Why Leaders Lie (18 page)

58
. Michael Walzer,
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 74–85. As John Schuessler notes, the incentives for leaders to deceive their public will be even greater if they anticipate that the preventive war will be long and bloody (“The Deception Dividend,” 135–142). Of course, the Bush administration expected a quick and easy victory in Iraq.

59
. The Bush Doctrine, which was laid out in 2002 and which provided the rationalization for invading Iraq, made the case for fighting preemptive wars against gathering threats, when, in fact, the Bush administration was contemplating preventive wars against Iraq and other countries in the Middle East. See
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America
(Washington, DC: White House, September 2002); Remarks by the President to the Graduating Class, West Point (White House, Office of the Press Secretary, June 1, 2002).

1
. Ian Ousby,
The Road to Verdun: World War I’s Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism
(New York: Anchor Books, 2003), 299. See also
New York Times
, “French Army Chief May Go,” December 7, 1916; Robert A. Doughty,
Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), chaps. 5–6; Walter Duranty, “Joffre-Gallieni Dispute Bared,
New York Times
, August 21, 1919; Walter Duranty, “Joffre Ousted by Intrigues,”
New York Times
, August 23, 1919; David Dutton, “The Fall of General Joffre: An Episode in the Politico-Military Struggle in Wartime France,”
Journal of Strategic Studies
19, no. 3 (December 1978): 338–51; Jere Clemens King,
Generals & Politicians: Conflict Between France’s High Command, Parliament, and Government, 1914–1918
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), chaps. 5–6; Harold D. Lasswell,
Propaganda Technique in the World War
(New York: Knopf, 1927), 39–40; Walter Lippmann,
Public Opinion
(New York: Free Press, 1965), chaps. 1–2; David Mason,
verdun
(Moreton-in-Marsh, UK: Windrush, 2000), 9–12, 23–27, 133–37, 182, 190–91; Gordon Wright,
Raymond Poincaré and the French Presidency
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1942), 193–98.

2
. Michael Bar-Zohar,
Ben-Gurion: A Biography
, trans. Peretz Kidron (New York: Delacorte, 1978), 203–6; Benny Morris,
Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War
, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), chap. 8; Benny Morris,
Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999
(New York: Knopf, 1999), 278–79; Avi Shlaim,
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
(New York: Norton, 2000), 90–93.

3
. Quoted in Morris,
Israel’s Border Wars
, 259.

4
. Shlaim,
Iron Wall
, 91.

5
. Bar-Zohar,
Ben-Gurion
, 205.

6
. Morris,
Righteous Victims
, 278–79.

7
. Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow,
Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis
, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 356–66; McGeorge Bundy,
Danger and Survival
(New York: Random House, 1988), 427–39, 445; Michael Dobbs,
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
(New York: Knopf, 2008), 199–201, 231–36, 257, 270–71,
288–93, 305–38 Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali,
One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964
(New York: Norton, 1997), 249–50, 266–67, 275–89, 293–94, 300, 321–24, 352.

8
. E. H. Carr,
German-Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1951), chaps. 3–4; Hans W. Gatzke,
Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany
(New York: Norton, 1969), chaps. 4–5; George W. F. Hallgarten, “General Hans von Seeckt and Russia, 1920–1922,”
Journal of Modern History
21, no. 1 (March 1949): 28–34; Gustav Hilger and Alfred G. Meyer,
The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations, 1918–1941
(New York: Macmillan, 1953); Vasilis Vourkoutiotis,
Making Common Cause: German-Soviet Relations, 1919–22
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

9
. Caroline Elkins,
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya
(New York: Holt, 2005), chaps. 9–10.

10
. Martin Fackler, “Japanese Split on Exposing Secret Pacts with U.S.,”
New York Times
, February 9, 2010; John M. Glionna, “Japan’s Secret Pact with U.S. Spurs Debate,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 17, 2010; Robert A. Wampler, ed., “Nuclear Noh Drama: Tokyo, Washington and the Case of the Missing Nuclear Agreements,”
The National Security Archive
, October 13, 2009,
http://www.gwu. edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb291/index.htm
.

11
. One might argue that masking incompetence is more likely in a democracy, because leaders are accountable to their people, who will punish them if they find out about their ineptitude. While I believe this is true, lying of this sort is done for selfish purposes, not for the good of the country. In other words, it would be an ignoble cover-up, not a strategic cover-up; as emphasized earlier, the former kind of lie falls outside the scope of this book. One might also argue the opposite: there is likely to be less need to hide mistakes in democracies, because democracies do a better job of making strategic choices than nondemocracies. See David A. Lake, “Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War,”
American Political Science Review
86, no. 1 (March 1992): 24–37; Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam,
Democracies at War
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). However, a careful review of the logic and the evidence behind this claim shows that there is no meaningful difference in the ability of democracies and nondemocracies to make intelligent decisions in the foreign-policy realm.
See Michael C. Desch,
Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Alexander B. Downes, “How Smart and Tough Are Democracies? Reassessing Theories of Democratic Victory in War,”
International Security
33, no. 4 (Spring 2009): 9–51; Sebastian Rosato, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,”
American Political Science Review
97, no. 4 (November 2003): 585–602.

1
. This is not to say that a country’s master narrative about its past is simply comprised of myths; it may also contain some truthful stories.

2
. Stephen Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,”
International Security
18, no. 4 (Spring 1994): 27.

3
. Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?” in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds.,
Becoming National: A Reader
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 45.

4
. Dominique Moisi, “France Is Haunted by an Inability to Confront its Past,”
Financial Times
, December 12, 2005.

5
. Van Evera notes that “nationalist myths can help politically frail elites to bolster their grip on power,” and they can “bolster the authority and political power of incumbent elites” (“Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,” 30). While this is certainly true, selfish lies of this sort fall outside the scope of this book.

6
. The best book on this subject is Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies II,
The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). See also Omer Bartov,
Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); Paula Bradish,
Crimes of the German Wehrmacht: Dimensions of a War of Annihilation, 1941–1944
, exhibition brochure (Hamburg, Germany: Hamburg Institute for Social Research, 2004); Norbert Frei,
Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Intergration
, trans. Joel Golb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, eds.,
War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II, 1941–1944
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2000); John J. Mearsheimer,
Liddell Hart and the Weight of History
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 178–201; Alaric Searle,
Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society,
and the Debate on Rearmament, 1949–1959
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); Wolfram Wette,
The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality
, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), chap. 5.

7
. Christopher Simpson,
Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War
(New York: Collier Books, 1989), 158.

8
. On the myth about why the Palestinians fled their homes, see Erskine Childers, “The Other Exodus,”
Spectator
, May 12, 1961; Simha Flapan,
The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 81–118; Walid Khalidi, “Why Did the Palestinians Leave, Revisited,”
Journal of Palestine Studies
34, no. 2 (Winter 2005): 42–54; Walid Khalidi, “The Fall of Haifa,”
Middle East Forum
35, no. 10 (December 1959): 22–32; Benny Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Ilan Pappe,
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
(Oxford: Oneworld, 2006), 131. For analysis of other myths, see Flapan,
Birth of Israel;
Norman G. Finkelstein,
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
(London: Verso, 1995); John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt,
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), chap. 3; Benny Morris,
Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999
(New York: Knopf, 1999); Tom Segev,
One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate
, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Holt, 2001); Avi Shlaim,
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
(New York: Norton, 2000); Zeev Sternhell,
The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State
, trans. David Maisel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

9
. Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,” 29.

1
. Alexander B. Downes,
Targeting Civilians in War
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 3.

2
. Robert A. Pape,
Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), chap. 4.

3
. Quoted in Tim Weiner, “Robert S. McNamara, Architect of Futile War, Dies at 93,”
New York Times
, July 6, 2009.

4
. UNICEF, “Iraq Surveys Show ‘Humanitarian Emergency,’”
Information Newsline
, August 12, 1999,
http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm
; Biswajit Sen,
Iraq Watching Briefs: Overview
Report
, UNICEF, July 2003,
http://www.unicef.org/evaldatabase/files/Iraq_2003_Watching_Briefs.pdf
. Some argue that 500,000 deaths is too high a number. See, for examples, David Cortright, “A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions,”
Nation
, December 3, 2001; Matt Welch, “The Politics of Dead Children,”
Reason
, March 2002,
http://reason.com/archives/2002/03/01/the-politics-of-dead-children
. Whatever the exact number, David Rieff is almost certainly right when he writes, “American officials may quarrel with the numbers, but there is little doubt that at least several hundred thousand children who could reasonably have been expected to live died before their fifth birthdays” (“Were Sanctions Right?”
New York Times Magazine
, July 27, 2003).

5
. Benjamin A. Valentino,
Final Solutions: Mass Killings and Genocide in the Twentieth Century
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 73–75, 91–117. In his discussion of Hitler’s murderous role in the Holocaust, Valentino notes: “If even a fraction of those who perished in the massive famines under Stalin and Mao are included, each of those tyrants is responsible for a greater absolute toll than Hitler, perhaps several times higher” (ibid., 177–78).

6
. P. M. H. Bell,
John Bull and the Bear: British Public Opinion, Foreign Policy, and the Soviet Union, 1941–1945
(London: Arnold, 1990); Martin H. Folly,
Churchill, Whitehall, and the Soviet Union, 1940–45
(New York: St. Martin’s, 2000); John Lewis Gaddis,
The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), chap. 2; Ralph B. Levering,
American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, 1939–1945
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), chaps. 3–5; Ido Oren, “The Subjectivity of the ‘Democratic’ Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany,”
International Security
20, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 181–82; Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies II,
The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chap. 1.