WikiLeaked: Tom Sawyer goes to Brussels

The WikiLeaks archive gives a fascinating glimpse into just how deeply into the diplomatic toolbox U.S. officials had to dig as they were seeking new homes for Guantanamo detainees. Many of the tactics were variations on the classic quid pro quo: Diplomats gave money to the Maldives and Kirbati and offered face time with President Obama to Slovenia. They tried to guilt long-time allies like Germany into shouldering some of their burden. And they sweet-talked anybody who would listen.

But the most creative diplomatic method was probably applied in Belgium: brazen, unabashed reframing of the situation. A cable from the Brussels embassy addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that in her meeting with Belgian leaders, she should present the arrival of Guantanamo detainees not as a problem, but as an opportunity. “We have also begun to suggest the possibility of Belgium stepping forward from the chorus line and up to the footlights on Guantanamo,” the cable reads. “Helping solve the USG’s [the U.S. government’s] — and Europe’s problem with Guantanamo is a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.”

There’s no indication that Washington was offering any further inducements to the Belgian government: the Guantanamo detainees were simply presented as their own reward. The United States would gladly relocate the detainees somewhere on their own territory, but they wanted to offer Belgians the chance to attain “prominence” in the global “footlights.”

Belgium didn’t take the U.S. up on the offer — no doubt because it felt the U.S. deserved all the prominence it had earned for itself.