The deception dividend: FDR's undeclared war

International Security

Volumn 34, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 133-165

  Schuessler, John M ^a  

^a Department of Leadership and Strategy ^*  (United States)

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EID: 77954300582     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.2010.34.4.133     Document Type: Article

References (164)

1. I define "deception" as deliberate attempts by leaders to mislead the public about the thrust of official thinking, in this case about the decision to go to war. Deception can take different forms. Lying, where a leader makes a knowingly false statement, is a particularly blatant form of deception, but for that reason is also less common than other, subtler forms such as spinning, where a leader uses exaggerated rhetoric, and concealment, where a leader withholds vital information. Deception campaigns invariably involve all three of types of deception.
2. For more on the different kinds of deception, see John J. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
3. Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).
4. There are two basic logics underpinning the democratic peace: a normative one and an institutional one. Public constraint is one of the causal mechanisms making up the institutional logic. See Sebastian Rosato, "The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 4 (November 2003), pp. 585-602.
5. Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Fallacy of Political Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), chap. 5.
6. For foundational treatments of realism, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
7. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
8. Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 5-49.
9. Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy, pp. 6-11.
10. Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).
11. Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), pp. 223-224.
12. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, p. 29.
13. Alexander B. Downes points out that the statistical significance of Reiter and Stam's results depends on two choices: their decision to equate war targets and joiners and their decision to exclude draws. See Downes, "How Smart and Tough Are Democracies? Reassessing Theories of Democratic Victory in War," International Security, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Spring 2009), pp. 9-51.
14. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, chaps. 2, 6.
15. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Randolph M. Siverson, "War and the Survival of Political Leaders: A Comparative Study of Regime Types and Political Accountability," American Political Science Review, Vol. 89, No. 4 (December 1995), pp. 841-885.
16. On the process of collective deliberation, see Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 362-366.
17. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, p. 23.
18. The marketplace of ideas argument is made most fa mously by Jack Snyder. See Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 31-55.
19. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, chap. 3.
20. David A. Lake, "Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War," American Political Science Review, Vol. 86, No. 1 (March 1992), pp. 24-37.
21. Michael C. Desch, Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
22. On the impact of regime type on leaders' postwar fate, see H.E. Goemans, War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
23. Desch, Power and Military Effectiveness, pp. 49-51.
24. Desch drops six cases from consideration because the democracies in question did not actually initiate war. These include the Boxer Rebellion (1900), the Czech-Hungarian War (1919), and World War II (1941-45).
25. David M. Edelstein, "Review of Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism," Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 6, No. 4 (December 2008), pp. 863-864.
26. Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, "Understanding Victory: Why Political Institutions Matter," International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 168-179.
27. As Michael C. Desch points out, Reiter and Stam are inconsistent on this point. In their book, they go to some effort to dispel the notion that democracies win their wars because they are richer or better able to extract resources from their economies. See Desch, "Democracy and Victory: Fair Fights or Food Fights?" International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 185-186.
28. David Kinsella, "No Rest for the Democratic Peace," American Political Science Review, Vol. 99, No. 3 (August 2005), p. 455.
29. Branislav L. Slantchev, Anna Alexandrova, and Erik Gartzke, "Probabilistic Causality, Selection Bias, and the Logic of the Democratic Peace," American Political Science Review, Vol. 99, No. 3 (August 2005), p. 461.
30. Desch, Power and Military Effectiveness, p. 50.
31. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, p. 148.
32. Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009).
33. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler seek to qualify the less contingent claim, associated with John E. Mueller, that public support for war declines inexorably with mounting casualties.
34. See Mueller, "Trends in Support for the Wars in Korea or Vietnam," American Political Science Review, Vol. 65, No. 2 (June 1971), pp. 358-375.
35. Christensen, Useful Adversaries, p. 27.
36. On the sources of threat, see Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 21-26.
37. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 19.
38. John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), chap. 2, especially pp. 62-63.
39. Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), chap. 4, especially pp. 76-79.
40. Jack S. Levy, "Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War," World Politics, Vol. 40, No. 1 (October 1987), p. 87 (emphasis in original).
41. Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000).
42. Randall L. Schweller, "Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?" World Politics, Vol. 44, No. 2 (January 1992), p. 248.
43. Jack S. Levy and Joseph R. Gochal, "Democracy and Preventive War: Israel and the 1956 Sinai Campaign," Security Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Winter 2001/02), pp. 1-49.
44. Marc Trachtenberg, "Preventive War and U.S. Foreign Policy," Security Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (January-March 2007), pp. 1-31.
45. Scott A. Silverstone, Preventive War and American Democracy (New York: Routledge, 2007).
46. Jack S. Levy, "Preventive War and Democratic Politics," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 1-24.
47. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 140-143.
48. Michael C. Desch, When the Third World Matters: Latin America and United States Grand Strategy (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
49. Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America's Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
50. Robert J. Art, "The United States, the Balance of Power, and World War II: Was Spykman Right?" Security Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July-September 2005), pp. 365-406.
51. On buck-passing, see Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 157-158. 44. Ibid., chap. 7.
52. Downes's treatment of the Vietnam War suggests that domestic politics may also contribute to leaders' decisions to initiate war despite poor odds of victory. See Downes, "How Smart and Tough Are Democracies?".
53. Michael Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 1986), pp. 1151-1169.
54. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, p. 144.
55. I agree with Reiter and Stam that democratic leaders want to generate public consent before entering into war. Unlike them, however, I highlight the ways in which leaders can manufacture such consent, by way of deception.
56. Kenneth A. Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 82-83.
57. On the "polarization effect," see John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 100-113.
58. Alexander Thompson argues that when powerful coercers work through international organizations (IOs), they do so strategically to lower the international political costs of coercion. See Thompson, "Coercion through IO's: The Security Council and the Logic of Information Transmission," International Organization, Vol. 60, No. 1 (January 2006), p. 9. An additional benefit would be the enhanced domestic support that comes from giving diplomacy a chance, however half-heartedly.
59. Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. 25.
60. John E. Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973), pp. 208-213.
61. FDR's deceptions were a prominent theme in the first wave of revisionist scholarship on U.S. entry into World War II. See, for example, Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of War, 1941: Appearances and Realities (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948).
62. On the heuristic value of outliers, see Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), p. 75.
63. John Gerring, Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 105-108.
64. On tough tests, see George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Scences, pp. 120-123.
65. Gerring, Case Study Research, pp. 115-122.
66. For the impact of the Munich crisis on FDR's thinking, see Barbara Rearden Farnham, Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-Making (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).
67. On the perceived Nazi threat to the Western Hemisphere, see Desch, When the Third World Matters, chap. 3.
68. On the impact of the fall of France on U.S. thinking, see David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937-41: A Study in Competitive Cooperation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), pp. 108-113.
69. Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, comp. Samuel Rosenman, Vol. 9 (for 1940) (New York: Russell and Russell, 1941), p. 635.
70. Initially, military planners recommended a posture of hemispheric defense in response to Hitler's victories in Europe, but that consensus was short lived. See Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 24-29.
71. The Plan Dog memorandum is reprinted in Steven T. Ross, ed., American War Plans, 1919-1941, Vol. 3: Plans to Meet the Axis Threat, 1939-1940 (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 225-250. Direct quotes are taken from pp. 229, 241, and 247.
72. For FDR's reaction to Plan Dog, see James R. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy: Anglo-American Naval Collaboration, 1937-1941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pp. 202-205, 219.
73. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, pp. 33-37.
74. Quoted in Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), pp. 412, 415.
75. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, p. 49. In a separate estimate, the U.S. Army concluded that Germany's defeat would require the creation of a ground force of 215 divisions and nearly 9 million men.
76. Justus D. Doenecke, "Historiography: U.S. Policy and the European War, 1939-1941," Diplomatic History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 1995), p. 696.
77. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 288. 70. Ibid., pp. 218-219.
78. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, pp. 56-57.
79. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 212.
80. Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 265, 285.
81. Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War against Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 42.
82. Waldo Heinrichs concludes that, from the Atlantic Conference on, FDR was not seeking war but was knowingly risking it to forward supplies to the allies and contain Japan. He admits, though, that "it is hard to believe that he did not understand that sooner or later, one way or the other, this course of action would lead to war." See Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988), p. 159.
83. Casey, Cautious Crusade, p. 13.
84. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 145. Heinrichs represents the dominant view among historians when he describes U.S. policy in the Pacific in containment terms.
85. Scott D. Sagan, "From Deterrence to Coercion to War: The Road to Pearl Harbor," in Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994), p. 61.
86. Justus D. Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), p. 8.
87. David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt's America and the Origins of the Second World War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), p. 94.
88. Doenecke expands on all these themes in Storm on the Horizon.
89. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 109.
90. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 54.
91. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 292.
92. On public attitudes toward Nazi Germany and World War II, see Casey, Cautious Crusade, pp. 19-30.
93. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 267.
94. Paul W. Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1958), pp. 182-199.
95. Casey, Cautious Crusade, p. 30.
96. Quoted in Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 289.
97. FDR regularly consulted a variety of sources to stay abreast of popular attitudes. These included newspapers, media surveys, gossip, mail, and increasingly opinion polls. See Casey, Cautious Crusade, pp. 16-19.
98. Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, pp. 63-68.
99. Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 297.
100. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 82.
101. On the "common-law" alliance between the United States and Britain, see Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pt. 3.
102. Quoted in Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 250.
103. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. 9, p. 640.
104. On FDR's authorization of the talks, see Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy, pp. 202-205.
105. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 184.
106. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 273.
107. Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, p. 117.
108. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 30.
109. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 267.
110. William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940-1941 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953).
111. Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, comp. Samuel Rosenman, Vol. 10 (for 1941) (New York: Russell and Russell, 1950), pp. 181, 190.
112. Quoted in Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pp. 214-215.
113. Reynolds suggests that such bellicose rhetoric was meant to boost British morale and should not be taken at face value.
114. Quoted in Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 265. Stimson did not intend this remark as a compliment. He, along with other cabinet "hawks," grew increasingly frustrated with FDR for his indecisiveness during the spring and summer of 1941, as well as for his lack of candor with the public. Their fear, at least, was that FDR would not intervene soon enough to stave off disaster.
115. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, p. 216.
116. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, pp. 166-168.
117. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. 10, pp. 384, 386-387, 390.
118. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 292.
119. Gerhard L. Weinberg has argued that the Roosevelt administration exploited intercepted German naval messages to avoid rather than provoke incidents during this period.
120. See Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 240-241. Marc Trachtenberg rebuts these claims.
121. See Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 84-87.
122. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 109.
123. Roberta Wohlstetter's account remains definitive. See Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962).
124. David M. Kennedy, The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear, pt. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 90.
125. Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, p. 163.
126. The "back door" argument is made most famously by Charles Callan Tansill. See Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 (Chicago: Regnery, 1952).
127. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, chap. 4.
128. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, pp. 118-121.
129. Sagan, "From Deterrence to Coercion to War," pp. 66-67.
130. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 177.
131. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, pp. 273-274.
132. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, p. 96.
133. See, for example, Jonathan G. Utley, Going to War with Japan, 1937-1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985).
134. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, p. 100.
135. Trachtenberg rebuts Jonathan Utley's argument that Roosevelt had lost control of policy. He cites Waldo Heinrichs, who agrees that Roosevelt had some hand in the oil embargo but argues that it was intended to deter a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union (see Threshold of War, pp. 141-142).
136. What is puzzling, from this perspective, is why the embargo remained in effect even after it was clear that a Japanese attack on the Soviet Union was unlikely and why the United States insisted on a Japanese withdrawal from China as a condition of its removal.
137. Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations, p. 54.
138. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, p. 91.
139. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, p. 58.
140. Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations, pp. 100-101.
141. Quoted in Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 307.
142. Quoted in Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 428.
143. On the sense of relief surrounding Pearl Harbor, see Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 311.
144. Casey, Cautious Crusade, p. 47.
145. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, p. 129.
146. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, p. 126.
147. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy, pp. 225, 242.
148. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, p. 125.
149. See, for example, F.H. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, Vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 75.
150. Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, p. 127.
151. Richard F. Hill, Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor: Why the United States Declared War on Germany (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2003), p. 209 n. 37.
152. Trachtenberg, "Preventive War and U.S. Foreign Policy," p. 28.
153. Christensen, Useful Adversaries, p. 251.
154. Casey, Cautious Crusade, chap. 3.
155. Senator J. William Fulbright famously asserted in 1971, "FDR's deviousness in a good cause made it easier for LBJ to practice the same kind of deviousness in a bad cause."
156. Quoted in Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, p. 289.
157. Randall L. Schweller argues that democracies will be particularly slow to balance against threats.
158. See Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 48.
159. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995).
160. Risa A. Brooks and Elizabeth A. Stanley, eds., Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007).
161. For some skepticism on this point, see Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry into World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
162. On threat inflation in the context of the Iraq case, see A. Trevor Thrall and Jane K. Cramer, eds., American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation since 9/11 (London: Routledge, 2009).
163. George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: White House, September 2002).
164. John M. Schuessler, "Deception and the Iraq War," Air War College, 2009.