Why Leaders Lie - Mearsheimer, John J_ [39]
As noted, the same logic applies to people bargaining over a house or car. They are allowed to lie about their reservation price—it is part of the game—but that does not mean that they are free to lie in their other matters. Inter-state politics is another well-defined domain where lying is generally considered acceptable, and where there is not much danger of spillover or blowback.
Turning to the international consequences, there is no doubt that inter-state lying can backfire, just as any policy a state pursues can fail and harm the national interest. But there is nothing special about this particular kind of international lie that makes it prone to backfiring, as I will argue is the case with fearmongering and strategic cover-ups. Moreover, the damage done when inter-state lying goes awry is usually not major, which is not to deny that there are some costs.
A lie that a statesman or diplomat tells to another country can go wrong in two different ways. First, it might be exposed soon after it is told, which would obviously make it impossible for the lie to have its intended effect. But what about the consequences for the leaders who lied? They are unlikely to be severe because the incentive to retaliate would not be great, since the lie was uncovered before it could do harm to the target country, and since there are usually not good ways for the intended victim to punish the liars. One possible option is to embarrass the liar, but that is a minor punishment indeed. And that sanction is not even likely to work well, since most people understand that leaders sometimes lie to each other for the good of their countries. It is hard to shame a leader with that motive, even if he botches the job and gets caught red-handed.
The target state might retaliate by ending ongoing negotiations or pursuing hard-line policies against the country that tried to dupe it. In that case, the exposed lie would seriously worsen relations between the involved countries. However, this is unlikely to happen, not only because the lie was exposed and failed to harm the intended target, but also because—as I have emphasized repeatedly—it is taken for granted that states lie to each other. There is no question that an unmasked lie could contribute to the deterioration of relations between two states, but it is highly unlikely that it would be the main driving force, which would almost certainly be some significant economic or political dispute between them.
A case of backfiring that fits this profile occurred when the Eisenhower administration was caught telling a handful of blatant lies about the U-2 incident in the spring of 1960.5 The president himself felt humiliated when those lies were revealed, but more importantly, he was preparing at the time to meet with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev. Both leaders were hoping to improve relations between the superpowers and slow down the nuclear arms race. But the planned summit was scuttled, in part because of the administration’s lies about the plane’s mission. The main reason it failed, however, was that the incident revealed to the world that the United States was violating Soviet airspace and operating spy planes over the Soviet Union, which caused Khrushchev significant political problems at home and made it difficult for him to meet and cooperate with Eisenhower. In short, the lies that the president and his advisors told to Moscow mattered, but not that much.
One might argue that getting caught telling a lie hurts a state’s reputation, which can cause serious damage to its international position. As noted, reputation is important in the realm of low politics.6 If a country made a practice of telling lies when dealing