As Wikileaks founder Julian Assange prepares to battle the charges he faces in Sweden and the cyber attacks on his website (apparently) by governmental agencies, Assange has suddenly found more enemies than friends amongst the diplomats, heads of states and governments around the world. The US government is clearly the most upset. These leaks, now being referred to as the ?wicked leaks?, while reaffirming some truths, have, at the same time, also raised some questions.?

For instance, why was India?s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh so keen to have good relations with Pakistan, even though Islamabad had barely moved to nail those who were behind the 26/11 attacks and there were enough inputs to say that Pakistan?s military brass were not in favour of improving relations with India? Is Dr Singh naive or is he just an excellent economist ? as President Asif Zardari claims in these leaks ? but clueless about the functioning of the Pakistani establishment (a la their men in uniform). Moreover, the same Zardari, though having expressed a desire to solve the Kashmir issue, is said to be?by these leaks?against back channel diplomacy, which had interestingly the approval of the powerful Pakistan Army chief, General Kayani! But then, this very General Kayani had overruled Pakistan?s President, having refused to send ISI chief Lt General Pasha to New Delhi just after the 26/11 attacks, even though this would have been a huge confidence-building measure.

To join these dots and to get the picture right one must know enough to separate facts from the fiction, is therefore, essential. And while the leaks have highlighted?what was obvious to many experts?that the orchestrated attacks on Mumbai on 26/11 two years ago were done to show India as unsafe for foreign investors, as also to get the Indian government to initiate the knee-jerk military response (like it was done after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001),?so that Pakistan could keep the bogie of the Indian threat alive. More importantly, the Wikileaks have more than authenticated the fact that there is a lack of will on the part of India?s political leadership to even flex our military muscles after such a glaring attack on India?s citizens from across the border in Pakistan, as we saw in Mumbai.? It has only reaffirmed our worst fears about the lack of will to even strategically put Pakistan in an uncomfortable situation following such a brazen attack on Indian citizens.? Unlike 26/11, the attacks on the Parliament had energised our politicians for the first time since cross-border attacks on Indian soil began over the past two decades to threaten war on Pakistan, even though no Parliamentarian was killed and only a handful of our policemen died protecting the pathetic lot of India?s politicians! But when innocent and sometimes rather capable Indian citizens (many of whom as individuals, were perhaps greater assets to India than the motley bunch of politicians), were ruthlessly murdered, along with some foreign nationals in Mumbai, this Congress-led government simply warned Pakistan by saying that India had kept all its options open. This, I am sure, would have drawn smirks and chuckles from the masterminds of the militants in GHQ Rawalpindi, since it was clear that India?s leaders lacked the ability to even match Pakistan eyeball for eyeball.

A central rule of deterrence is for your enemy to fear your ability to punish it if push came to shove; and thus a country?s nuclear and military capability should be seen as a threat by its adversary, if the country concerned had the will and the capability in its politico-military leadership to be willing to use those capabilities in the country?s (in this case India?s) interest. But here again, the Wikileaks have shown India?s leadership failed the country and its people to even send out this message to Pakistan. Therefore, to say that India enjoys military superiority over Pakistan and has the nuclear capability to hit back, is purely an academic statement of fact. The evidence that has surfaced has shown New Delhi lacks the will. The last time that a message from India went out to Pakistan, and that I?m told had caused ripples in its establishment, was when the then Army chief General Padmanabhan had responded to a question in a press conference on what India might do in the event of a Pakistani nuclear attack, by stating in a matter of fact manner that if that were to happen, then India?s response would be so severe that Pakistan would cease to exist as a functional state.?

Moreover, the Wikileaks disclosures have also authenticated that Pakistani nuclear programme is essentially supplied and supported by China, patched with delivery systems of North Korean origin. This, too, has come as no surprise. But despite China, being a UN P-5 member and a signatory to all international protocols against illegal nuclear trade, including the NPT, it continues to violate the very norms it claims to uphold, and the world has few options but to turn and look the other way. But terrorism spreading like a cancer that affects and threatens the world equally and which could find its way from Pakistan through the northern areas and into the Xinxang region of China is something that Beijing should be more concerned about. However, the Wikileaks have also revealed that China?s pro-Pak policies had led it to stall India?s efforts to put another three terror groups that operate from Pakistan simply because Beijing is secretly happy to see India being limited to a hyphenated relationship with Pakistan as long as Pakistan?s terror machinery remains live.America?s efforts, though half-hearted, to support India, have a big democratic hope and a model for Asia to counter Chinese dominance, is obviously something that Beijing disapproves of.

But the bigger question that one must now ask is that the support for democracy and free speech, which the Western world in particular is obsessed with, is now the nightmare that haunts US mandarins in Washington. And with a Pakistani initiative to put out false leaks against India?s atrocities in Kashmir?which the Guardian newspaper, the UK partner of Wikileaks, has dismissed as fake and false?there is a thin line between what can be taken as the truth and what must be ignored. Moreover, the question also being raised is how much dirty linen can be washed in public?

But one thing is certain, we are in the realms of new-age warfare, of cyber wars to be precise, with?Wikileaks supporters of Julian Assange, having attacked many important e-paysites that were blocking payments to Wikileaks. These included the visa and the mastercards websites getting experts to claim that Assange and his faithful could number up to 4,000 geeks or more. It started, of course, with a US military intelligence military officer who often walked into important data storage facilities with CDs that he pretended were for music and entertainment, but were clearly used to download hundred of documents and files that are now embarrassing the US, Pakistan and many other big governments. He is now in jail, just like Assange is, because they have challenged the might of the world and exposed the games they play.

There is also, of course, the lighter side of how kings and presidents refer to their rivals and counterparts in the quiet of the boardrooms and bedrooms when they are not flashing their teeth and uttering??how do you do your excellency??. India certainly comes out looking sloppy and has been two-timed despite its well publicised diplomatic relations with Washington, and Pakistan military clearly seems to be not only in control of an otherwise chaotic state of Pakistan, but of their future, despite having little to offer except their ability to be American linchpins in America?s war of terror in the Af-Pak region.?Wikileaks now warns exposure of a major US bank, possibly the Bank of America?s innermost secrets, e-mails, documents, database and websites and of the decisions they have made in acquisitions and legislations, which will now be embarrassingly laid out to the public. So while the diplomatic dimension of these website leaks is now catching the headline, the corporates should now tighten the belts for the shock waves that will follow. ????

This has made many a wee bit jittery. But there is a lighter side to all this. Would people in India be surprised at the Saudi ruler?s assessment of ?close ally? Pakistan President Zardari? But there really haven?t been any big diplomatic surprises, just titillating stuff about how the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi travels everywhere with a ?voluptuous blond nurse? or Russia?s Putin inspires the Italian Prime Minister Silivio Berlusconi with his masculine image. But the truly comic revelation was an earlier leaked bit that EU diplomats, who were planning to walk out of Iran leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?s inauguration ceremony, had to scrap the plan, because none of them had ever been into the venue, and they just didn?t know how they?d walk out! In short, it?s all about intelligence or simply the lack it.

The writer is a specialist on military and strategic affairs