Idealism

Neither active idealism (a massive humanitarian intervention) nor defensive realism (an anticommunist security strategy) quite comes to grips with the Marshall Plan’s rationale. Americans would not have been so committed to spending these large, sacrificial sums except that their own core beliefs, values, and institutions were at risk.

Many Christian elites will not like Donald Trump’s United Nations speech this week, whose key phrase was “we reject the ideology of globalism and accept the doctrine of patriotism.”

Most Christians, including most evangelicals, have been falling over themselves to denounce Jeff Sessions. But the way this immigration debate is carried out too often mirrors the political debate.

The foreign policies of Teddy Roosevelt and his distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt represent an intersection between two different Protestant worldviews.

HBO’s The Final Year traverses the globe, from Africa to the Arctic, Havana to Hanoi, but it is in Syria where the cockfight personified by Samantha Power and Ben Rhodes climaxes. Indeed, President Obama claims that “on no other issue was there such a split” between them.

The idealists desire a global government; the realists see the problem of power. Niebuhr explains, critiques, and offers wisdom for an international body.

This article about the tools necessary to defeat Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers was originally published in Christianity and Crisis on August 10, 1942.  Examining the relationship between ideals and power throughout history, editor Reinhold Niebuhr argues the importance of discerning and then actualizing, the Allied Powers’ potential power. Conversely, he advocates against succumbing to the belief that Nazi defeat is inevitable.

With his novel concept of sovereign obligation in A World in Disarray, Richard Haass makes an important advance in the search for peace in a disoriented world. But its advances fall short, unable to grasp the essential moral quality of world order.