Why Leaders Lie by John J. Mearsheimer Read Free Book Online

lose popular support when the public discovers that it has been misled, compounding the country’s troubles. This is what happened to the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War and the Bush administration during the Iraq war. In each case, it became apparent when the war was going badly that there had been serious deception in the run-up to the conflict. Nevertheless, if statesmen and diplomats are found out to have lied about a policy that clearly achieves its aims, the public is unlikely to punish them, simply because nothing succeeds like success in international politics. Of course, that logic helps convince policymakers in the first place that they can get away with fearmongering.
THE HAZARDS OF STRATEGIC COVER-UPS
     
    Strategic cover-ups can also lead to serious trouble both at home and abroad. Leaders who lie to their own citizens about either failed or contentious policies obviously thinkthat their people are unable to deal intelligently with those matters. As with fearmongering, that situation is naturally ripe for blowback, because policymakers who hold such views can easily slide into thinking that the public is incapable of dealing intelligently with important domestic issues as well, which would open the floodgates for lying on the home front. That outcome would surely have regrettable consequences for any body politic.
    How trouble might occur in the foreign policy realm depends on the type of cover-up and how it plays out. Let us first consider how concealing a controversial policy might backfire. A leader might decide to surreptitiously adopt a particular policy after an open and contentious public debate leads him to conclude that the policy in question is good for the country, even though it is deeply unpopular with a substantial portion of the citizenry. Alternatively, a leader might feel compelled to secretly adopt a policy before it is vigorously debated in public, simply because he anticipates that it would encounter serious opposition. In both scenarios, the leader would have to lie if he were asked whether the shrouded policy had been adopted.
    There is serious potential for backfire with cover-ups of this sort, because whenever leaders cannot sell a policy to their public in a rational-legal manner, there is a good chance that the problem is with the policy, not the audience. This is especially true if a substantial number 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 cometo 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