Review: Why Leaders Lie The Truth About Lying in International Politics
| DOI | 10.1177/002070201106600407 |
| Author | Kari Roberts |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Published date | 01 December 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Coming AttractionsReview |
| 1072 | Autumn 2011 | International Journal |
| Reviews |
Raj does indeed haunt present-day Pakistan to an extent that is not true of
independent India.
In A Passage to India, E.M. Forster draws the classic portrait of the
Anglo-Indian mind, or at least its dominant strain as represented by the
military officer corps and the civil servants, the herd-like habitués of the all-
white colonial club, the toadies and Tories—“the Turtons and Burtons” as
the author calls them. In a famous passage, one of the civil servants, Ronny,
has an exchange with his mother, a lady of ecumenical religious longing and
human sympathies, about the proper British mission on the subcontinent.
“We’re not pleasant in India, and we don’t intend to be pleasant,” the British
official insists. “We’ve something more important to do. I am out here…to
hold this wretched country by force.”
This was of course exactly the attitude of the 5th Royal Gurka Rifles
(Frontier Force) and of those whom Lieven perhaps a little fatuously calls
“their successors.” Read side by side with Pakistan: A Hard Country, Forster’s
novel of 1924 does indeed suggest that today’s professor of war studies, for
all the time he has spent in cantonment guest houses and the officers mess
on the subcontinent, has yet to make a comprehensive or fully satisfactory
passage to Pakistan.
James Eldin Reed/Massachusetts Fulbright Association, Boston
WHY LEADERS LIE
The Truth About Lying in International Politics
John J. Mearsheimer
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 142pp, US$21.95 cloth
ISBN: 978-0-19-975873-9
What would be considered unacceptable behaviour in daily life finds
acceptance in international politics. Most societies find murder reprehensible
and punish it by law, but it remains an unfortunate and necessary by-product
of statecraft. War happens. So, it seems, does lying.
John Mearsheimer, famous for explaining the tragedy of competition
among the great powers, adds lying to the toolkit of international statecraft.
At the outset of his new book, Mearsheimer notes that it is common to
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