Why Leaders Lie - Mearsheimer, John J_.original_ [5]
In contrast to the international system, the structure of a state is hierarchic, not anarchic.8 In a well-ordered state, there is a higher authority—the state itself—to which individuals can turn for protection. Consequently, the incentives to cheat and lie that apply when states are dealing with each other usually do not apply to individuals within a state. Indeed, a strong case can be made that widespread lying threatens the inner life of a state. It does so in good part for purely utilitarian reasons, as it is hard to make a state function efficiently when people lie to each other all the time. One can also make a moral case against lying within the confines of a state, because a well-defined community usually exists there, which is not the case in international politics. Thomas Hobbes put the point succinctly in Leviathan: “Before the names of Just, and Unjust can have place, there must be some coercive Power to compel men equally to the performance of their Covenants.… Where there is no Common-wealth, there nothing is Unjust.”9
Lying is obviously a form of deception, but not all deception is lying. There are two other kinds of deception: concealment and spinning. Unlike lying, neither involves making a false statement or telling a story with a false bottom line. Concealment and spinning, however, are not the same as telling the truth.
These two kinds of deception are pervasive in every realm of daily life, and they cause hardly a word of protest.10 For example, a person interviewing for a job is allowed to spin his life story on a resume in ways that present him in the most favorable light. He is free to omit information from that resume as he sees fit.11 Politics is an especially fertile breeding ground for spinning and concealing. A president can tell a story about the state of the American economy that accentuates the positive trends and downplays or even ignores the negative ones, while a critic from the opposing party is free to do the opposite. But neither individual is allowed to lie to make his case. Indeed, getting caught in a lie would probably do them significant political harm.
That is not true, however, if a foreign-policy issue is at stake. Statesmen and diplomats are rarely punished for lying, especially if they were telling lies to other countries. Probably the only exception to this rule involves cases where it becomes known that a leader lied to his fellow citizens about a policy that failed in ways that obviously damage the national interest. But even here, the main reason that a leader would likely incur his public’s wrath is because the policy failed, not because he lied. Of course, this is why a leader who is discovered to have lied to his public about a particular policy is unlikely to pay much of a political price if it works as intended. When it comes to foreign policy, success excuses lying, or at least makes it tolerable.
In short, concealment and spinning are generally seen as legitimate forms of behavior in domestic as well as international politics. Buy lying is a different matter.12 It is considered unacceptable behavior in most walks of life, save for international politics, where it is generally viewed as regrettable but sometimes necessary.
THE TASK AHEAD
There is a substantial body of literature on lying, but hardly any of it deals explicitly with lying in international politics. One notable exception is Eric Alterman’s When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences, which provides an excellent narrative of presidential lying over the past seventy years.13 However, Alterman is not a social scientist and he does not attempt to theorize about international lying. Nor has anyone else. One might respond that there are numerous studies dealing with deception among states. While this is true,