Why Leaders Lie - Mearsheimer, John J_ [17]
NATO’s nuclear policy during the Cold War is another case of an empty threat being used for deterrence purposes. The alliance’s official position was that if the Warsaw Pact nations attacked Western Europe and began advancing across Germany, NATO would employ its nuclear weapons to force the Soviet Union and its allies to halt their offensive and possibly even retreat back to their starting positions along the intra-German border. However, some important American policymakers, including former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former secretary of defense Robert McNamara, publicly endorsed this policy when they were in office, but later made clear that they would not have used nuclear weapons to defend Western Europe in the event of a massive Soviet conventional attack.24 Their unwillingness to initiate nuclear war was largely a result of the fact that Moscow would surely have retaliated against the United States with its own nuclear weapons, thus risking mutual suicide. Still, it made good sense for NATO policymakers to tell the Soviets that the alliance would use its nuclear weapons to defend Western Europe, even if they thought that was a crazy idea, because Moscow could never be sure that those weapons would not be used, which significantly enhanced deterrence.
Sixth, leaders might lie to provoke another state into attacking their state or another country. Bismarck’s behavior in the run-up to the Franco-Prussian War (1870) is probably the most well-known case of a leader purposely giving another country a casus belli to attack his own state.25 And he did it with the help of well-told lies. The Prussian chancellor was committed to creating a unified Germany, and he believed that provoking France to declare war against Prussia, or even a major crisis that threw France into a state of turmoil, would help achieve that goal. Toward that end, he began working assiduously in the spring of 1870 to put a Prussian prince on the throne of Spain, knowing full well that it would alarm and anger France. He denied, however, that he had anything to do with that ploy, which was a lie.
Bismarck spread a second and more important falsehood when he “doctored” the famous Ems Dispatch from Kaiser Wilhelm I to Napoleon III. After the chancellor’s efforts to place a Prussian noble on the Spanish throne failed, the French demanded that the kaiser promise that he would not raise the issue again. In his draft response, the kaiser said no, but he left the door open for further negotiations. Fearing that this might lead to a peaceful resolution of the crisis, Bismarck edited the kaiser’s draft to make it look like the kaiser was not only saying no, but was also closing the door on any further discussion of the matter. The doctored telegram was then published, and there was outrage across France. Shortly thereafter, Napoleon III foolishly declared war against Prussia.
Seventh, a country that is worried that its allies are not paying enough attention to a dangerous rival state might lie about that adversary’s capabilities or behavior to make it look more menacing to its allies. The Bush administration engaged in this kind of lying in early 2005, when it was worried that China, Japan, and South Korea did not fully appreciate the seriousness of the threat posed by North Korea.26 To get their attention, officials from the National Security Council went to Asia and made the case that North Korea had sold Libya uranium hexafluoride, a critical ingredient for making nuclear weapons. But that was not true. Pakistan, not North Korea, had actually sold the uranium hexafluoride to Libya, and although it is possible