A short, fun and readable book about lying in politics by one the most significant political scientists of the world.
Many people think that politics is often accompanied with lying, maybe include yourself. Professor Mearsheimer in this book argues that unlike the thinking of the people around the world, the lying especially in the international politics is not coommonplace. Of course this doesn't mean that diplomats and statesman never lie to each other.
Because of the anarchic ordering principle of the international structure and decentralization, meaning there is no formal central authority, all the states, without no exception, seek their own interests. Many people think lying is one of the tools that states use to reach their goals. This thinking is right but in the international politics it is different. There are very few instances in the history that appear statesman and diplomats lie to each other. In other words, inter-state lying is not very often, instead seem more that leaders incline to lie to the their own people because they think it is good of their country. Although lying is widely viewed as reprehensible behavior in our ordinary life, leaders sometimes have good strategic reasons to lie.
Mearsheimer believes that leaders usually tell international lies for good strategic reasons, not because they are craven or corrupt. He believes that lying is sometimes a useful instruments of statecraft in our dangerous world. But these lies may backfire or blowback and have an unintended consequences.
This book is comprised of nine chapters. The author starts by defining lying and the other two forms of deception: concealment and spinning. The subsequent chapter lays out the inventory of international lies. He distinguishes between strategic lies and selfish lies, and explain why the focus is on the former kind. In the next five chapters, he looks in detail at each of the different kinds of strategic lies. He considers the logic behind each type and when it is more or less likely to occur. In the penultimate chapter, he considers the potential pitfalls of international lying. He assesses 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. He concludes with a brief discussion of what all of this means for American foreign policy and the United States
more generally.