ANY POLICY NOT WORTH A LIE IS NOT WORTH ADOPTING:

After a brief discussion of how to define lying--to which I shall return--he classifies lies into seven types--inter-state, fearmongering, strategic cover-ups, national myth-making, liberal lies, social imperialism, and ignoble cover-ups. A chapter is devoted to each of these lies explaining in more detail the nature of the lie, its intended audience, its motivations, and what outcomes are expected. In all cases the leaders who tell the lies do so because they think it is in the national interest to do so. There may be international lies which are done for selfish, or personal, reasons but Mearsheimer does not think there are many of these, and he explicitly excludes them from the scope of his explanatory theory.

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. (11)

He concentrates on four issues about international lies: The classification of types of lies;the motives for the different types of lies; the circumstances that make each type more or less likely; and the potential costs of lying

About each of these topics he has interesting things to say. He provides us with hypotheses, gives enough historical evidence to make it plausible to test these--as opposed to other--hypotheses. And he leaves it to other scholars to test these hypotheses with more and better data.

Some of his hypotheses are the following. Leaders usually lie because they believe lying promotes the national interest--not for selfish or corrupt reasons. The most dangerous kinds of international lies are those that leaders tell their own citizens. Leaders of democratic states are more likely to lie to their citizens about controversial policies then undemocratic leaders. This last finding is interesting because, unlike many social science results, it is surprising.

Either out of naivety or cynicism I would have guessed the opposite. Mearsheimer gives a number of reasons why this finding might be true. Democratic leaders must pay more attention to public opinion because they have to win elections. They are more likely to lie to cover-up a controversial policy because they are more exposed to questioning of their actions. There is a norm that leaders should provide information for thinking about policies. This makes it harder to hide the downsides of controversial policy without lying. 

Mearsheimer says early on, "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."

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