Why Leaders Lie (19 page)

Authors: John J. Mearsheimer

BOOK: Why Leaders Lie

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7
. The Soviet Union murdered about 22,000 Poles in April-May 1940. Roughly 4,400 were buried in the Katyn Forest. The remaining victims were killed and buried in other locations. George Sanford,
Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 1. Among the best sources on Katyn and how Churchill and Roosevelt reacted are Bell,
John Bull
, chap. 4; Allen Paul,
Katy
: The Untold Story of Stalin’s
Polish Massacre
(New York: Scribner’s, 1991), chap. 22; Sanford,
Katyn and the Soviet Massacre
, chaps. 6–7; Victor Zaslavsky,
Class Cleansing: The Katyn Massacre
, trans. Kizer Walker (New York: Telos, 2008), chap. 5.

8
. Quoted in Paul,
Katy
, 303.

9
. Bell,
John Bull
, 119. On the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to cover up Soviet responsibility for what happened in the Katyn forest, see Paul,
Katy
, 306–15; Sanford,
Katyn and the Soviet Massacre
, 159–66.

10
. The quotes in this paragraph are from Alan Bullock,
Hitler, a Study in Tyranny
, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 546–47. See also Joachim C. Fest,
Hitler
, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 598–600; Bradley Lightbody,
The Second World War: Ambitions to Nemesis
(New York: Routledge, 2004), 39.

11
. Max Hastings,
Bomber Campaign: Churchill’s Epic Campaign
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 171. See also Stephen A. Garrett,
Ethics and Airpower in World War II: The British Bombing of German Cities
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), 30–37.

12
. David Bamber, “Bin Laden: Yes, I Did It,”
Daily Telegraph
, November 11, 2001; Peter L. Bergen,
The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al-Qaeda’s Leader
(New York: Free Press, 2006), 321–22; Bruce Lawrence, ed.,
Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden
, trans. James Howarth (London: Verso, 2005), 140–41.

13
. Michael Walzer,
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 19.

Chapter 8

1
. For a good discussion of the costs of lying for a society, see Evelin Sullivan,
The Concise Book of Lying
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 55–147.

2
. Francis Fukuyama,
Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity
(New York: Free Press, 1995); Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, Luigi Zingales, “The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development” (working paper 7563, National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2000); Marc J. Hetherington,
Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Stephen Knack and Philip Keefer, “Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
112, no. 4 (November 1997): 1251–88; Rafael La Porta et al., “Trust in Large Organizations,”
American Economic Review
87, no. 2 (May 1997): 333–38; Robert D. Putnam,
Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Charles Tilly,
Trust and Rule
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

3
. “Transcript of Special Counsel Fitzgerald’s Press Conference,”
Washington Post
, October 28, 2005. The best book about the Libby case is Michael Isikoff and David Corn,
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
(New York: Crown, 2006).

4
. Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills, “Death Row Justice Derailed,”
Chicago Tribune
, November 14, 1999; Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills, “Inept Defenses Cloud Verdict,”
Chicago Tribune
, November 15, 1999; Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills, “The Jailhouse Informant,”
Chicago Tribune
, November 16, 1999; Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills, “A Tortured Path to Death Row,”
Chicago Tribune
, November 17, 1999; Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills, “Convicted by a Hair,”
Chicago Tribune
, November 18, 1999; Martha Irvine, “Illinois Governor Orders Death Penalty Moratorium,” Associated Press, January 31, 2000; Barry James, “Clearing of Illinois Death Row Is Greeted with Global Cheers,”
New York Times
, January 14, 2003; Paul M. Krawzak, “Ryan Explains Moratorium Call,” Copley News Service, January 31, 2000; Robert E. Pierre and Kari Lydersen, “Illinois Death Row Emptied,”
Washington Post
, January 12, 2003.

5
. Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Waging Peace, 1956–1961: The White House Years
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), chap. 23; Peter Lyon,
Eisenhower: Portrait of the Hero
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 859–66.

6
. See Andrew T. Guzmán,
How International Law Works: A Rational Choice Theory
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), especially chap. 3.

7
. Ann E. Sartori argues that “states often are tempted to bluff, or dissemble, but a state that is caught bluffing acquires a reputation for doing so, and opponents are less likely to believe its future communications.” Thus, states usually do not bluff or lie, because of the damage it might do to their reputation, and thus their prospects
for future cooperation. “The prospect of acquiring a reputation for lying—and lessening the credibility of the state’s future diplomacy—keeps statesmen and diplomats honest except when fibs are the most tempting.”
Deterrence by Diplomacy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 5. I agree that reputation matters a lot to states in the realm of low politics and that this discourages lying, but, contrary to Sartori, I do not think reputation is important when dealing with matters relating to high politics. See Daryl G. Press,
Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).

8
. As John M. Schuessler makes clear, however, Roosevelt’s deceptions in the run-up to the war with Japan did impede his conduct of the war in a variety of ways. “The Deception Dividend,”
International Security
34, no. 4 (Spring 2010): 162–63. See also Thomas J. Christensen,
Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino- American Conflict, 1947–1958
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).

9
. George Orwell,
Orwell and Politics: Animal Farm in the Context of Essays, Reviews and Letters Selected from the Complete Works of George Orwell
, ed. Peter Davison (London: Penguin, 2001), 357. Orwell also wrote, “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them” (ibid., 363).

10
. Richard E. Neustadt,
Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership
(New York: New American Library, 1964), 134.

11
. P. M. Kennedy, “The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West, 1900–1970,”
Journal of Contemporary History
8, no. 1 (January 1973): 77–100; Stephen Van Evera, “Primed for Peace: Europe After the Cold War,”
International Security
15, no. 3 (Winter 1990/1991): 23–25; Stephen Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,”
International Security
18, no. 4 (Spring 1994). See also Holger H. Herwig, “Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany after the Great War,”
International Security
12, no. 2 (Fall 1987): 5–44.

12
. Dale C. Copeland,
The Origins of Major War
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), chaps. 3–4; John J. Mearsheimer,
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
(New York: Norton, 2001), 181–90.

13
. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt,
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 92–97.

14
. Works that emphasize both the nationalist and realist sides of Bismarck’s foreign policy between 1862 and 1870 are: Lothar Gall,
Bismarck: The White Revolutionary
, trans. J. A. Underwood (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986); Bruce Waller,
Bismarck
, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), chaps. 2–4; Otto Pflanze,
Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification, 1815–1871
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).

Chapter 9