Why do states bother to deceive? Managing trust at home and abroad

Review of International Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 337-361

  Jacobsen, John Kurt ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 42949106539     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S026021050800805X     Document Type: Article

References (192)

1. Hannah Arendt, Crises of The Republic (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972), p. 42.
2. Cited in Bruce Russett, Controlling The Sword: The Democratic Governance of National Security (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 146. About 29 per cent were 'very interested' in events in other countries.
3. Meg Bostrum, 'Public Attitudes about Foreign Affairs: An Overview of the Current State of Public Opinion' (Washington, DC: Framework Institute, 2001).
4. 'Politicians have a tendency to deceive themselves about what they are doing': Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 4th edn. (New York: Knopf, 1967), pp. 83-4.
5. See Michael William's essay on Morgenthau's unappreciated subtleties: 'Why Ideas Matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism, and the Moral Construction of Power Polities', International Organization, 58 (Fall 2004). The irony is the essay needed to be written at all to acquaint Realists with important but downplayed aspects of their 'tradition'.
6. Quoted in George Kennan, At A Century's End (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 135;
7. also see Eric Alterman, Who Speaks for the People? (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), ch. 1. 'The modern propagandist, like the modern psychologist, recognizes that men are often poor judges of their own interests, flitting from one alternative to the next without solid reason, or clinging timorously to the fragments of some mossy rock of ages'.
8. Dwaine Marvik (ed.), Harold Lasswell on Political Sociology (Chicago, IL: Univerisy of Chicago, 1977), p. 236.
9. Quoted in Barry D. Karl, Charles Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp. 301-2.
10. The 2004 Pew Study, finding 4 of 5 citizens underestimated US nuclear weapons, is at 〈http://peoplepress.org/reports/display.php3?PageID =1016〉. 〈http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/ 0/5/9/9/9/p59994_index.html?phpsessid=26ca0719348d439017fe4210d.398a0ed.〉
11. A realist referee at another journal stated exactly this objection to this article's argument. The author will be happy to relay the edifying document to inquirers.
12. John J. Mearsheimer, 'Lying in International Polities'. Unpublished paper, University of Chicago (2004), p. 8.
13. Also see fn. 8 where this view is also vigorously advanced. 〈http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/5/9/9/9/ p59994_index.html?phpsessid=26ca0719348d43 9017fe4210d398a0ed.〉
14. Eisenhower balked at publicising such activities - not at performing them - because he believed the propaganda costs of abandoning the high ground were too high. Stephen Ambrose, Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), p. 188. Eisenhower approved spy flights because he needed the information to make sound policy. The U-2 shootdown in 1960, and its initial denial via a 'cover story', was a diplomatic setback.
15. See Philip Taubman, Secret Empire: Eisenhower, The CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), pp. 26, 308.
16. George Orwell, Inside the Whale and other Essays (London: Penguin, 1957), pp. 75, 76.
17. See, most recently, Paul Joseph, Are Americans Becoming More Peaceful? A Counterintuitive Examination of the US Public's Attitude Toward War (Chicago, IL: Paradigm Publishers, 2006).
18. See Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravscik, 'Is Anybody Still a Realist?', International Security, 24:2 (Fall 1999).
19. For contrasting assessments of the costs see Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Pantheon, 1978),
20. and Jeremy Campbell, The Liar's Tale: A History of Falsehood (New York: Norton, 2002). On 'noble lies',
21. see Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and The American Right (New York: St. Martins Press, 1997).
22. Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2nd edn. (London: Bloomsbury, 2005), p. 9.
23. Propaganda is desensitising such that a 'cry wolf reaction arises, most terribly with stories of the death camps which many were inclined to ascribe to what the Nazis termed 'horror propaganda'. The opposite also occurs. When the public finds it was mistaken in attributing a 'cry wolf motive to a genuine mass crime, it is likely to credit future accusations.
24. For a contemporary case, see James Dao, 'Physicist Says Pentagon Is Trying to Silence Him', New York Times, 27 July 2001. 'A leading critic of the military's missile defense testing program has accused the Pentagon of trying to silence him and intimidate his employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by investigating him for disseminating classified documents'.
25. Also, for a follow-up related report, see William J. Broad, 'Accounting Office Finds Itself Accused', New York Times, 2 April 2006.
26. 'Few salesmen', E.H. Carr wrote long ago, 'fail in an emergency to recognize a duty to lie for their country'. Cited in Charles Jones, E.H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. iii. By the same token, few unfaithful spouses fail in an emergency (threat of exposure) to recognize a duty to lie for the sake of their marriages. Motives matter and are worth exploring.
27. '[S]pinning is all about assembling known facts in a way that presents a favorable picture to the person telling the story. No false statements are involved and no attempt is made to present an untrue bottom line. Concealment simply involves withholding information from others ... A lie is a positive action; an individual must actually do something to lie'. John J. Mearsheimer, 'Lying in International Relations', APSA Annual Meetings Paper (2004), pp. 2, 4. Is it credible that a person is not 'doing something', or something 'positive' (for themselves, at least), when they spin or conceal?
28. Scott Shane, 'Some worry U.S. may bend facts for policy Intelligence: Analysts pressured to spin reports to support White House position', Baltimore Sun, 4 April 2003.
29. He calls this 'fear-mongering', which has positive and negative variants. Mearsheimer, 'Lying', p. 9. The question, who is to judge which is which, is an interesting one that goes unasked.
30. Witness Ronald Reagan's order to reclassify declassified materials, and George W. Bush's administration order that the US National Archive reclassify formerly public records: 'Secrecy-Obsessed White House a Nightmare for Historians', Chicago Sun-Times, 24 April 2006, p. 35.
31. Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995). Apart from the 'national interest' being usurped by subnational, other-national or supranational forces, one ought to distinguish the 'necessary and variable elements' of the national interest such that consequent acts can survive 'rational scrutiny'.
32. Hans J. Morgenthau, 'The National Interest', in Michael Smith, Richard Little, Michael Shackleton (eds.), Perspectives in World Politics (London: Open University, 1981), p. 52.
33. Public support for war without a new UN vote authorising it was 30 per cent, according to a poll conducted 17-18 February 2003. David W. Moore and Frank Newport Gallup News Service Poll Analyses 'Powell "Bounce" Fades But Majority of Americans still open to War with Iraq', 21 February 2003. The phrasing of the headline is itself an interesting exhibit of media slant.
34. Versus 55-60 per cent whose support for war is highly conditional and 15 per cent who are pacifist. See Paul Joseph, Are Americans becoming More Peaceful?, pp. 1-40. By February 2007 polls were reporting 72 per cent disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq, and 53 per cent want a withdrawal of troops 'as soon as possible'.
35. The Guardian, February 2007.
36. Victor Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind: European Attitudes to Other Cultures in The Imperial Age, 2nd edn. (London: Serif, 1995), p. 240. The postwar lesson widely drawn from defeating fascism was a fear of public mobilisation.
37. See William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (Chicago, IL: Free Press, 1959).
38. Richard Sobel and Eric Shiraev (eds.). International Public Opinion and the Bosnian Crisis (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003), pp. 66-7, 107, 303.
39. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1961), p. 235.
40. Nixon's chief-of-staff H. R. Haldeman, in the midst of the Vietnam war, scribbled it was 'very hard for our guys to keep their balance because they are beat on by the kids, by the press, by the people they meet socially etc'. The Haldeman Diaries: Inside The Nixon White House (New York: Putnam, 1994), p. 225.
41. An often overlooked point is that realists always confer enormous latitude on leaders. So if a leader presumably believes her own untruths then she is truthful, if not telling the truth. True believers therefore cannot lie - which is preposterous. Absent a foolproof polygraph, the best test is to investigate whether the actions a leader advocates accord with their demonstrable interests. If they do, one has strong grounds to suspect lying at work.
42. Nixon's advisers used the phrase 'How will it play in Peoria?' - a solidly Republican Party community in rural Illinois - when anticipating the relevant impact of proposed policies.
43. Plato, The Republic (London: Penguin, 1963), pp. 62-83.
44. See Richard Ned Lebow and Robert Kelly, 'Thucydides and Hegemony: Athens and The US', Review of International Studies, 27:4 (October 2001)
45. and Nancy Kokaz, 'Moderating Power: A Thucydidean Perspective', Review of International Studies, 27:1 (2001).
46. Kenneth Waltz, Man, The State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 28.
47. Snyder describes neorealists as 'truncated realists' versus the broad approaches of Morgenthau, Machiavelli, and Thucydides. 'Aggressive Realism' is exemplified by John Mearsheimer, and 'defensive Realism' by Stephen Walt. Snyder, Myths of Empire: International Ambitions and Domestic Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 12, 19.
48. Ole Waever labels Mearsheimer a 'modified neorealist, in 'Identity, Integration, and Security: Solving The Sovereignty Puzzle in E.U. Studies', International Organization, 49:1 (Spring 1995), pp. 396, 397.
49. Charles Glaser refers to 'contingent realism' in his 'Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help', in Brown et al. Stephen G. Brooks distinguishes between 'worst-case possibilitistic neorealism' and 'probability-oriented postclassical realism' in 'Dueling Realisms', International Organization, 51 (Summer 1997), p. 446. Let us not omit 'crackpot realism' which may occasionally be relevant.
50. See C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).
51. Legro and Moravscik, 'Is Anyone Still a Realist?' On the delicate question as to what point is it that an accumulation of ad hoc statements should scuttle a theory, see Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1975).
52. Waltz, Man, States and War, p. 238.
53. For a detailed analysis of neorealism see his Theory of International Relations (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
54. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 10, 11.
55. See Oliver Thomas, Easily Led: A History of Propaganda (London: Sutton, 1999);
56. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formations of Men's Attitudes (New York: Vintage, 1971);
57. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1922);
58. and J. A. C. Brown, Techniques of Persuasion (London: Pelican, 1963) [New York 1992].
59. Mearsheimer, 'Lying', p. 9.
60. Barrington Moore, Jr, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 486. 'To speak of cultural inertia [or complicity], is to overlook the concrete interests and privileges that are served by indoctrination, education and the entire process of transmitting culture from one generation to the next'.
61. BBC television documentary, 'Great Books: Catch-22', 27 December 2003. 'Every argument used to justify Athenian imperialism abroad could be applied with equal force to the justification of tyranny at home . .. and the sort of treatment that the Athenians had once meted out to the Melions they ended up, during and after the Sicilian expedition, meting out to one another'. Paul Rahe, 'Thucydides' Critique of Real-politik', in Benjamin Frankel (ed.), Roots of Realism (London: Frank Cass, 1996), pp. 134-5.
62. See Robert C. Byrd, Losing America (New York: Norton, 2004). The mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and in Abu Ghraib prison, among others, in Iraq became an election issue.
63. See Ronald Dworkin, 'The Supreme Court and Guantanamo', New York Review of Books, L1, 13 (12 August 2004).
64. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), p. 40.
65. On the misconstruing of liberal internationalists in the interwar period as pacifists, see David H. Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain 1920-1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
66. Andrew Moravscik, 'Integrating Domestic and International Theories of International Bargaining', in Peter Evans et al., Double-Edged Diplomacy, p. 12.
67. Gideon Rose. 'Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy'. World Politics, 51, October 1998.
68. Mearsheimer, 'Lying,' p. 18.
69. George Kennan, Memories 1950-1963 (New York: Pantheon, 1972), p. 56.
70. Quoted in A. L. Rowse, Appeasement: A Study in Political Decline 1933-39 (New York: Norton, 1963), p. 12.
71. Ibid, pp. 14, 117. Rowse said that only a 'ruinous foreign policy' separated him from Conservatives since he had 'no illusions about people's average intelligence' and the 'humbug of the welfare state'. The Labour Party 'for all the lunatic fringe it had to carry of pacifists and illusionists - did stand for collective security', (pp. 111, 112)
72. See David H. Edgerton, England and The Aeroplane (London: Macmillan, 1991) p. 71: Clive Pointing, 1940: Myth and Reality (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1990), p. 30;
73. and Keith Robbins, Appeasement (London: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 44. Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott in The Appeasers (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963). p. 59 mistakenly state that in 1935 the three major British parties refused to endorse a White Paper recommendation for rearmament, and suggest that by 1939 British air power lagged behind Germany. During a flap over aviation hero Lindberg's overestimate of German airpower in 1938, British intelligence knew that they were not outnumbered but were not going to say so.
74. Rowse, Appeasement, p. 80.
75. Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane, pp. 37, 43.
76. Robbins, Appeasement, p. 44. On the British public showing more perspicuity than their government,
77. see Richard Rosecrance and Zara Steiner, "British Grand Strategy and the Origins of World War It, in Rosecrance and Art Stein (eds.), The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). pp. 136. 139, 147-8.
78. Also see Lucian M. Ashworth, 'Where are the Idealists in Interwar International Relations?', Review of International Studies'. 32:2 (April 2006).
79. William O'Neill, A Democracy at War (New York: New Press, 1993), p. 59. By his own account an anus buildup began in 1934-35, with a massive naval construction programme in 1936. Actually, FDR ordained naval rearmament during his first year in office.
80. See William McBride, 'The Unstable Dynamics of a Strategic Technology: Disarmament, Unemployment, and the Interwar Battleship', Technology and Culture (April 1997), pp. 386, 389.
81. O'Neill. A Democracy at War, pp. 107-8. On the interest-laden idiosyncracies of isolationism,
82. see Franz Schurmann, The Logic of World Power (New York: Pantheon, 1974), ch. 1.
83. Robert Shogan, Hard Bargain (New York: Scribners, 1994). p. 267;
84. Kenneth Davis, FDR: Into The Storm 1937-1940 (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 565.
85. Shogan, Hard Bargain, pp. 267-8.
86. O'Neill, A Democracy at War, p. 86.
87. Joseph E. Persico, Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage (New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 86, 87.
88. Wehrmacht troops were punishing 'Polish impudence' and liberating ethnic Germans 'from the Polish yoke'. Initially, soldiers were kept in the dark as to einsatzgruppen activities but Army-SS cooperation was so high as ultimately to make little difference in their respective conduct. Alexander B. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology and Atrocity (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2003), pp. 10, 27, 58-9, 87.
89. William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979).
90. Blowback is a cost that elites inflict on their own populations, partly because it often (though not always, as the 2004 Spanish election attests) redounds to the elites' advantage.
91. Gabriel Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger, 1950), p. 69.
92. The people make 'a dangerous master' in foreign policy, according to Walter Lippman in his Essays on the Public Philosophy (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1995), p. 558. In response,
93. see Ole Holsti,'Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the Almond-Lippman Thesis', International Studies Quarterly, 36 (1992).
94. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power (New York: Basic Books), p. 21.
95. Kaase and Newton, Belief in Government, p. 107.
96. Also see Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro, The Rational Public (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1992).
97. Bruce Jentleson, 'The Pretty Prudent Public: Post-Vietnam American Opinion and the Use of Military Force', International Studies Quarterly, 36 (1992), p. 71.
98. Also see Bruce Jentleson and Rebecca Britton, 'Still Pretty Prudent: Post-Cold War American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force', Journal of Conflict Resolution, 42:4 (1998).
99. Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1991).
100. Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1990).
101. Also see Robert Shapiro and Lawrence Jacobs, 'Who Leads? Who Follows? US Presidents, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy', in Brigitte L. Nacos, Robert Shapiro and Pierangelo Isneria (eds.), Decision-making in a Glass House: Mass Media, Public Opinion, and American and European Foreign. Policy in the 21st Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).
102. Mearsheimer, 'Lying', p. 19.
103. Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (Hertfordshire: Hammondsworth, 1998), p. 39.
104. Steven Kull and Clay Ramsay, 'The Myth of the Reactive Public: American Public Attitudes on Military Fatalities in the Post-Cold War Period', in Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia (eds.), Public Opinion and the International Use of Force (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 6.
105. Ibid. p. 12. 'In Korea and Vietnam it is more likely that support diminished as the public came to question the purposes of the wars and their likelihood of success' (emphasis mine), p. 20.
106. Capt. Marc Hedahl, who teaches ethics at the Air Force Academy, notes: 'Most military members have used the Washington Post test at some point in their careers. If you are facing an ethical dilemma, then you simply ask yourself what you would do if you knew that your actions would make the front page of tomorrow's Washington Post. The test is easier to remember and employ than Kant's Categorical Imperative.' 2 February 2003 〈http://www.msnbc.com/news/ 752664〉.
107. Hans J. Morgenthau, 'Vietnam and the National Interest in Marvin Gettleman (ed.), Vietnam: History, Opinions and Documents of a Major World Crisis (New York: Fawcett, 1965), pp. 365-75.
108. Kurt Vonnegut told Morgenthau in the early 1970s that 'we've learned over the past eight years that the government will not respond to what we think and what we say. It simply is not interested.' Morgenthau ruefully agreed, Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons (New York: Delacorte Press, 1974), p. 271.
109. Robert Jervis, 'Realism in the Study of World Polities', International Organization, 52:4 (1998), p. 976.
110. Miroslav Nincic. Democracy and Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 38. 39-42, 54-5.
111. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 23.
112. Ian Ousby, Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-44 (London: Pimlico, 1999), p. 178.
113. Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners (New York: Knopf, 1996).
114. Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler's Greece (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 191.
115. Jack Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner, 'Moral and Legal Rhetoric in IR: A Rational Choice Perspective', paper presented at the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security, University of Chicago, 19 October 2000, p. 2.
116. Charles Townshend, 'Civilization and "Frightfulness": Air Control in the Middle East Between the Wars', in Chris Wagler (ed.), Warfare, Diplomacy and Politics: Essays in Honour of A. J. P. Taylor (London: Henry Hamilton, 1986). p. 151.
117. Roger Hilsman, 'Difficulties of Covering Vietnam', in Harrison Salisbury, Vietnam Reconsidered (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 126.
118. 'American reporters should go out and seek the truth', deduced Morley Safer, 'but only within the context of serving American foreign policy', p. 159.
119. William Prochnau, Once Upon a Distant War (New York: Vintage, 1996), pp. 59, 109, 130.
120. Neil Sheehan, The Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), p. 241.
121. Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 290.
122. Prochnau, Once Upon a Distant War, p. 69.
123. See 〈www.projectforaNewAmericanCentuy.org/ rebuildingamericasdefenses.pdf〉.
124. Mike Gravel, Pentagon Papers, vol. III (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974), p. 108.
125. 'I have one more problem for your computer', Johnson told advisers, 'will you feed into it how long it will take five hundred thousand angry Americans to climb that White House wall out there and lynch their President if he does something like that'. David Halberstam, The Best and The Brightest (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 641.
126. Bruce Franklin, Vietnam and other American Fantasies (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 200) p. 43.
127. James William Gibson, The Perfect War (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), pp. 64, 332.
128. Also Sheehan edition of the Pentagon Papers, pp. 316, 321, 470, 515.
129. Stephen Ambrose, Nixon, vol. II, pp. 377-8.
130. Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 57.
131. Ambrose, Nixon, vol. II, p. 301.
132. Ibid, p. 291.
133. Gabriel Kolko, Vietnam: Anatomy of a War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), p. 321.
134. Tom Wells, The War Within (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), p. 5-6.
135. Also the Clifford Group report in Sheehan, The Pentagon Papers, p. 601-2;
136. Terry Anderson, The Movement and The Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 237-8;
137. and Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), pp. 129-31, 195.
138. On LBJ's decision not to run again, see Ginsberg, The Captive Public, p. 67.
139. Berman, No Peace, No Honor, pp. 6, 7.
140. Ibid. p. 262. A Gallup poll found 71 per cent said no to bombing North Vietnam if it 'does try to take over South Vietnam' and 79 per cent opposed sending in ground troops.
141. Interview with Daniel Ellsberg.
142. Adam Garfinkel, Tell Tale Hearts: The Origin and Impact of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (New York, 1995), pp. 17-19, 264.
143. A Gallup poll in 1971 showed 60 per cent with college education favouring withdrawal, 75 per cent with a high school diploma, and 80 per cent of those with only a grade school education. Bruce Franklin, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, p. 57.
144. See Lawrence Lichty, 'Comments on the Influence of Television on Public Opinion', in Peter Braestrup (ed.), Vietnam as History (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1989), p. 158.
145. Ray McGovern, CIA Director Caves In, Counterpunch, 13 February 2003.
146. Also see C. Michael Hiam, Who the Hell are We Fighting? The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence War (South Royaton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2006).
147. Rhodri Jeffrey-Jones, Peace Now! American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1999), p. 83.
148. No More Vietnams (New York: Arbor House, 1985), p. 102.
149. See Daniel Hallin, The 'Uncensored War: The Media in Vietnam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), and Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, pp. 342-8.
150. See Theodore Draper, A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affair (New York: Hill & Wang, 1991);
151. Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-87 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991),
152. and a Reagan administration viewpoint, Michael Ledeen, Perilous Statecraft (New York: Scribner, 1992).
153. See Samuel Segev, The Iranian Triangle: The Untold Story of Israel's Role in the Iran-Contra Affair (New York: Free Press, 1988).
154. Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era (South End Press, 1987), p. 29.
155. Draper, A Very Thin Line, p. 21.
156. Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Volume I: Investigations and Prosecutions, Lawrence E. Walsh Independent Counsel, Washington, 4 August 1993, p. 21, 〈http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/ 〉.
157. Also see Lawrence Walsh, Firewall: The Iran Conspiracy and Cover-up (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998).
158. Malcolm Byrne and Peter Kornbluh, 'The Press Indicts the Prosecutor', Columbia Journalism Review (March-April 1994), p. 23. 'An April 11, 1993, Washington Post Magazine profile of Walsh by Marjorie Williams dismissed Walsh's "sense of duty" as "anachronistic", and cited as an example his insistence 'that it was a serious matter - a serious crime - for members of the executive branch to lie to Congress' (p. 24).
159. Also see Byrne and Kornbluh, The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History (New York: The New Press, 1993).
160. On the unpopularity of Reagan's policies versus the popularity of the man, see Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn (New York: Hill & Wang, 1989).
161. Marshall et al., The Iran-Contra Connection, p. 27.
162. Duncan Campbell, 'Bush Appointments tainted by Reagan Era Scandal', The Guardian, 20 August 2001.
163. Quoted in David Brock, Blinded by The Right (New York: Crown, 2002), p. 44.
164. Alterman, Who Speaks for America?, p. 132.
165. The information was available in non-mainstream sources which only a small minority seek out. See Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Drug Trade (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill, 1991);
166. Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991);
167. and Alexander Cockburn, Whiteout (London: Verso, 1998).
168. See James Bamford, A Pretext for War (New York: Doubleday, 2004).
169. Blix, Disarming Iraq, pp. 260, 272. 'While the Iraqis had become frantic, though not very successful, about finding evidence of their innocence, the US had become frantic - but also not very successful - about finding convincing evidence of Iraqi guilt' (p. 11).
170. Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and The Pentagon Papers (New York: Little, Brown, 2002), p. 23.
171. Margaret H. Belknap, 'The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk?' Parameters (Autumn 2002). In the US, 'stab in the back' is as popular an explanation for military failure in Vietnam as it was in Germany after 1918.
172. On American insiders, see Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terrorism (New York: Free Press, 2004),
173. and Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, The White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill (New York, 2004).
174. Also see Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004);
175. Michael Sheuer, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (New York: Potomac Books, 2004),
176. and Blix, Disarming Iraq.
177. Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling (New York: Norton, 2004), p. 260.
178. Reported in London's Sunday Times, 1 May 2005.
179. On British lack of veracity, see David Miller, Big and Little Lies', in David Miller (ed.), Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq (London: Pluto, 2004).
180. John Kurt Jacobsen, Chasing Progress in the Irish Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 1-22.
181. Kenneth N. Waltz, 'Laws and Theories', in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 62-3.
182. For constructivists, norms shape identities and preferences in ways that transcend material or instrumental aims. Talk about norms can alter the content and efficacy of international norms. A problem arises regarding 'identities' when they are cultivated as deceptions. Receding mirror images appear. The concept of 'identity' of States looks less compelling when one confronts the problems of prevarication, or dual/triple messaging, with respect to different audiences. When a peddled illusion becomes the basis for policy, it becomes a dangerous 'social fact'. Myths generate an entrancing reality of their own, which does not make them any less myths. So is 'lies all the way down' the bedrock for identities inasmuch as every State deceives? Yet this proposition suggests that there is a recognisable basis - perhaps itself composed of a melange of misconceptions and prejudices - from which the liar departs. If identity can be a veneer - different things to different audiences - then what, one is entitled to ask, is it a veneer over? See John Kurt Jacobsen, 'Duelling Constructivisms: A Post-Mortem on the Ideas Debate in Mainstream IR/IPE', Review of International Studies, 29:1 (2003).
183. Rose, 'Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy'.
184. For a reconsideration of Carr's 'historical realism', see David Goldfisher, 'E. H. Carr: An "Historical Realist" Approach for the Globalization Era', Review of International Studies, 28 (2002), pp. 697-717.
185. Mearsheimer, 'Lying', p. 12.
186. Alexander Todorov and Anesu N. Mandisodza, 'Public Opinion on Foreign Policy: The Multilateral Public that perceives itself as Unilateral'. Policy Brief, Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs, September 2003, p. 1.
187. Ibid. The 16 per cent who are unilateralists thought 54 per cent shared their views while the 71 per cent who believed the 'US should do its fair share' assumed only 49 per cent shared their views.
188. The four categories are hawks, pragmatists, doves, and isolationists. Ronald Asmus, Philip Everts, and Pierangelo Isernia, 'Power, War, and Public Opinion: Thoughts on the Nature and Structure of the Trans-Atlantic Divide', Policy Review, 123 (February/March 2004).pp 73-88.
189. See the Pew Research Centre for People and the Press Study at 〈http://peoplepress.org/reports/display.php3?PageID = 1016〉.
190. The UN Security Council appeared, prior to the invasion of Iraq, as a last resort in order for an Americans to restrain their own government. One sees similar motives in the case of European Union, where citizens sometimes view the ELT institutions as a means to establish fair rules and practices they cannot count on their own governments to provide.
191. Kennan, At A Century's End, p. 279.
192. The University of Michigan Center for Political Studies polls find that whereas in 1958 over three quarters (76.3 per cent) of respondents said they believed their government was run for the 'benefit of all the people', by 1972 only 37.7 per cent did, and by 1994 the figure had fallen under a fifth (19 per cent). Two-thirds said that the country was governed for the sake of a 'few big interests'. Cited in H. Bruce Franklin, Vietnam and Other Fantasies (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 2000), pp. 43, 46.