The
issue of official deception has assumed new prominence
with the war in Iraq. While offering a number of
rationales for military action, the Bush
Administration’s primary one before the war was that the
nexus of tyranny, weapons of mass destruction, and
terrorism posed unacceptable risks for the United States
after the attacks on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon. The ouster of Saddam Hussein was thus
warranted. However, since the invasion, scarcely any
evidence has surfaced of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction or of ties with terrorism. Accordingly, as
the insurgency escalated, debate ensued over whether the
Bush administration resorted to deception to marshal
public support for war. In a recent article in the major
scholarly journal International Security, Chaim Kaufmann
argues that the Bush administration inflated the threat
posed by Saddam Hussein to mobilize support. The
indictment of “Scooter” Libby for obstruction and
perjury reinforced perceptions that official deception
is rife: nearly half of Americans agree that the overall
level of honesty and ethics in the federal government
has fallen since President Bush took office.
Given this distrustful political climate, Eric
Alterman’s When Presidents Lie is an especially timely
contribution. The book is a detailed examination of
four presidential lies about key matters of war and
peace: Franklin Roosevelt and the Yalta accords, John F.
Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Lyndon Johnson and
the second Gulf of Tonkin incident, and Ronald Reagan
and Central America in the 1980’s. The book is a potent
reminder that official deception predates the Bush
Administration and that even presidents who are widely
admired are highly capable of dishonesty. Moreover, Alterman’s main argument – that official deception,
while pervasive, is ultimately counter-productive –
should resonate at a time when success, as defined by
the administration, is proving elusive in Iraq and
political fallout continues to accumulate at home.
Indeed, one of Alterman’s strengths is that he does not
shy away from making bold claims. His message is clear:
“Presidential dishonesty about key matters of state –
whether moral or immoral – is ultimately and invariably
self-destructive”(22). According to Alterman, the main
problem with lying is blowback. As he puts it: “The
pragmatic problem with official lies is their
amoeba-like penchant for self-replication. The more a
leader lies to his people, the more he must lie to his
people. Eventually the lies take on a life of their own
and tend to overpower the liar”(20). Consistent with
this argument, Alterman’s four case studies are filled
with tragedy: however good their intentions, presidents
invariably do more harm than good when they resort to
deception.
Perhaps the most persuasive illustrations of blowback in
the book are the first two: Franklin Roosevelt and the
Yalta accords and John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile
Crisis. As Alterman puts it, “In each case, a
Democratic president cut a deal with his Soviet
counterpart that recognized and respected his
adversary’s interests while simultaneously securing the
United States’ most important goals. But in neither
case was the president willing to confide even in some
of his closest political advisers – much less the
American people – about the traditional diplomatic
give-and-take necessary to close the deal, so
threatening did each leader find the notion of a
publicly admitted political compromise”(144).
As it turns out, the results in each case were the
opposite of what Roosevelt or Kennedy intended:
deteriorating relations with the Soviet Union and a
poisoned political climate at home. Indeed, Alterman
argues that FDR’s lies about Yalta provided the
immediate impetus for the Cold War while setting the
stage for McCarthyism. Kennedy’s lies about the Cuban
Missile Crisis contributed to Johnson’s decision to
escalate the Vietnam War. It is hardly surprising,
then, that Alterman’s central claim is that lying is
ultimately counterproductive.
Consider this: if lying is so counterproductive, then
why is it so pervasive? Are presidents really so
shortsighted that they consistently engage in
self-destructive behaviors? This should be puzzling for
anyone that comes to the subject with rationalist
assumptions. For example, the ‘realist tradition’ in
international relations tells us that statesmen
prudently maximize national security while the ‘liberal
tradition’ tells us that statesmen prudently maximize
their domestic political fortunes too. Alterman’s
argument is hard to square with either perspective.
Therefore, I feel obligated, as a political scientist,
to question his thesis: that lying, while pervasive, is
ultimately counterproductive.
First, based on Alterman’s evidence we surely can
conclude that presidential lying is sometimes
counterproductive. As mentioned, each of the case
studies is filled with tragedy: ruined careers, a
poisoned political climate, costly misperceptions,
unnecessary conflict, etc. However, we cannot conclude
as yet that lying is generally counterproductive. After
all, the four cases examined chosen could be an
unrepresentative sample. One suspects that Yalta, the
Cuban Missile Crisis, the second Gulf of Tonkin
incident, and Iran-Contra were selected because each is
associated with failure in some way. The discomfiting
question that remains is: what about cases where lying
worked? And are such cases more typical than those Alterman chose?
It is not so hard to find such cases. Alterman
discusses an important one in his introduction: FDR’s
less than honest leadership preceding US entry into
World War II (16-17). As is well documented, Roosevelt
steadily escalated US involvement after the fall of
France while promising publicly that he would keep the
US out of the fighting. Why does Alterman not examine
this episode? Whereas FDR’s dishonesty facilitated US
entry into World War II, the “Good War,” the Gulf of
Tonkin incident precipitated US escalation of the
Vietnam War, which ended in disaster. Also telling in
this regard is Alterman’s inattention to the dishonesty
involved in rallying support for the first Gulf War and
the war in Kosovo. Again, each was a cheap and easy
victory for the United States. Where was the blowback
in these cases?
Official deception attracts public attention precisely
when it contributes to a failing endeavor, as in Iraq.
The problem with paying attention only to disasters is
that it biases our conclusions: we tend to overestimate
the extent to which lying leads to failure. In Alterman’s case, he provides evidence that lying can be
counterproductive; however, he concludes that lying is
always counterproductive. These are very different
propositions, as any good Machiavellian will notice.
Second, even if we admit that deception generates
unintended consequences, it does not necessarily follow
that the presidents were wrong in their decisions
Indeed, rationally speaking (instrumentally, that is),
one can only argue that lying is counterproductive if
there were feasible alternatives available in each case,
and pursuing those alternatives would have led to better
outcomes.
In the Yalta case, it is difficult to imagine what those
alternatives would have been. What leverage did the
United States have over the Soviet Union, which had just
defeated Nazi Germany and occupied much of Eastern
Europe? Was the fate of Poland worth risking war with
the Soviet Union? Or, is Alterman suggesting that
Roosevelt should have been candid about the concessions
he hade made at Yalta? Wouldn’t a political uproar have
resulted? And wouldn’t that political uproar have
soured relations with the Soviet Union anyway?
Alterman’s argument is that, while some version of the
Cold War was inevitable, it would have been a less
competitive and more honorable one if Roosevelt had been
honest about Yalta (46, 89). However, for those of us
who believe that the Cold War was largely the result of
security competition or ideological contest, it is
difficult to credit his case. Indeed, rather than
triggering the Cold War, perhaps FDR’s lies about Yalta
delayed it, affording the United States the time to
mobilize for a coming confrontation with the Soviet
Union. Any other alternative might have only speeded
that confrontation, with unpredictable and potentially
terrible results. When seen in this unabashedly
pragmatic light, the primary lesson of Yalta is not that
lying is counterproductive. It is that presidents
operate in a severely constrained environment, both
domestically and internationally, and that lying is
sometimes the least bad of several bad alternatives.
This brings me to my final point. Alterman’s main
argument is that lying is “ultimately and invariably
self-destructive”(22). However, I think his argument is
better stated as follows: Foreign policymaking in a
democracy is difficult. This is an old realist insight,
and it is one that Alterman himself hints at. For
example, in his concluding chapter, Alterman asks, “Why
do American presidents feel compelled to deceive
Congress, the media, and their country about their most
significant decisions?” His answer is that there is a
“fundamental contradiction at the heart of the practice
of American democracy. American presidents have no
choice but to practice the diplomacy of great power
politics, but American citizens have rarely if ever been
asked to understand the world in these terms”(306-307).
As Alterman notes, the problem with foreign policymaking
in a democracy, from the policymakers’ point of view, is
that voters ask presidents to do the impossible: that
is, to protect the national interest in a manner
consistent with American values while at the same time
minimizing the risks and costs of war. Rather than
admit the fact that they cannot maximize all these
values simultaneously (and so suffer political
retribution), presidents opt for deception.
Alterman recognizes this real world dilemma. The real
problem may be that lying is just a symptom. The
‘disease,’ so far as decision-makers and their advisors
are concerned, is democracy itself and the contradictory
demands it places on decision-makers in the foreign
policy realm. Indeed, it seems rather facile to argue
that lying, under any circumstances, is such a terrible
thing when presidents may have few better alternatives.
Of course, I understand why Alterman does not want to
place too much blame on democracy itself. However, any
adequate account of why presidents lie must deal with
this persistent reality.
----------
*
Chaim Kaufmann, “Threat Inflation and the Failure of the
Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War,”
International Security, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer 2004),
pp. 5-48.
*
Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, “White House Ethics,
Honesty Questioned,” Washington Post, October 30, 2005.
*
Eric Alterman, When Presidents Lie: A History of
Official Deception and its Consequences (New York, NY:
Viking, 2004). References to page numbers appear in
text.
John Schuessler
is a graduate student in the Department of Political
Science at the University of Chicago.
