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.256 Telling Liestrickery is not the path of wisdom but of disaster for adiplomat.Since one has to deal with the same person overand over again, one can get away with it only once at best,and then only at the cost of [permanent] stifling of therelationship."11 Perhaps a diplomat can acknowledge theimportance of deceit only after his career is over, and it isnot by any means certain that is yet so for Kissinger.In anycase, his account of his own diplomatic efforts is repletewith examples of how he engaged in what I term conceal-ment and half-concealment lies, as well as many instancesin which he wondered whether his counterparts were en-gaging in concealment or falsification lies.Stalin put it most bluntly: "[A] diplomat's words musthave no relations to actions otherwise what kind of diplo-macy is it?.Good words are a concealment of bad deeds.Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water oriron wood."12 This is obviously too extreme a statement.Sometimes diplomats do speak truthfully, but certainly notalways, and rarely when being truthful would seriouslyharm their nations' interests.When there is no doubt thatonly one policy can advance a nation's interests, other na-tions know what to expect, lying won't be an issue, and itprobably won't be tried, because it would be so obviouslyfalse.Often matters are more ambiguous.One nation be-lieves that another nation thinks it could gain by secretacts, cheating, or misleading proclamations, even if theirdishonest acts are discovered later.Then assessments ofnational interests are not sufficient, and nor are the dis-trusted nation's words or public actions.A nation sus-pected of deceit would claim to be trustworthy just aswould a truly trustworthy nation.Jervis notes: "Whetherthe Russians were going to cheat [in regard to the nucleartest ban] or not they would try to create the impression ofhonesty.Both an honest man and a liar will answer affirma-tively if asked whether they will tell the truth."13Lie Checking257It is no wonder then that governments seek ways todetect lying by their adversaries.International deceits canoccur in a number of different contexts, to serve quitedifferent national objectives.One context, already men-tioned, is when leaders, or high-ranking officials who repre-sent a leader, meet in an attempt to resolve an internationalcrisis.Each side may wish to bluff, to have offers that arenot final perceived to be, and to have true intentions notrecognized.Each side will also wish at times to make cer-tain that the adversary accurately perceives those threatsthat are not bluffs, those offers that are final, those inten-tions that will be realized.Skill in lying or lie catching is also important to concealor uncover a surprise attack.The political scientist MichaelHandel described a recent example: "By 2 June [1967] itbecame clear to the Israeli Government that war was unav-oidable.The problem was how to launch a successful sur-prise attack while both sides were fully mobilized and alert.As part of a deception plan to conceal Israel's intention togo to war, Dayan [the Israeli defense minister] told a Brit-ish journalist on 2 June that it was both too early and toolate for Israel to go to war.He repeated this statementduring a news conference on 3 June."14 While this was notthe only means Israel used to fool its opponents, Dayan'sskill in lying was relevant to their success in achieving atotal surprise in their attack on June 5.Still another use of deception is to mislead an opponentabout the deceiver's military capability.Barton Whaley'sanalysis of Germany's covert rearmament from 1919 to1939 provides numerous examples of how skillfully theGermans did this.[I]n August 1938, as the Czechoslovak crisis was heating upunder Hitler's pressure, [German Air Marshal] Hermann Gor-ing invited the chiefs of the French Armee de l'Air to an inspec-258Telling Liestion tour of the Luftwaffe.General Joseph Vuillemin, Chief of theAir General Staff, promptly accepted.[German GeneralErnst Udet] took Vuillemin up in his personal courier plane.As Udet brought the slow plane in at near stalling speed, themoment he had carefully planned.for his visitor's benefitarrived.Suddenly a Heinkel He-100 streaked past at full throttle,a mere blur and a hiss.Both planes landed and the Germans tooktheir startled French visitors over to inspect."Tell me, Udet,"[German General] Milch asked with feigned casualness, "how faralong are we with mass production?" Udet, on cue, replied, "Oh,the second production line is ready and third will be within twoweeks." Vuillemin looked crestfallen and blurted out to Milchthat he was "shattered.".The French air delegation returnedto Paris with the defeatist word that the Luftwaffe was unbeat-able.15The He-100 aircraft, whose speed was magnified by thistrick, was one of only three ever built.This kind ofbluffing, pretending unbeatable air power, ".became animportant ingredient in Hitler's diplomatic negotiationswhich led to his brilliant series of triumphs; the policy ofappeasement was founded partially on the fear of the Luft-waffe."16While international deceits do not always require directpersonal contact between liar and target (they can be ac-complished by camouflage, false communiques, and so on),these examples illustrate that there are occasions when thelie is face-to-face.A polygraph or any other intrusive devicethat requires the opponent to cooperate in having his truth-fulness measured can't be used.So interest in the last tenyears has turned to whether it would be possible to usescientific studies of behavioral clues to deceit.I explainedin the Introduction that when I met with officials from ourown government, and officials from other governments,my cautions about the dangers did not seem to impressthem.One of my motives in writing this book is to makeLie Checking259my case for caution again, with more care and complete-ness, and to make it available to more than just the fewofficials with whom I have consulted.As with criminaldeceits, the choices are not simple.Sometimes behavioralclues to deceit might help to identify whether a leader orother national spokesman is lying.The problem is to figureout when that will be possible and when it won't, and whenleaders may be misled by their own or their experts' assess-ments of clues to deceit.Let's go back to the example I used in the first page ofthis book, when Chamberlain met Hitler for the first time,at Berchtesgaden, on September 15, 1938, fifteen days be-fore the Munich Conference.* Hitler sought to convinceChamberlain that he did not plan war against Europe, thathe only wished to solve the problem of the Sudeten Ger-mans in Czechoslovakia.If Britain would agree to his plan a plebiscite should be held in those areas of Czecho-slovakia in which the majority of the population were Su-deten Germans, and if the people voted for it, those areaswould be annexed to Germany then Hitler would not goto war.Secretly Hitler was already committed to war.Hehad already mobilized his army to attack Czechoslovakia onOctober 1, and his plans for military conquest did not stopthere.Recall my earlier quote from Chamberlain's letter tohis sister after this first meeting with Hitler: ".[Hitleris] a man who could be relied upon when he had given hisword [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]