Time (Again) for a Niebuhrian Revival

A little over a decade and a half ago, at the close of the what had been up, until that point, among the most arrogant and clueless of American presidencies, there seemed, if for only a short while, a yearning both within Washington and the country at large for a return to normalcy, a desire to abandon the unilateralism and wars of choice that became the hallmark of U.S. foreign policy beginning on September 11, 2001.

The desire to rethink the prevailing assumptions of hegemony and endless war manifested itself in some quarters, mainly among journalists and intellectuals, in a renewed interest in the work of the mid-20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, known, if at all, among the churchgoing public as the author of the Serenity Prayer. The son of a German pastor, Niebuhr was born in 1892 in Wright City, Missouri. He became among the most trenchant critics of America’s postwar transformation into a Cold War hegemon, which he saw as antithetical to both the best traditions of the country and to a vibrant and healthy democracy. 

Niebuhr understood that the exercise of global power in the postwar decades came with its own set of problems. The intellectual historian Wilfred MaClay has observed that for Niebuhr, “the pursuit of good ends in the arenas of national and international politics had to take full account of the un-loveliness of human nature, and the un-loveliness of power.”

As far as I can tell, the first major public intellectual to call for a Niebuhrian Revival was the international relations scholar Andrew Bacevich in 2008. At the time, hopes were high among conservatives (remember the ObamaCons?) that Obama, thoughtful, measured, mature, and, perhaps most importantly, Not Hillary, would take U.S. foreign policy in new, less sanguinary directions. He gave every indication that he might. Speaking with David Brooks in 2007, Obama claimed Niebuhr was his “favorite philosopher.” In 2009, the Pew Research Center held a conference featuring E.J. Dionne on “the recent revival of interest in Niebuhrian thought.” And as late as 2014, a TIME magazine contributor claimed to have “heard a distinct Niebuhrian strain” in a speech Obama gave on the Middle East.

It was not surprising that after eight years of Bush-Cheney— which brought us military disaster, economic ruin, and national disgrace—there would be a renewed interest in the work of Niebuhr who, in his 1952 book The Irony of American History, observed that,

if we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.

Unfortunately, Obama’s repudiation of Washington’s imperial arrogance was short lived. In some ways, in spite of a few adroitly delivered speeches, his foreign policy exhibited an arrogance on par with that of his predecessor: The destruction of Libya; the attempted destruction of Syria; and a new and more dangerous Cold War with Russia are among Obama’s troubling legacies. 

Today, President Joe Biden, overseeing what is for all intents and purposes a third Obama term, makes Bush, Cheney and Co. seem almost humble by comparison. Niebuhr, citing John Adams, recognized what Biden and his team of liberal interventionists (they refer to themselves, by the way, as “the A-Team”) clearly do not, that power,

always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.

Consider the recent televised exchange between Biden and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:

Stephanopoulos: Would you be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognit– cognitive tests and release the results to the American people?

Biden: Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not—and that’s not hy—sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.

Read that again: I am running the world. We are the essential nation of the world. Comments like these make it clear that among the greatest dangers we face is the unmitigated, undisguised hubris of our elected leaders.

Which brings us to the man of the hour. 

Having been, by luck or some otherworldly power, spared his life after the nearest of misses, there are signs that the former President Trump might take a more measured, mature approach going forward. In a widely read interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump said he re-drafted his RNC acceptance address in light of last weekend’s assassination attempt. “It is,” he said, “a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance.”

It might be too much to expect that the foreign policy proposals of his current crop of advisers will likewise undergo a thoughtful reconsideration. Time will tell. But Reinhold Niebuhr understood the “ironies of history.” Might it be Donald Trump, of all people, to be the one who brings us just a bit closer to that long hoped for Niebuhrian Revival?

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