You're reading: Davos: Tough times for diplomacy in post-WikiLeaks world

If ministers and diplomats have learned a single lesson from the WikiLeaks saga, it is this: write nothing down.

Behind the closed doors of a supposedly confidential Davos forum panel discussion, policymakers, diplomats, journalists and a buzz of social networkers gathered this weekend to ponder the uncertain future of diplomacy in the digital age.

"This session is off the record, whatever that means in the digital age," the moderator began, noting that delegates had breached the confidentiality of other World Economic Forum debates by sending Twitter messages live from the room.

This report of a dialogue on the eruption of blogs, tweets and Facebook into the once sedate and secretive world of international negotiations will respect those ground rules. Only one participant, former U.S. State Department official Richard Haas, agreed to be quoted since he no longer holds office.

As the session proceeded, tweets reported, erroneously, that veteran President Hosni Mubarak had fled Egypt or had a heart attack. Similar messages from anonymous Tunisians on Jan. 14 were first to break the news that autocratic President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife had flown into exile.

It is clear that governments have been profoundly spooked by the publication of some of the 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by the WikiLeaks activist network headed by Julian Assange through a group of leading newspapers.

The immediacy of the Internet, real time news and citizen journalism is gnawing at the secrecy essential for successful diplomacy and compressing the time for analysis and consensus-building in shaping policy, Haas lamented.

"The time for consideration and reflection has shrunk," said Haas, president of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.

The WikiLeaks disclosures had reinforced the narrative of U.S. foreign policy, by showing Washington’s private actions were consistent with its public pronouncements, he said.

But others disputed his conclusion that the mega-leak of dispatches on the views of key allies, and incisive analyses of the personalities and foibles of foreign leaders, would not wreak lasting harm on America’s international relations.