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of outside experts oppose or are likely to oppose the policy in question. With the first scenario, however, there is at least a public debate where the leaders are forced to listen and respond to their critics’ concerns, including those of outside experts who know the issues well. That back-and-forth is likely to make those leaders think hard about their preferred course of action, which reduces the likelihood that they are just covering up a misguided policy. Moreover, they might come to recognize certain problems with their preferred policy and modify it in smart ways. But in the second scenario, where there is hardly any public debate, the likelihood that a leader will recognize the flaws in his chosen policy is sharply reduced, and thus there is a greater possibility that it will go wrong.

Turning next to the other kind of strategic cover-up—hiding a failed policy—it might seem at first glance that backfiring is a moot issue, since the policy has already gone awry. But that conclusion would be wrong. Covering up a botched policy, which invariably entails protecting the responsible individuals and not firing them on the spot, is likely to mean that the failed policy—or some variant of it—will remain in place for a while, which is not a desirable outcome. For example, defending Marshal Joffre and his strategy for fighting the German army at Verdun meant that he and his flawed formula remained in place for the entire ten months of that bloody battle. France’s soldiers would have been better served if a more able commander had replaced Joffre early in that fight.

Furthermore, hiding botched policies can lead to further disasters down the road, not just because incompetents are usually kept in key leadership positions for at least some period of time, but also because engaging in cover-ups makes it difficult to have a national security system in which policymakers and military commanders are held accountable for their actions. No organization can work effectively without accountability at every level of the operation. Finally, if a botched policy is kept under tight wraps, it is difficult to have a meaningful discussion about what went wrong and how best to make sure that it does not happen again.

In sum, strategic cover-ups may sometimes be necessary, but they carry significant risks, because they have considerable potential for backfiring as well as corrupting daily life on the home front.

THE RISKS OF NATIONALIST MYTHMAKING

Lying to help perpetrate national myths is unlikely to have harmful domestic or foreign-policy consequences. There is not much danger of blowback because most people are usually so taken with their nation’s myths that they do not recognize them for what they are. Instead, they see the myths as hallowed truths, not lies or distortions of the historical record. George Orwell captures the essence of this collective self-delusion when he writes, “Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also—since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself—unshakably certain of being in the right.”9 Even well-educated and otherwise sophisticated elites sometimes fall victim to this phenomenon; in effect, they end up believing their own lies, in which case they are no longer lies. As the scholar Richard Neustadt notes, “The tendency of bureaucratic language to create in private the same images presented to the public never should be underrated.”10

What about foreign policy? A number of prominent scholars, including Yale historian Paul Kennedy and Stephen Van Evera, maintain that nationalist myths sometimes lead states to behave foolishly.11 Indeed, these kinds of myths are said to cause countries to act aggressively toward their neighbors and to refuse to resolve conflicts that are otherwise amenable to a peaceful settlement. Nationalist myths, for example, are said to be a major cause of Germany’s aggressive behavior in the early part of the twentieth century—including starting World War I. Chauvinistic myths