Reinhold Niebuhr And International Relations Th... -

Niebuhr began his career as a pacifist, horrified by the carnage of World War I. But as he watched the rise of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the 1930s, he realized that "doing nothing" was its own kind of moral failure.

Borrowing from St. Augustine, he argued that nations are driven by a libido dominandi (desire to dominate) that hides behind high-sounding ideals. Reinhold Niebuhr and International Relations Th...

Niebuhr’s story is the birth of , a framework that transformed how we think about power and nations. The Great Awakening Niebuhr began his career as a pacifist, horrified

By the Cold War, Niebuhr had become a "prophet" for the American establishment. Political giants like (the architect of containment) and Hans Morgenthau (the father of modern Realism) cited him as their primary inspiration. Kennan famously called him "the father of all of us". Go to product viewer dialog for this item. Augustine, he argued that nations are driven by

He believed individuals could be moral, but groups—especially nations—are almost always selfish. He called this "Moral Man and Immoral Society".

Niebuhr’s "International Relations theory" (though he never wrote a single textbook on it) rests on a few haunting truths about human nature:

Niebuhrian International Relations: The Ethics of Foreign Policymaking