How Niebuhr can steer Obama through choppy waters

President Barack Obama says that Reinhold Niebuhr is “one of my favourite philosophers”. In an interview with the New York Times in 2007, he told journalist David Brooks that the 20th-century Protestant theologian had helped him grasp “the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain ... we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.” That’s not just a politician trying to sound clever. Obama really does seem to know his Niebuhr. Brooks later revealed that the then junior Senator for Illinois – at that time still considered a long shot for the presidency – spoke eloquently about Niebuhr for 20 minutes. “He gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you,” said Brooks.
Now Obama is the most powerful man in the world, which invites the question: has he applied Niebuhr’s wisdom to his statecraft? The answer is unclear.
Niebuhr, who died in 1971, is often described as the chief expo nent of Christian realism, a 20thcentury movement grounded in the teaching of St Augustine. Niebuhr sought to use theology to interpret questions of modern politics and diplomacy. He was fiercely anti-Communist. Yet he was also a sharp critic of American jingoism – and what is often called American exceptionalism. He regarded the Vietnam War as unjust.
His seminal work, The Irony of American History, is today seen by admirers as prophetic, given the troubled history of American internationalism since the “unipolar moment” when the Berlin Wall fell and the US emerged as the world’s super power. Andrew Bacevich, professor of International Relations at Boston University, says Niebuhr “summons us to toss aside what he calls ‘the halo of moral sanctity’ and to disenthrall ourselves from the self-aggrandising parable in which we cast America as the liberator of the world’s oppressed”. Obama’s supporters would say that the President’s foreign policy has so far been informed by a decidedly Niebuhrian realism – a contrast to George W Bush, who liked to speak in Manichean terms about the global battle of “good versus evil”. Obama, who opposed the Iraq War from its beginning, has attempted to improve America’s international standing through negotiation and compromise.
The White House has confirmed, for instance, that the US will abandon plans to build a galactically expensive missile defence “shield” in Eastern Europe, described by one Obama staffer as “a system that won’t work, against a threat that doesn’t exist, paid for with money we don’t have”.
But the real test of Obama’s Niebuhrian bona fides might just be the one he now faces over the conflict in Afghanistan, which last week marked its eighth anniversary. Opponents of the war are calling the Afghanistan struggle “Obama’s Vietnam”, an entanglement that risks derailing his presidency. The commanderin-chief must choose between humiliating withdrawal or plunging on in an unpopular and apparently futile conflict. Obama seems eager to scale back America’s military operations, yet his administration is under consider able political pressure from the Pentagon and others to increase America’s commitment to building democracy in the region. General Stanley McChrystal, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, says another huge investment in soldiers and resources is required. But Obama initiated a massive troop “surge” earlier this year to little effect, so perhaps a change in strategy is required.
The President thus stands at an agonising diplomatic crossroads. The White House announced last week that Obama needed time to make the right decision. He might take a moment to re-read some Reinhold Niebuhr.