GVPT10012/4/10Wikileaks vs. the World: Machiavelli’s Theories at WorkFor the past several months, one news story has remained consistently in the spotlight above nearly all others. Wikileaks.org (recently changed to Wikileaks.ch) has wreaked havoc throughout the United States government as well as that of several others across the globe. Wikileaks, using a network of anonymous whistle-blowers, has gatheredhundreds of thousands, if not millions, of restricted documents from different governments and has placed nearly all of them on the Internet for the world to see. Claiming to be providing a great service to the world, the Wikileaks organization has caused an incredible stir throughout the global media and has sent fear through the hearts of every government. While Wikileaks has indeed created an unprecedented media disaster for these governments, by looking to the past these administrations can gain much useful advice on how to handle the catastrophe they now face. Niccolo Machiavelli, one of the most important political theorists in history, would have been appalled by this website and the incredible power it possesses. I believe that according to Machiavellian principles of politics, Wikileaks is to be considered a major threat by all governments, and it is in the governments’ best interest to surmount all political obstaclesin seeing that this website is destroyed. Niccolo Machiavelli was born on May 3rd, 1469 in Florence, Italy. Having grown up during the Renaissance period, Machiavelli was deeply inspired by the political turmoil that was occurring around him in Italy, France, and Spain (Lucidcafe). The Renaissance helped give birth to many new ideas, most notably the idea that man, as an 1individual, is powerful and can control his own needs and desires. Machiavelli was fascinated with this new outlook and was inspired to explore it as it affects a ruler. During the Renaissance, Italy in particular was a scene of intense political unrest, each city-state battling against each other to secure their existence. Machiavelli observed this turmoil and realized that the main goal of politics is the need to secure authority (Lucidcafe). In 1514, Machiavelli wrote his most famous work, The Prince. The Prince isconsidered by many to be a how-to book for a ruler on how to acquire and maintain political power, to stabilize the ruling government and suppress all rebellion. In order to do so, Machiavelli wrote that a ruler must always assume that he is being threatened. Themodern term “Machiavellian” refers to Machiavelli’s somewhat paranoid outlook on human nature and one’s need to be cautious at all costs. In Machiavelli’s words, “One can say this in general of men: they are ungrateful, disloyal, insincere, and deceitful, timid of danger, and avid of profit…”(Gilbert). Because Machiavelli had a very negative view of human nature, he believed that a ruler must appeal to the people (or at least give such impression) in order to be empowered and accepted as a legitimate ruler (The Prince.) If the people are kept happy and the ruler can maintain the façade of being ‘of the people,’ then rebellion will not occur and force will not be needed in order to secure authority. While Machiavelli was not in favor of turning to violence as a first resort, he did believe that at times a ruler must adopt less desirable behaviors for the sake of continuing his rule. Machiavelli believed that if all else fails, ruthless and complete destruction of one’s enemies is not appropriate, but necessary. As Machiavelli famously wrote, “it is much more secure to be feared than to be loved” (The Prince).2Although Machiavelli may not have had Wikileaks in mind when he wrote his famous book, I believe that his advice is shockingly relevant to the modern controversy. For the past three years Wikileaks has been the premier leader of uncovering and publicizing secret government documents. Founded by a secret group comprised of “an international collaboration, primarily of mathematicians... of various backgrounds, some Chinese," and led by Australian hacker, Julian Assange, the site only collects documents that are of political, historical, or diplomatic nature and have never been released to the public (Theage.com). Throughout its short existence, the site has faced dozens of attacks by various governments and hackers across the globe. Most recently, on December 2nd, 2010, Wikileaks was removed from its American server and forced to relocate to a Swedish domain (Guardian). With the help of Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the Amazon server claimed that Wikileaks abused their policy by distributing illegally obtained information (readwriteweb). This act was the first time the American government had successfully managed to get the site off of its American domain. The Obama administration is particularly outraged over the site because of the release of nearly 250,000 classified documents that detail many confidential negotiations, conversations, and data regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While many of these documents are damaging to the United States government because of the unwanted exposure that they cause, they are also damaging because they place thousands of overseas troops at risk. By distributing these classified documents for the world to see, enemies can have an inside look at the inner workings of the government and use this information to harm the United States. 3Despite having the cyber capabilities to shut the site down completely, the Obamaadministration has repeatedly directed threats of imprisonment and prosecution toward Assange without taking action to back them up. In April of 2010, a video was posted on Wikileaks of a U.S. apache helicopter attack that killed nearly a dozen civilians in Baghdad in 2007. Bradley Manning, the individual who was responsible for the leaked information, was arrested nearly a month later on grounds of treason and made an example of (Thompson). Manning, an intelligence officer for the U.S. army in Iraq, sent the documents through securely encrypted cables to Wikileaks to publish for the world to see. Machiavelli warned that often force is necessary in order to assert power and to suppress rebellion. He espoused that violence and deception are superior to legality in controlling subjects (Stanford). While Wikileaks is not staging a full-blown rebellion in the