Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 30 / Trend E. Tariverdiyeva /
The West is observing an obvious excess of freedom and a crisis of the liberal model of development, German political scientist Alexander Rahr told Trend today. An era has ensued when new IT controls the people, as opposed to the other way around.
"The WikiLeaks publications, I do not want to sound too philosophical, have opened a new era of development, when humans and government can no longer control the flow of information," the director of the German Council on Foreign Relations' Russia-Eurasia Center said.
According to Rahr, this is the second biggest hit after the global financial crisis on the United States.
Roughly 250,000 secret diplomatic telegrams and letters sent from U.S. diplomatic missions in various countries to the U.S. State Department were transferred via WikiLeaks to the New York Times and several other influential media outlets.
The documents, part of which were marked "Top Secret," disclosed correspondence from U.S. President Barack Obama's administration on crises and conflicts, harsh statements by U.S. diplomats about Muslim presidents and European leaders, information from the ostensibly private conversations between world leaders and U.S. officials, and U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's requests to organize a shadowing of members of the U.N. Security Council.
"The world saw with horror that a major power like the United States cannot keep its own secrets under control," Rahr said. "This is a scary trend, as next time, the lists of American spies or secret strategies for nuclear strikes, which call the security of the United States as a nation into question, may be published."
On the other hand, Rahr believes that there is a major trend to use such information to entertain the public, which insists that all of the world's information should be available to citizens. This trend is stronger than the attempts to stop the uncontrollable flow of information.
"IT has become stronger than countries, and it is not possible to stop them," he said. "It is unclear where the boundary of the ban on information lies."
According to Rahr, the consequences of publishing secret information on WikiLeaks will not be sensational.
"All of the information was already made known by the media," he said. "What is news that diplomats gossip like journalists and it is a shame for the United States."
According to the expert, this is another strike to U.S. prestige, but nothing terrible will happen "until some WikiLeaks or other publication publishes real secrets, such as the placing of nuclear missiles, submarines, or guidance instructions."
"Only in this case bans could be imposed on information," Rahr said.