Why Leaders Lie - Mearsheimer, John J_.original_ [19]
To my surprise, I have only been able to find a few examples of leaders or diplomats lying or bluffing when they are negotiating treaties or other kinds of covenants.33 There may in fact be many such cases, but if so they have been covered up and are not part of the historical record. But I think not. There is no question that someone who succeeds at bluffing is unlikely to boast about it right after the fact. It makes much more sense to cover up the lie or at least be circumspect about it.34 Otherwise, the other side might demand to renegotiate the deal or be loath to cut future deals for fear of being played for a sucker again. Still, this line of argument does not make sense because—as I discussed earlier—it is difficult to hide a lie for a long period of time. It is hard to believe that bluffing in international negotiations has been commonplace over time, but very few cases have been revealed to the public.35
One case that has been revealed involves Greece lying about its budget deficits so that it could gain entry into the eurozone. 36 According to the European Union’s rules, a member country should only be allowed to adopt the euro as its currency if it maintains deficits that are less than 3 percent of the gross domestic product. During the late 1990s, when Greece was being evaluated for possible admission into the eurozone, it was running deficits that were well above that threshold. To deal with this problem, Athens simply lied about the numbers for the relevant years, claiming that its deficits were well under 3 percent when they were not. The gambit worked, and Greece adopted the single currency in 2001.
The United States also lied to its Western European allies (France, Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries) in the early 1950s to try to persuade them to ratify the European Defense Community (EDC) Treaty, which they had signed in May 1952. The Eisenhower administration strongly supported ratification, in the hope that a functioning EDC could balance the Soviet Union and enable the United States to withdraw most of its troops from Western Europe. As the historian Marc Trachtenberg puts it, “The real point of EDC … was to weld France and Germany together as the core of a strong European federation that could stand up to Russia on its own, and thus make it possible for American forces to withdraw from Europe in the near future.”37
The Europeans, however, suspected that American support for the EDC was driven largely by Washington’s desire to leave the continent, which was an outcome that most Europeans, and especially the French, did not want at all. To deal with this problem, the Eisenhower administration repeatedly assured its allies that ratifying the EDC would not precipitate an American withdrawal, when that was not true. And when there were leaks to the press about what the Americans were up to, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, as one scholar put it, “was willing to openly lie and state to the press that no U.S. troop withdrawals were being contemplated.”38
WHEN STATES TELL EACH OTHER LIES
There are four sets of circumstances which are likely to promote inter-state lying, which is not to say that leaders frequently lie in these situations. Countries that are located in dangerous areas where there is intense security competition are more likely to lie than states that live in relatively peaceful regions. This tendency is largely a result of the high premium that states place on survival. States that operate in high-threat environments invariably have an acute sense of vulnerability and thus are strongly inclined to employ any tactic or strategy that might enhance their