Secret Diplomacy: How Far Can It Be Eliminated?Reinsch, Paul S. (Paul Samuel)
Philosophy
Secret Diplomacy: How Far Can It Be Eliminated?
Reinsch, Paul S. (Paul Samuel)
Diplomacy; Europe -- Politics and government
in the sense that undivided popular support is given to a policy from
a variety of motives which are not clearly reasoned out but which all
express themselves in an overpowering impulse which may be called
instinctive. Thus the Monroe policy in which the most fundamental
motive is the desire for peace and for the safety of the continental
position of the American nation, may be said to rest on the instinct of
self-preservation.
But it is quite plain that unless what is here called instinct can
be transformed into an intelligent, wise and discriminating public
opinion, such instinct is but a shifting sand, affording material which
may be molded into any desired form by an ambitious policy working
through suggestion and propaganda. Instinct can be transformed into
a true public policy only through publicity and through the training
of large groups of men to see things with true eyes and to judge with
reason and wisdom. Here is the crux of the matter. Secret diplomacy
treats all except the inner official ring as outsiders and “persons
without responsibility.” Among these outsiders there may be numerous
persons actually better qualified than the officials themselves,
through experience and thought, to judge of international affairs. No
one can here assume infallibility. Safe counsel can come only if the
entire intelligence and moral sentiment of a nation can find expression
and if its fittest individuals can concentrate their attention upon
every great problem as it arises. A sound, just, wise public policy
without publicity cannot be imagined. To consider publicity an evil,
to consider it as impeding the proper flow of international influences
and obstructing the solution of international difficulties, appears as
an unbelievable perversion when we consider the true implications of
such a thought.
It is therefore inestimably important that the facts of international
life, the materials out of which policies are formed, should be known
freely and fully to the public of every nation. The manipulation
of international communications for political purposes is the most
sinister and dangerous part of the system with which secret diplomacy
is entwined. According to this theory it is not only not good for the
people to know everything but they must also be made to know things
about the truth of which we need not bother our heads but which will
stimulate the passions and arouse the instincts our policy desires
to work upon. Thus the void left by secrecy, by a concealment of the
true nature and character of internationally important matters, is
frequently supplied by an intelligence service carrying distorted
and colored versions of facts; all this confuses and discourages the
public mind to such an extent that it becomes unable to sever fact from
fiction and to form a consistent and firm judgment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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