and the wise thing is to step back until we are prepared and have the power to prevail and strike at the right time. They think that way and we don’t, and if we don’t become more Machiavellian, or even godfather-like in our strategies we will be in deep trouble. There are just too many things wrong at this time, namely:

1. Incompetent leadership. Does anyone want to get into a military conflict with Joe Biden as commander-in-chief? 

2. A military that has been badly damaged by idiotic “woke” policies and vaccine dismissals and is simply not ready for any kind of serious conflict at this point. 

3. In even entertaining any kind of conflict have we tightly coordinated with allies like Japan and Australia to have a joint strategy and preparation for conflict?  Unlikely. 

4. Can we enter a full-blown military conflict, which will rapidly supersede everything else, without serious damage at home? 

5. We have no clear idea of the extent to which the Chinese Communists have penetrated our society, taking advantage of our political divisions and disarray.

6. Have we done anything substantial enough to decouple from China without harming ourselves?

7. Do we even know who has managed to penetrate our defenseless, abandoned southern border?

8. Do we know what the Chinese are up to in buying up farmland near military bases?

9. Do we have any inkling of how many self-serving elites have been bought by China?

Changing Pelosi’s schedule is hardly “backing down.” In fact it removes any pretext for China to act under conditions that are currently favorable to them. That doesn’t mean we surrender or give up; it is a tactical move to enable us to finally begin to take this threat seriously and prepare, with the rest of our allies, for circumstances that will be more in our favor. Furthermore, short of that we haven’t even done anything to try and undercut Chinese influence around the world, in places like Africa, whose inhabitants are increasingly chafing under Chinese domination, or to respond in kind to continuous covert aggression against our country. We have allowed ourselves to be played. 

This is currently a country where a scoundrel like Eric Swallwell was found to be sleeping with a Chinese spy on his staff, but instead of being expelled from congress, Pelosi put him on the intelligence committee!  Yet we are supposed to not “back down” on behalf of Pelosi. We have been asleep at the switch, oblivious to the threat right in front of us while facing internal disintegration that leaves us ill-prepared for anything serious. It is vital we get our own house in order before adapting  a posture that is oblivious to our own sorry condition. It is time to get our act together before it is too late.