I guess I'm just unwilling to grant the point that the idea of closed government is dead. If anything, the reaction to this leak may be worse than the disease. But, nonetheless, these were a ton of `secret' cables. They were embarrassing, they make it more difficult to conduct foreign affairs, but they were not actually that destructive or informative. For two key reasons:

1) The cables are the opinions of low-level functionaries, no matter how good they are at their job. These were not TS cables, they did not include a shocking set of information. In fact, it is all sort of "meh, we pretty much knew that.

2) "The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation."

The first point is that we pretty much didn't learn anything, and the second is that it won't really matter.