I agree with you but wish to supplement. A lot of what both you and Stephen Walt wrote earlier on about the Wikileaks "scandal" and how, if you were paying attention, it didn't particularly matter as much b/c it contained no "big lies" and didn't change the way that American statecraft will operate. (http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/29/the_utopianism_of_julian_assange, http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/29/what_should_scholars_and_foreign_policy_wonks_do_with_wikileaks, http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/29/dont_write_if_you_can_talk_the_latest_from_wikileaks)

I feel like, for anyone actually worth listening to, this doesn't really change the conversation. For the most part, it merely says in plain and simple language what many of us who follow foreign affairs had already deduced ourselves. China is worried about North Korea and they've grown apart? We can't keep control of Syria in regards to Hezbollah? We don't have the utmost respect for Russian governance and democracy? You would have to be willfully not paying attention to the news to think any of that is new. And if you know anything about how much of what the US government (or any government for that matter) is not in the public record contemporaneously, again, the nature of the cables doesn't particularly shock and awe.

There are many political scientists that have the same strange utopianism as Assange, there's not doubt about that. But, for myself, I've never particularly given credence to those people and much of the political science community hasn't either. Hopefully, it will stay that way.

may want to fix multiple typos to be taken a bit more seriously...

As a diplomatic historian I can see the worry, but I'm personally not too worried because, if there is one thing I learned from analyzing the history of American foreign relations, it is that diplomats are very much concerned about preserving their place in history. For this reason, they often steal authorized documents and, more importantly, have a large collection of personal papers that can give one a much better sense than official documents about the process of developing a given foreign policy. I'm far more worried about the fact that a lot of communication that would have previously existed in hard copy is now confined to the internet. Will gmail correspondence be available to historians in the future? What about text messages, etc.? These are questions that worry me more than the State Department all of sudden mandating that things can't be written down. Things will become top secret, I think, not disappear.

I found the site and its actions dubious previously but this goal seems nothing short of stupid. 'Stupid' may seem like a word not worth being used in debate but I think there is no other word to describe what this is.

To start they seem to overestimate their abilities by arguing that by releasing these files they will be able to cause the U.S intelligence community to overreact to the point of self destruction. Even if Wikileaks were to release all 250,000+ files and reveal exactly what U.S intelligence and diplomats were up to that still would not lead to the destruction of the system. In the 1970s the public was made uncomfortably aware of the fact that our government was not that close to our theoretical values, at this point in time the nation has gotten used to the fact. The Church committee didn't lead to the end of American espionage and neither will this.

Second is the fact that Mr. Assange seems to believe that by doing this he will somehow make the world a better place. Let us pretend for a moment that he could actually succeed. What would the world look like without American secrecy and spying? Probably pretty much the same as it does now but with more blood and harder times for the U.S. A state losing it's intelligence capacity would not do well in a world where every other state has spies, nor would it be able to do much to stop violence without an ability to have morally dubious deals and hordes of spies.

Lastly is that Mr. Assange does not seem to have considered the possibility (a very real one) that instead of resulting in a more transparent government it could very well have precisely the opposite effect by encouraging the U.S government to be more secretive to the point of becoming an authoritarian democracy in a replay of what nearly happened after the Pentagon Papers*.

* Yes that did in part lead to Watergate and Nixon's resignation but it easily could have gone the other way as well.

Do we not have any real secrets? Is it not dangerous to have published a list of essential vulnerable international assets? Would it be bad for scholarship if there were no power to run your typewriter? I suppose what you are saying is that someone else can look at source material and come up with an alternative idea. That isn't so much bad for scholarship as bad for the 'scholar' perhaps. In that sense though it is like saying that translating the Bible into English is like bad for scholarship.

Julian Assange benefitted from (apparently) the willingness of one or at most a few people to exploit the glaring weaknesses of SIPRNet -- DOD's inability to plug i/o devices/outlets. They will certainly do so now, posthaste, even in-theater where information portability is a fairly high operational priority. I think we may not see too many more epic dumps.

As for the value of those dumps, I believe Wikileaks performed a much greater service by disseminating that damning US Army attack helicopter video. For me, at least, it prompted some serious reflection on contemporary rules of engagement, and I doubt I'm the only military veteran to have this reaction.

I would agree with your statement “I just don't think that these will really and truly cripple the U.S. government.” The leaks have revealed nothing too surprising, but they have also strained diplomatic ties and potentially put people’s lives at risk. While not detrimental to the government, I fear more WikiLeaks type followers might prove to be problematic.

I'm more interested with Manning. Although I despise Assange, I realize it would be futile to try him under any trumped-up charges. Less than 25 years ago espionage of this magnitude was subject to capital punishment. If found guilty, why have the rules changed? Our opponents on the world stage may be different from the U.S.S.R, but should the punishment therefore be reduced? I'm not sure. Perhaps it would be a deterrent in the future, but it may also be characterized as the self-destructive behavior Assange is looking for.