John Mearsheimer

Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics by John Mearsheimer

December 2011–January 2012, no. 337

Politics is a demanding profession that calls for skills of leadership and oratory, as well as management, analysis, and even theatre. Asking a politician to be truthful as well may be looking a gift-horse in the mouth. But we do. Misleading parliament by being ‘untruthful’ (‘lying’ is so reprehensible that it is unparliamentary to accuse a member of it) is a serious offence. In the US presidential system, where the executive is independent of the legislature and the head of government is also head of state, the great deterrent to lying is the authority that Congress has to censure and expel its members and to impeach officials, including the president.

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The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt

by Peter Rodgers •

February 2008, no. 298

Peter Rodgers reviews 'The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy' by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

The day I began writing this review, the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) news service carried three items reflecting the umbilical nature of ties between the United States and Israel. One item reported President George W. Bush as threatening to veto an intelligence bill because it would require revelations about a mysterious Israeli air attack on Syria on September 6. A second reported the Bush administration’s delaying a request to Congress for approval of an arms sale to Saudi Arabia. The sale forms part of a $20 billion deal with Arab nations, aimed at a united front against Iran, but ‘some pro-Israeli groups and Congress members say it is risky to sell offensive arms to a régime that has at times harboured militant Islamists’. The third item dealt with a bill to fully integrate the United States and Israeli missile defence systems. The bill’s congressional sponsor hailed it as ‘a symbol of our shared values and a safer 21^st century’.

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