Borrowing from St. Augustine, he argued that nations are driven by a libido dominandi (desire to dominate) that hides behind high-sounding ideals.
He warned that "idealists" who ignore power dynamics actually make the world more dangerous by being unprepared for real-world tyrants. A Legacy of "The Father of Us All" 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
