Why Leaders Lie (3 page)

At the most general level, one can think about lying from either an absolutist or a utilitarian perspective. Absolutists like Immanuel Kant and Augustine maintain that lying is always wrong and that it has hardly any positive effects. Lying, according to Kant, is “the greatest violation of man’s
duty to himself.”
¹⁴
Utilitarians, on the other hand, believe that lying sometimes makes sense, because it serves a useful social purpose; but other times it does not. The key is to determine when and why lying has positive utility.

I look at international lying from a strictly utilitarian perspective, mainly because there are compelling reasons that justify it and, not surprisingly, we find a considerable amount of it in the historical record. Many people seem to believe that there are circumstances in world politics where it pays to lie. This is not to deny, however, the importance of examining the moral dimensions of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, that task involves a different set of calculations and considerations, which lie beyond the scope of this book.

Broadly speaking, leaders tell international lies for two different reasons. They can tell lies in the service of the national interest. These are
strategic lies
that leaders tell for the purpose of helping their country survive in the rough and tumble of inter-state relations. Leaders can also tell
selfish lies
, which have little to do with raison d’état, but instead aim to protect their own personal interests or those of their friends. My concern is with lies that leaders tell for the good of the collectivity, not for selfish purposes. Thus, when I use the term international lying, I am talking about strategic lies, not selfish lies.

The subsequent analysis is built around four questions. First, what are the different kinds of international lies that leaders tell? Second, why do they lie? What are the strategic logics that motivate each kind of lying? Specifically, what are the potential benefits of lying that cause leaders to engage in this distasteful, if not noxious, behavior? Third, what are the circumstances that make each type of lying more or less likely? Fourth, what are the potential costs of lying for a state’s domestic politics as well as its foreign policy? In other words, what is the downside of telling international
lies? Thus, I consider both the benefits and the costs of the various kinds of lies that statesmen and diplomats tell each other as well as their own publics. However, I do not address the important question of when each kind of lie is likely to achieve its intended effect or not, mainly because I could not come up with a good answer.

I attempt to answer these questions by providing simple analytical frameworks that draw on the theoretical literature in international relations as well as the extensive literature on lying. I have tried to ensure that my arguments are logically sound, and I have provided historical evidence to illustrate them. However, I do not test my various claims by bringing evidence to bear in a systematic manner. That task is beyond the scope of this book, which is mainly concerned with providing a theoretical template for thinking about international lying. I hope other scholars will systematically test some of the arguments offered in the following pages.

I make numerous claims in the subsequent analysis, but five of them stand out above the rest. First, international lying comes in a variety of forms, but the most important distinction is between the lies that states tell each other and those that leaders tell their own publics.

Second, leaders usually tell international lies for good strategic reasons, not because they are craven or corrupt. Lest I be misunderstood, I am not saying that lying is a great virtue and that more international lying is better than less. I am merely saying that lying is sometimes a useful instrument of statecraft in a dangerous world. Indeed, a leader can occasionally tell what Plato famously called a “noble lie.” For example, President Franklin Roosevelt lied to the American people about the German attack on the USS
Greer
in August
1941. He was trying to get the United States into World War II against Nazi Germany, which then appeared to be on its way to conquering all of Europe. Roosevelt’s objective was the right one and it was appropriate for him to lie in this instance.

Third, while lying among states is a permanent fixture of international politics, it is not commonplace. In the discussion of inter-state lying in
chapter 3
, I describe a variety of cases in which the leaders of one state lied to another state. Reading this chapter might give the impression that interstate lying is routine behavior among statesmen and diplomats. But I had difficulty finding those cases, and, moreover, the chapter includes almost all the cases I was able to identify. I was especially surprised by how difficult it was to find evidence of states attempting to bluff each other in bargaining situations.
¹⁵
In fact, it appears that leaders are more likely to lie to their own people than to rival states. That seems to be particularly true for democracies like the United States.

Fourth, the most dangerous kinds of international lies are those that leaders tell their own citizens. They are more likely to backfire and damage a state’s strategic position than the lies that leaders tell other states. Moreover, they are more likely to corrupt political and social life at home, which can have many harmful consequences for daily life.

Fifth, because the United States is so powerful and so heavily engaged around the globe, its leaders often confront situations where there are strong incentives to lie either to other states or to the American people. This is a matter of serious concern, since international lying can have serious negative consequences, especially for democracies like the United States.

This book is comprised of nine chapters. I start by defining lying and the other two forms of deception: concealment and spinning. The subsequent chapter lays out the
inventory of international lies. I distinguish between strategic lies and selfish lies, and explain why the focus is on the former kind. In the next five chapters, I look in detail at each of the different kinds of strategic lies. I consider the logic behind each type and when it is more or less likely to occur. In the penultimate chapter, I consider the potential pitfalls of international lying. I assess which kinds of lies are most likely to backfire and undermine a state’s foreign policy and which are most likely to cause damage on the home front. I conclude with a brief discussion of what all of this means for American foreign policy and the United States more generally.

Before defining lying, spinning, and concealment, it makes good sense to define deception, the general category that includes those three behaviors, as well as truth telling, which is the direct opposite of deception.

Truth telling
is when an individual does his best to state the facts and tell a story in a straightforward and honest way. Every person invariably has limited knowledge about the details of any case and biases as well. Memories can also be faulty and it is impossible to relate every fact one knows when telling a story. The key point, however, is that a truth teller makes a serious effort to overcome any biases or selfish interests that he might have and report the relevant facts in as fair-minded a way as he can.
Deception
, in contrast, is where an individual purposely takes steps that are designed to prevent others from knowing the full truth—as that individual understands it—about a particular matter. The deliberate aim, in other words, is not to provide a straightforward or comprehensive description of events.

Lying
is when a person makes a statement that he knows or suspects to be false in the hope that others will think it is true. A lie is a positive action designed to deceive the target audience. Lying can involve making up facts that one knows to be false or denying facts that one knows to be true. But lying is not only about the truthfulness of particular facts. It can also involve the disingenuous arrangement of facts to tell a fictitious story. Specifically, a person is lying when he uses facts—even true facts—to imply that something is true, when he knows that it is not true.
¹
In such cases, the liar is purposely leading the listener to a false conclusion without explicitly stating that conclusion.

There is always the possibility, of course, that a person who thinks that he is telling a lie has the facts wrong and is inadvertently telling the truth. The reverse might be true as well: a person who believes that he is telling the truth might have his facts wrong. This problem, however, is irrelevant for my purposes, because I am interested in determining whether a person is being truthful—stating facts or telling a story that he believes to be true—not whether he ultimately proves to be right or wrong about the facts. Simply put, my concern is with truthfulness, not the truth.
²

Spinning
is different from lying, although there will be some cases where the distinction is murky. Spinning is when a person telling a story emphasizes certain facts and links them together in ways that play to his advantage, while, at the same time, downplaying or ignoring inconvenient facts. Spinning is all about interpreting the known facts in a way that allows the spinner to tell a favorable story. It is all about emphasizing and deemphasizing particular facts to portray one’s position in a positive light. With spinning, no attempt is made to render a completely accurate account of events. The basic story being told is distorted, but the facts are not put together so as to tell a false story, which would be a
lie. Spinning is exaggeration or distortion, not prevarication. Tiger Woods captured the essence of spinning when he told an interviewer from
Sports Illustrated
in 2000, “I’ve learned you can always tell the truth, but you don’t have to tell the whole truth.”
³

What usually happens in an American courtroom provides a good way of illustrating the difference between lying and spinning. When a witness is called to the stand he is sworn to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” and then he is asked a series of questions, which he is expected to answer truthfully. The person in the docket could lie, but the key point is that he is required by law to tell what he believes to be the truth. The attorneys for the plaintiff and the defendant, on the other hand, are primarily interested in winning the case for their clients, not determining the full truth about what happened in the dispute at hand. Accordingly, each makes an opening and closing statement in which he spins the facts of the case in ways that puts his client in the most favorable light. The rival lawyers invariably tell two different stories, but neither is allowed to lie. The American Bar Association, for example, stipulates in its rules of conduct that “a lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal.”
⁴
Spinning, however, is not only permissible; it is what lawyers routinely do for their clients.

The third kind of deception is
concealment
, which involves withholding information that might undermine or weaken one’s position. In cases of this sort, the individual simply remains silent about the evidence, because he wants to hide it from others. Of course, if he is asked a question about the matter and lies to conceal it, that behavior fits my definition of lying. A good example of concealment is the Bush administration’s decision not to tell the public before the Iraq War began in March 2003 that two key Al Qaeda figures—Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zabaydah—had separately told their American interrogators that Osama bin Laden had thought about asking Saddam Hussein to form an alliance against the United States, but then decided against it.
⁵
If these facts had been made public, they would have undermined the Bush administration’s claim that bin Laden and Saddam were collaborating with each other, which was important for winning public and congressional support for the war. This behavior was certainly deceptive, but it was not lying, at least according to my definition, because it did not involve taking a positive step to deceive someone.
⁶
In short, when a person spins a story or conceals facts, he is not lying, but neither is he being completely truthful.

Lying, as emphasized, is usually considered deplorable behavior, whereas most people seem to believe that it is acceptable to spin and conceal, even though these behaviors are designed to deceive. One possible reason for this difference is that lying is more difficult to detect and protect against than either spinning or concealment. Liars make false assertions in ways that are designed not to raise any doubts about the truthfulness of their claims. Skillful liars present false assertions with an air of certainty that makes it especially difficult for the target audience to figure out that it is being bamboozled.

With spinning, however, the listeners are much more likely to be able to recognize that they are not getting a complete and accurate picture, and then rectify the problem by filling in the missing pieces of the story. Specifically, the target audience can compare the spinner’s motives with how the spinner put his story together, i.e., what he might have left out, what he emphasized, and what he deemphasized. If there is reason to be suspicious of the spinner’s story, the listeners can ask the spinner for additional information, do independent research on the spinner’s story, or listen to
counter-spinners, who are usually not in short supply when it comes to foreign policy.

The target audience should also be able to defend itself reasonably well against concealment. In particular, it can always ask if there is information available on specific aspects of the subject at hand, and it should expect to be told the truth. None of this is to deny, however, that the target audience might not know all the relevant lines of inquiry. After all, sometimes you do not know what you do not know, and therefore do not know what questions to ask.