Dr Ashraf Abul Saud
Throughout history, political lying has not been just an occasional mistake or moral slip-up.
In many cases, it has become a deliberate tool for managing power.
This does not mean the entire world runs on lies. But it does show that countries do not just fight over land, resources, or money. They also battle over the stories that explain the world and justify their actions.
Take the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. The US accused North Vietnamese forces of attacking an American destroyer.
That event gave President Lyndon Johnson the green light to dramatically expand the war in Vietnam.
Years later, newly released documents and testimonies raised serious doubts about what really happened.
What started as a murky naval clash became a textbook example of how questionable information can drag a superpower into a long, costly war.
A few years after that came Watergate. It began with a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in 1972 and snowballed into one of the biggest scandals in American history.
When the official story fell apart, President Richard Nixon had to resign.
Watergate showed how lying, instead of protecting power, can destroy it.
In the 1980s, the Iran-Contra affair exposed the messy side of foreign policy.
While President Reagan publicly took a hard line against Iran, his administration secretly sold weapons to Tehran to free American hostages and used the money to fund rebels in Nicaragua.
It raised tough questions about how far governments will go when their goals clash with public rules and laws.
Then came the 2003 Iraq War. The US and its allies insisted Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
That claim was central to justifying the invasion. After the regime fell, inspectors found no such weapons.
The Iraq case is still brought up today as a prime example of how flawed or exaggerated intelligence can lead to major wars.
With Donald Trump, the issue went beyond single events. Fact-checking organisations recorded thousands of misleading or false statements.
It started to feel like questioning basic truth had become normal in politics. So why do leaders and governments spread misleading narratives?
Here are some common reasons.
Some countries exaggerate their successes or paint themselves as champions of democracy and human rights, even when their actions do not match the image.
Governments sometimes create scary stories about their enemies to make their own people fear and hate them, turning rivals into existential threats.
They deny secret operations in other countries to avoid public backlash or damaged international relations.
For example, when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane in 1960, the US first claimed it was just a lost weather plane.
In 2005, the US reportedly used a false story about North Korea selling uranium to Libya to pressure its Asian allies into taking the threat more seriously.
Leaders sometimes invent or exaggerate external threats to shift attention away from domestic problems.
Margaret Thatcher did this during the 1982 Falklands War.
While Britain faced high inflation and unemployment, she emphasised the islands’ importance, rallied the public, and emerged stronger, earning the nickname “Iron Lady”.
In the end, there are two versions of the truth: what actually happened, and what is told to the public.
Many of history’s biggest decisions are made in the space between them, decisions that can reshape the world or erase entire chapters of it.
Dr Ashraf Abul Saud is a writer and an international
relations scholar. [email protected]
