Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics by John Mearsheimer
Summary and takeaways from the book.
Keywords:
Informed
Aug 18, 2025
John J. Mearsheimer is Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago. He is an "
international relations theorist".
"there are sometimes good strategic reasons for leaders to lie to other countries as well as to their own people".
Inter State Lying
There is less inter State lying. This is because States are generally less trusting of other States, and the international arena is inherently anarchic. There is distrust. So States verify claims of others as best as they can.
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statesmen and diplomats do not lie to each other very often."
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There is just not that much inter-state lying. Of course, this is not to say there is none."
Leaders lie to their people
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In fact, it appears that leaders are more likely to lie to their own people than to rival states."
Forms of Deception
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Deception, in contrast, is where an individual purposely takes steps that are designed to prevent others from knowing the full truth."
Lying is just one form of
deception.
Lying: not telling the truth
Spinning: "
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." This is the realm of Spin Doctors and narrative builders.
Concealment: withholding crucial information.
Forms of Inter State Lies
Fearmongering: "
Leaders do not fearmonger because they are evil or because they are pursuing selfish gains, but because they believe that inflating a particular threat serves the national interest."
Strategic cover-ups: are lies designed to hide either failed policies or controversial policies from the public
Nationalist mythmaking: "
The purpose is to create a powerful sense of group identity among the broader population, because that is necessary for building and maintaining a viable nation-state, and for motivating people to fight wars for their homeland. These myths sometimes help states gain legitimacy with other states."
Liberal lies: are designed to cover up the behavior of states when it contradicts the well-developed body of liberal norms that is widely accepted around the world and codified in international law.
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One case that has been revealed involves Greece lying about its budget deficits so that it could gain entry into the eurozone.
According to the European Union’s rules, a member country should only be allowed to adopt the euro as its currency if it maintains deficits that are less than 3 percent of the gross domestic product.
During the late 1990s, when Greece was being evaluated for possible admission into the eurozone, it was running deficits that were well above that threshold. To deal with this problem, Athens simply lied about the numbers for the relevant years, claiming that its deficits were well under 3 percent when they were not. The gambit worked, and Greece adopted the single currency in 2001."
Lies can be caught or backfire
The author gives two examples.
The author gives example when Francis Gary Power U2 spy plane was shot down over Russia. "
There is also the danger that their lies will be exposed and harm rather than help their country, as happened when the Eisenhower administration told a series of lies after the Soviet Union had shot down a U-2 spy plane."
Second example of lies backfiring: "
lies can backfire even if they are not exposed and are believed by the leaders of the target country. This is what happened when Khrushchev exaggerated the size of the Soviet ICBM arsenal in the late 1950s. He ended up fueling an arms race which he did not want and which was not in his country’s best interest."
"Backfiring is just one potential downside of international lying; the other is blowback, and it is the more worrisome of the two.
Leaders who lie to their citizenry for what they believe are good strategic reasons might nevertheless do significant damage to their body politic by fostering a culture of dishonesty. "
Related articles
How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato
Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation by Allison Carnegie, Austin Carson
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