Edward Snowden’s stories keep leaking out, yet Russia says he must not do this. The latest one is on how the NSA spies on European leaders.
They all knew this. Their voters did not. This is the threat Snowden poses, and American foreign policy experts know this.
In an article for the forthcoming edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore argue that it’s the disclosure of such practices rather than their existence that is damaging.”When these deeds turn out to clash with the government’s public rhetoric, as they so often do, it becomes harder for U.S. allies to overlook Washington’s covert behavior and easier for U.S. adversaries to justify their own,” they write.
“The U.S. government, its friends, and its foes can no longer plausibly deny the dark side of U.S. foreign policy and will have to address it head-on,” they argue.[amazon asin=B009KBLCZC&template=*lrc ad (right)]
The U.S. government will pretend to address this head-on. It will do nothing substantive, which would involve cutting the NSA’s budget. This, politicians will not do, since the NSA has been monitoring their phone calls. The politicians know who holds the hammer: the NSA.
Snowden has inflicted more damage on the American government than any civilian since Daniel Ellsberg released what became known as the Pentagon papers a generation ago. The difference is this: Ellsberg’s release of papers was a one-shot affair. They undermined Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war policies, but they were focused on just Johnson and the war. This had tremendous repercussions, but they were all based on an initial equivalent of a thermonuclear blast. Snowden has launched the equivalent of a MIRVed missile. Warheads keep exploding. Nobody knows how many warheads the initial missile had, which is why he is such a liability to the federal government, and why he is such a benefit to the public.
The latest brouhaha was based on the fact that the NSA has been spying on senior German and French officials. These German and French officials are fully aware of the spying capacity of the United States government, and especially the NSA. The thought that these revelations are news to foreign leaders is naïve. What is disturbing to the foreign leaders is that their own domestic populations are finding out how subservient the leaders have been to the United States government, and how defenseless all domestic populations really are. It is obvious that if the NSA can spy on Angela Merkel, it can spy on anybody in Germany.
The embarrassment that this is causing national leaders is sufficient to prod Merkel and other leaders into action. They are making verbal protests. Verbal protests are utterly useless, of course. The leaders are aware of this. I suspect that, soon enough, voting populations are going to be aware of this. There is nothing that Merkel the other leaders can do to stop the NSA from spying on them. The NSA probably will say nothing, and Obama will assure everybody that it really isn’t happening, and it really will never happen again. This is utter nonsense, and the leaders know it is nonsense. The technology exists. The desire to accumulate information exists. The spying networks are there to spy. The leaders know that there is not a thing they can do about it. But they are appalled by the fact that Snowden’s revelations have made it obvious to their voters that they are utterly impotent in dealing with United States.
