¹ Reinhold Niebuhr, Man's Nature and His Communities (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965), 71. Henceforth MNHC.

² Morgenthau, “The Influence of Reinhold Niebuhr in American Political Life and Thought,” in Harold R. Landon, ed., Reinhold Niebuhr: A Prophetic Voice in Our Time: Essays in Tribute by Paul Tillich, John C. Bennett, Hans Morgenthau (Greenwich, CT: Seabury Press, 1962), 109. Morgenthau went on to add that Niebuhr was “perhaps the only creative political philosopher since Calhoun.” Niebuhr, in a letter to his early biographer June Bingham, said he “was embarrassed by Morgenthau's comparison with Calhoun, the Apostle of slavery and with his rather amoral conception of politics instead of my conviction of the moral ambiguity of the political order.” Reinhold Niebuhr to June Bingham, 29 Oct. 1961, in the Reinhold Niebuhr Papers, Library of Congress.

³ Christoph Frei, Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2001). Citing a January 1954 letter from Morgenthau to Robert Good (who later co-authored the book Reinhold Niebuhr on Politics in 1959) Morgenthau claimed that Good was correct in “surmising that Reinhold Niebuhr's writings have made a profound impression on me,” adding, however, that “they have confirmed certain conclusions at which I arrived independently” (Frei's italics). From this Frei concluded that this “assessment is credible: ‘confirmation’ of previously established conclusions, ‘deepening’ and ‘stimulating’ – but no more than that” (112). Morgenthau's letter to Robert Good is cited at footnote 77. Frei also pointed out that Morgenthau was a 40-year-old man when he first met Niebuhr, he had not yet begun to read him much, and at that age his formative influences were already in place. Frei wants only to say that “Although they came from different experiences and traditions in terms of direct formative influences, they quickly discovered common ground, not only in terms of a broader Weltanschauung, but also in regard to more specific spheres of human endeavor” (110).

⁴ Ibid., 111. Later in the book Frei reiterates his claim by saying that Morgenthau “uses Niebuhr's terminology as an unobtrusive way of expressing his German intellectual heritage in America” (189).

⁵ H. Stuart Hughes, The Sea Change: The Migration of Social Thought, 1930–1965 (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 268–69.

⁶ Niebuhr to Morgenthau, 29 Oct. 1970, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress.

⁷ Morgenthau to Niebuhr, 13 Nov. 1970, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress. A copy of this letter is also in the Niebuhr Papers, Container 64, Library of Congress.

⁸ Martin Halliwell, The Constant Dialogue: Reinhold Niebuhr and American Intellectual Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 210.

⁹ Michael J. Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 134. Frei's rejection appears on page 111 of Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography.

¹⁰ Kenneth W. Thompson, Masters of International Thought (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 88.

¹¹ Perhaps Frei was correct in dismissing as at least an exaggeration Michael Smith's notion that Morgenthau incorporated, while secularizing, “Niebuhr's insights into a general theory of international politics.” However, Morgenthau surely did not get his appreciation for Lincoln while in Germany. And certainly he did not obtain his sense of the value of the contributions of Madison and Adams from his time spent as a young man in Europe. Then too one can hardly believe he sorted out the course of America's progression from its early realism to present-day idealism at the feet of his German teachers. No, Morgenthau came to this in America and most likely was aided in this awareness in some measure through the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr as much as by any other source.

¹² Roger L. Shinn, “Christian Realism in a Pluralistic Society: Interactions between Niebuhr, and Morgenthau, Kennan and Schlesinger,” in Eric Patterson, ed., The Christian Realists: Reassessing the Contributions of Niebuhr and his Contemporaries (New York: University Press of America, 2003), 185–86.

¹³ Morgenthau, “The Escape from Power,” in idem, Politics in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1, The Decline of Democratic Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 312. First published in Lyman Bryson, et al., eds., Conflicts of Power in Modern Culture, Seventh Symposium of the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947), 1–10.

¹⁴ Morgenthau noted that Niebuhr “has time and again made emphatically the point that the historic area – the social scene – is essentially different from nature, and that the intellectual methods which are capable of understanding politics and society in general are bound to be different from the methods which apply to the discovery of the secret of nature.” See Morgenthau, “The Influence of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 101.

¹⁵ Morgenthau, Scientific Man Versus Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), 236. Christoph Frei argues that while “working on Scientific Man vs. Power Politics at the University of Chicago (1944–45),” Mogenthau “drew heavily on his Frankfurt manuscript ‘On the Origins of the Political’ after a friend had translated the text into English.” Frei, 129.

¹⁶ Niebuhr, review of Scientific Man Versus Power Politics in Christianity and Society, 12, 2 (Spring 1947), 33–34. Five years later Niebuhr wrote, “It is worth noting here that, when political science is severed from its ancient rootage in the humanities and ‘enriched’ by the wisdom of sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists, the result is frequently a preoccupation with minutia which obscures the grand and tragic outlines of contemporary history, and offers vapid solutions for profound problems.” Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952), 60. Henceforth cited as IAH.

¹⁷ Morgenthau to Niebuhr, 16 May 1947, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress.

¹⁸ Niebuhr to Morgenthau, 20 May 1947, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress.

¹⁹ Morgenthau, “The Surrender to the Immanence of Power: E. H. Carr,” in idem, Politics in the Twentieth Century, Volume 3, The Restoration of American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 42. This tribute to Carr first appeared in idem, In Foundations for World Order (Denver: Social Science Foundation, University of Denver, 1948).

²⁰ Morgenthau, “The Surrender to the Immanence of Power,” 66.

²¹ Morgenthau, ed., Germany and the Future of Europe (University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1–11.

²² Morgenthau to Niebuhr, 23 April 1965, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress.

²³ Niebuhr to Morgenthau, 27 April 1965, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress.

²⁴ Richard W. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 269. Fox's assessment is quite harsh but his sketch of the Princeton chapter in Niebuhr's life is worth looking at for its detail. See 267–69.

²⁵ Ibid., 269. Kennan, one of America's premier diplomats and sovietologists, author of the important American Diplomacy: 1900–1950 (1951), and source of the famous “Mr. X” article appearing in the July 1946 issue of Foreign Affairs that gave rise to the often misunderstood and misapplied “containment” theory, knew and admired Niebuhr. It was Kennan, as chair of the State Department Policy Making Committee, who, at two three-day conferences held in June 1949, brought Niebuhr into the group as one of the outside consultants.

²⁶ Morgenthau, “The Intellectual and Moral Dilemma of Politics,” Christianity and Crisis, 8 Feb. 1960, 7 and 3. Morgenthau includes this review in The Decline of Democratic Politics, 7–15.

²⁷ Niebuhr to Morgenthau, 13 Jan. 1970, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress.

²⁸ Fox, 238.

²⁹ Kenneth Thompson, “The Political Philosophy of Reinhold Niebuhr,” in Charles W. Kegley, ed., Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social and Political Thought (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984), 247, 248, and 249.

³⁰ Morgenthau, “The Influence of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 99–109, with Niebuhr's response to Morgenthau coming at 120–23, and in “The Ethics of War and Peace in the Nuclear Age” in War/Peace Report, 7, 2 (Feb. 1967) (published by the Center for War/Peace Studies), 3–8.

³¹ Morgenthau, A New Foreign Policy for the United States (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 129.

³² Morgenthau, “Postscript to the Transaction Edition: Bernard Johnson's Interview with Hans J. Morgenthau,” in Kenneth Thompson and Robert J. Myers, eds., Truth & Tragedy: A Tribute to Hans J. Morgenthau (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books, 1984; first published in 1977 by the New Republic Book Company, Inc.), 382.

³³ Ibid., 383–84.

³⁴ Morgenthau to Niebuhr, 12 May 1970, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress. The “Cambodian adventure” Morgenthau refers to here is Nixon's expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. This occurred on Thursday, 30 April 1970, and at this time Morgenthau was delivering an address on “A New Foreign Policy for the United States” (based, no doubt, on his recent book by that title published the previous year) at a symposium on United States Foreign Policy in Asia that I had organized at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, where I first taught. Morgenthau joined Edwin Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, to speak in opposition to US involvement in Vietnam. That very day the announcement came of the bombing of Cambodia. When the group reconvened for the evening session, all participants were called upon to respond spontaneously to this most recent event. What was memorable for me, in addition to this unscheduled, impromptu occasion, was the fact that Morgenthau had me give him a tour through our library and around our campus – a tour in which we spoke briefly of Reinhold Niebuhr.

³⁵ Morgenthau to Niebuhr, 24 Aug. 1970, Reinhold Niebuhr Papers, Container 64, Library of Congress.

³⁶ Niebuhr to Morgenthau, 27 Aug. 1970, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress.

³⁷ Morgenthau to Niebuhr, 17 March 1971, Hans Morgenthau Papers, Container 44, Library of Congress.

³⁸ Ursula Niebuhr to Mogenthau, 8 Jan. 1972, Reinhold Niebuhr Papers, Container 64, Library of Congress.

³⁹ Roger Shinn, in “Realism and Ethics in Political Philosophy,” in Kenneth Thompson and Robert J. Meyers, eds., A Tribute to Hans Morgenthau (Washington, DC: The New Republic Book Co., Ind., 1977), 97–98, pointed out that “Morgenthau and Niebuhr liked to sharpen their minds on each other, sometimes in disagreement, always in appreciation.” Both men played down the degree and importance of their differences. Certainly this was the case when Niebuhr responded to a question about the role “ethical considerations can play in questions of war and peace in the current state of international relations.” In their 1967 discussion on “The Ethics of War and Peace in the Nuclear Age” Niebuhr remarked that “I wouldn't say that the views of Morgenthau and myself are ‘somewhat different.’ We basically have common ideas with certain peripheral differences.” See “The Ethics of War and Peace in the Nuclear Age.” Although Niebuhr's statement was made in the restricted context of a discussion of ethical considerations in war and peace, it is in basic agreement with a position Morgenthau expressed back in his early days in Chicago when he said that he and Niebuhr had “come out pretty much the same on politics.” Martin Marty, “The Lost Worlds of Reinhold Niebuhr,” American Scholar, Autumn, 1976, 569.

⁴⁰ Marty, 569. In a recent e-mail letter Professor Marty elaborated this account by saying that “I was a young prof not in the Morgenthau prestige circle, but my reference was to a faculty-club conversation, where he talked about not needing all the ‘metaphysical’ stuff Reinie needed to come to a point similar to his own.” Martin Marty to Daniel Rice, 26 April 2005.

⁴¹ Bennett, John C., “Christian Realism: Retrospect and Prospect,” Christianity and Crisis, 28, 14 (5 Aug. 1968), 175Google Scholar.

⁴² On the matter of his politics Schlesinger expresses it succinctly when he states that “Niebuhr's method was to use ‘conservative’ arguments to make a stronger case for ‘liberal’ policies.” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Reflections on Morgenthau and the Cold War,” in G. O. Mazur, ed., Twenty-Five Year Memorial Commemoration to the Life of Hans Morgenthau (1904–2005) (New York: Semenenko Foundation, 2006), 13. It should also be pointed out that in the theological arena when Niebuhr drew upon the likes of Karl Barth or Emil Brunner he was not turning to bona fide “conservatives” of the day. These men, like Niebuhr, were critics of liberalism coming from within that tradition. They were not members of the established orthodoxies of Protestant conservatism. And it should be remembered that Niebuhr drew heavily on the likes of St. Augustine, Pascal, and Kierkegaard in order to reframe his own understanding of Christianity.

⁴³ Niebuhr, MNHC, 24–25. Niebuhr's alleged political “conservatism” is more appropriately viewed as an expression of his “realism” wherein he would draw from men such as Edmund Burke in stressing the organic-historical elements, for example, over and against the artifactual and ahistorical abstractions of Lockean liberalism. Niebuhr's sense of conservatism is seen, first, in his distinction between “traditional” conservatism and “American” conservatism. “Traditional conservatism in foreign policy,” he wrote, “is superior because of its recognition of the complexities of power in political struggles.” See Niebuhr, “American Conservatism and the World Crisis: A Study in Vacillation,” Yale Review, March 1951, 385.

⁴⁴ That there were numerous secular, or at least religiously skeptical, thinkers who gravitated toward Niebuhr – a sufficient number for whom the philosopher Morton White, with mild derision, coined the phrase “atheists for Niebuhr” – was then quite unique and somewhat surprising. This august group of secular thinkers included historians Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., C. Vann Woodward, Perry Miller, the philosopher Sidney Hook, political philosopher Kenneth Thompson, and, of course, Hans Morgenthau. See White, Morton, “Religion, Politics, and the Higher Learning,” Confluence, 3 (1954), 404Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ I would take partial issue with Martin Halliwell's emphasis that Morgenthau approaches problems from a theory of the nation-state whereas Niebuhr does so from a theory of human nature. Halliwell makes the contention (utilizing Kenneth Waltz's distinction from Man, the State, and War (1954) between “first image” and “second image” perspectives on international relations) that “where Niebuhr started from a fallen theory of human nature (Waltz's first image), Kennan, Morgenthau, and Acheson all began with the primacy of the state for political analysis (second image).” See Halliwell, The Constant Dialogue, 192. While Halliwell is partially correct, he confuses matters by overlooking the high degree to which Morgenthau himself offers up a distinct theory of human nature as key to understanding the nation-state. Joseph M. Grieco, recognizing this, makes a significant point that reflects such an awareness. Grieco suggests that Morgenthau might not be “representative of realistic thinking about the particular matter of state preferences for security versus power. It could be suggested, on the one hand, that he locates the ultimate source of state behavior not in the environment of states but rather in the nature of human beings, and on the other, that he attributes to the latter a deep, unchanging desire to dominate others for no other reason than to do so.” Joseph M. Grieco, “Realist International Theory and the Study of World Politics,” in Michael W. Doyle and G. John Ikenberry, eds., New Thinking in International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 42. One thing is indisputable – Niebuhr's was a theological anthropology whereas Morgenthau's, owing much to Nietzsche, was not.

⁴⁶ Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume 1, Human Nature (London: Nisbet & Co., Ltd., 1941), 1.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 213–14. See his entire discussion of the three forms of pride at 198–216.

⁴⁸ One of Niebuhr's most familiar aphorisms reads: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.” Niebuhr, IAH, 63.

⁴⁹ James M. Gustafson, Christ and the Moral Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 142. Gustafson's section on “Freedom to be Realistic and Pragmatic” (pp. 137–46) remains one of the best and most succinct treatments of Niebuhr's social ethics.

⁵⁰ Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger, 110. Smith correctly states that Niebuhr's view of human nature is faith-dependent, resting as it does on his understanding of the Christian doctrine of man. Niebuhr “tries valiantly to demonstrate the relevance of the Christian view throughout his work … to some effect; but to the skeptic who questions his first assertions his only reply would be that these are mysteries beyond human reason. Similar objections can be made to his notion of self-transcendence, which is defined in terms of religious revelation, to his doctrine of original sin, with its necessary-inevitable paradox, and to his idea that brotherhood is history's ‘impossible possibility.’” Ibid.

⁵¹ Marty, “The Lost Worlds of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 569.

⁵² Thompson, Masters of International Thought, 27.

⁵³ In broad terms Kenneth Thompson listed the ingredients of realism to include: (1) the tendency to avoid moral absolutes in international politics, (2) a rejection of the escape from power politics attempted by writers on international relations in the 1920s and 1930s, (3) a distrust of concepts of human perfectibility and moral progress in human affairs, (4) a passion for the study and interpretation of history, and (5) the conviction that a rather explicit conception of man is helpful to political thought. See Kenneth Thompson, Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics: An American Approach to Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 170.

⁵⁴ Morgenthau listed five respects in which he believed that rediscovery applied: (1) “the autonomy of the political sphere,” (2) “the intellectual dilemma of understanding politics and acting within the political sphere,” (3) “the moral dilemma of political action,” (4) “the organic relationship between political thought and political action,” and (5) “the tragedy which is inherent in the political act.” In Morgenthau, “The Influence of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 99.

⁵⁵ Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), 119. Henceforth cited as CRPP. Niebuhr goes on to say that “definitions of ‘realists’ and ‘idealists’ emphasize dispositions, rather than doctrines; and they are therefore bound to be inexact. It must remain a matter of opinion whether or not a man takes adequate account of all the various factors and forces in a social situation.” Ibid., 120.

⁵⁶ Colm McKeogh, The Political Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr: A Pragmatic Approach to Just War (Basingstoke: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 12.

⁵⁷ Stanley Hoffmann, “An American Social Science: International Relations,” Daedalus I, Summer 1977, 44. In commenting on Morgenthau's impact on the field of international relations, Hoffmann observes that Morgenthau “was both a goad and a foil.” He goes on to note that a “less arrogantly dogmatic scholar, a writer more modest both in his empirical scope and in his normative assertions, would never have had such an impact on scholarship. Less sweeping, he would not have imposed the idea that here was a realm with properties of its own. Less trenchant, he would not have made scholars burn with the itch to bring him down a peg or two.” 45.

⁵⁸ Morgenthau, “The Influence of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 100.

⁵⁹ Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952), 104. Henceforth cited as CPP.

⁶⁰ Thompson, Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics, 24.

⁶¹ In fact it is at this precise point where he indicted realists such as Hobbes and Luther for not being sufficiently realistic – for not being realistic enough to see the dangers of tyranny. The classic realists' fear of anarchy led them to a myopic view of order that blinded them to the dangers of tyranny and injustice. A responsible realism balances the fear of anarchy with a like fear of tyranny, and so long as realism does not run to excess in its “emphasis upon the factors of power and interest [it] is not fatal to the establishment of justice” (CRPP, 126). As forceful a critic of idealism as Niebuhr was, he still consistently expressed his suspicion of historic realism. He maintained that classic realists such as Machiavelli and Hobbes possessed such negative views of human nature that they either ignored the option of democratic government or held democracy in utter contempt. Even his beloved Augustine, who was far wiser than most, and whom Niebuhr openly recommended to his realist friends, came in for criticism here: “Whatever may be said about the resources of the Christian faith in transmuting and guiding the lives of individuals, an analysis of Augustine's and Luther's dualism and consequent ‘realism’ affecting political communities must yield the negative conclusion that the realism was too consistent to give a true picture of either human nature or the human community, even before the advent of free governments, and was certainly irrelevant to modern democratic governments.” (MNHC, 46).

⁶² Morgenthau, , “Love and Power,” Commentary, 33 (March 1962), 247Google Scholar.

⁶³ Niebuhr, MNHC, 75. Niebuhr quotes Morgenthau's contention that “the lust for power is, as it were, the twin of despairing love. Power becomes a substitute for love. What man can not achieve for any length of time through love he tries to achieve through power; to fulfill himself, to make himself whole by overcoming his loneliness, his isolation.” Ibid. There was a certain pathos in Morgenthau's view of the relation of power to love. He claimed that what one hopes to achieve in love is “another human being like himself” with whom “to form a union which will make him whole.” Failing in this man seeks through power “to impose his will upon another man, so that the will of the object of his power mirrors his own. What love seeks to discover in another man as a gift of nature, power must create through the artifice of psychological manipulation. Love is reunion through spontaneous mutuality, power seeks to create a union.” Morgenthau, “Love and Power,” in The Restoration of American Politics, 10.

⁶⁴ Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger, 136 and 137.

⁶⁵ This outline of Niebuhr's position comes from Children of Light and Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), 19–20. Henceforth cited as CLCD.

⁶⁶ Niebuhr, CRPP, 129–30.

⁶⁷ See quote at end of note 63 above.

⁶⁸ Niebuhr, MNHC, 75.

⁶⁹ Smith, 135.

⁷⁰ Niebuhr, MNHC, 77.

⁷¹ Niebuhr, CRPP, 136. The problem for Niebuhr was that the way in which Morgenthau stated his analysis of self-interest, and particularly the “national interest,” seemed to leave his view bereft of moral substance. Morgenthau, in his 1962 tribute to Niebuhr, contended that there was an “inescapable discrepancy between the commands of Christian teaching, of Christian ethics, and the requirements of political success,” concluding that “it is impossible, if I may put it in somewhat extreme and striking terms, to be a successful politician and a good Christian.” Morgenthau, “The Influence of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 102. Niebuhr's reply was very interesting. He first cautioned that Morgenthau might be conceding “too much to the perfectionist versions of Christianity.” He then chided Morgenthau by saying, “I do not think we will sacrifice any value in the ‘realist’ approach to the political order, of which Morgenthau is such an eminent and acknowledged exponent, and to which I am personally deeply indebted, if we define the moral ambiguity of the political realm in terms which do not rob it of moral content.” Niebuhr, “The Response of Reinhold Niebuhr,” in Landon, Reinhold Niebuhr, 121 and 122. This exchange brought into focus a significant difference between Niebuhr and his “realist” friends Morgenthau and Kennan. While the extent of this difference can be debated, its origins are quite clear. Niebuhr's concern with, and formulation of, political “realism” grew out of his occupation as a teacher of “Christian social ethics” and his role in defending and justifying “the Christian faith in a secular age, particularly among what Schleiermacher called Christianity's ‘intellectual despisers.’” Niebuhr, “Intellectual Biography,” in Kegley, Reinhold Niebuhr, 3.

⁷² Niebuhr, CRPP, 136.

⁷³ The War/Peace Report, 3.

⁷⁴ Michael J. Smith claimed that “the concept of the national interest simply cannot bear the weight Morgenthau assigned to it. It is not objective, as Morgenthau's own hesitations about its translations into policy demonstrate. Rather it is a value, itself defined by different – albeit sometimes characteristic – hierarchies of value.” Smith suggested that “Morgenthau would have done better to explicate and defend the values that informed his own understanding of the American national interest.” Smith, 160–61.

⁷⁵ In his critique of Kennan's American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951) Niebuhr concurred with Kennan's overall charge against the chronic weakness of America's idealistic tendency that it is a far too simplistic, legalistic-moralistic, approach. Yet Niebuhr objected to Kennan's “solution for our problem” as being a “return to the policy of making the ‘national interest’ the touchstone of our diplomacy.” He knew that Kennan was not being cynical, however, since what Kennan was recommending was that we restrict ourselves to ascertaining our own self-interest because of a modesty in regard to our ability as a nation to divine what is good for others. Although claiming that Kennan's “admonition to modesty is valid as far as it goes,” Niebuhr insisted that “his solution is wrong. For egotism is not the proper cure for an abstract and pretentious idealism.” IAH, 148.

⁷⁶ Gordon Harland, “The Theological Foundations of Reinhold Niebuhr's Social Thought,” in Gary A. Gaudin and Douglas John Hall, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr: 1892–1971: A Centenary Appraisal (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1994), 118.

⁷⁷ Niebuhr, CLCD, 41.

⁷⁸ Niebuhr, CRPP, 130.

⁷⁹ Kennan, however, remained uncompromising in his cautionary admonition. A few years later, in 1954, he declared the following: “Morality, then, as the channel to individual self-fulfillment – yes. Morality as the foundation of civic virtue, and accordingly as a condition precedent to successful democracy – yes. Morality in governmental method, as a matter of conscience and preference on the part of our people – yes. But morality as a general criterion for the determination of the behavior of states and above all as a criterion for measuring and comparing the behavior of different states – no. Here other criteria, sadder, more limited, more practical, must be allowed to prevail.” George Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 49.

⁸⁰ Niebuhr, IAH, 148.

⁸¹ Niebuhr, MNHC, 71.

⁸² Morgenthau, , “National Interest and Moral Principles in Foreign Policy: The Primacy of the National Interest,” American Scholar, 18 (Spring 1949), 207Google Scholar.

⁸³ The War/Peace Report, 5.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 73.

⁸⁵ The War/Peace Report, 2. The editor tells us that “the talk was held around Rev. Niebuhr's desk in his apartment on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, over looking the beautiful but then very cold Hudson River. The discussion took place in two sessions, on Dec. 16 and 29, since Rev. Niebuhr is under doctor's orders to limit his exertions. This will explain why it may seem to the reader that Prof. Morgenthau fell silent for a while; WPR editor Richard Hudson and the Rev. Niebuhr “began the second session a few minutes before Morgenthau's arrival.”

⁸⁶ Ibid., 3.

⁸⁷ Ibid.

⁸⁸ Niebuhr, CRPP, 146.

⁸⁹ Thompson, Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics, 24.

⁹⁰ Ronald H. Stone, Professor Reinhold Niebuhr: A Mentor to the Twentieth Century (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 158.

⁹¹ Kenneth Thompson, “Postscript,” in Kegley, Reinhold Niebuhr, 251.

⁹² Neither Morgenthau nor Niebuhr lived to see the breakup of the Soviet Union or witness the rise of sub-state terrorism. The toughness of their political realism might well have led both men to understand the fear the rest of the world feels confronted as they are by a single imperial power – the United States. For even though the United States is a democracy espousing broad, humane values and believes itself to be benign, it is also a self-righteous nation that is quite prone to expressing itself in arrogant, condescending, and aggressive ways.

⁹³ Niebuhr, CLCD, 153.

⁹⁴ Niebuhr, “Plans for World Organization,” Christianity and Crisis, 19 Oct. 1942. Reproduced in Niebuhr, Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. D. B. Robertson (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1957), 206–13.

⁹⁵ Niebuhr, CLCD, 168.

⁹⁶ Niebuhr, CRPP, 18.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 125. Augustine's remark comes in Civitas Dei, 19:17.

⁹⁸ Niebuhr, CLCD, 157. See also 165.

⁹⁹ In their 1967 interview Morgenthau and Niebuhr were in accord on the point of the organic basis of community. Niebuhr, speaking of the prospects of world government, claimed, “I don't see any immediate solution. … The difficulty with the constitutional convention idea is that it presupposes that law can create a community. I think it is the other way around – that community creates law.” Morgenthau agreed, saying, “I think you are absolutely right in saying that without a social integration capable of exerting pressure toward the creation of legal institutions, we cannot have a local order, a national order, or a world order.” The War/Peace Report, 6 and 7.

¹⁰⁰ Niebuhr, CRPP, 22.

¹⁰¹ Niebuhr, CLCD, 163–64.

¹⁰² Niebuhr, “Can We Organize the World?”, Christianity and Crisis, 2 Feb. 1953. The quote is taken from the republication of this article in Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 217.

¹⁰³ The War/Peace Report, 7.

¹⁰⁴ Niebuhr, “The Illusion of World Government,” in CRPP, 15. This article first appeared in the April 1949 issue of Foreign Affairs.

¹⁰⁵ Niebuhr, The Self and the Dramas of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955), 203 and 202. Henceforth cited as SDH.

¹⁰⁶ While he highly valued the United Nations, he recognized it proved incapable of serving its intended purpose of establishing world community. It had, nonetheless, performed “important and yet unintended services” to the process of “integrating the world as far as present realities permit,” including: (1) functioning as a “minimal bridge across the chasm between Russia and the West,” (2) furnishing “the meeting ground for the free nations, the aegis for its various ad hoc arrangements for defensive communities,” and (3) providing for “an assembly of peoples in which world opinion serves to check the policies of the most powerful nations in the alliance.” SDH, 206.

¹⁰⁷ See Niebuhr's discussion in CRPP, 26–31.

¹⁰⁸ The War/Peace Report, 6 and 7. In his own valuable and suggestive concluding essay to a recent book he edited on Morgenthau, G. O. Mazur explores questions pertaining to international law and forms of organization “in geopolitics” that, he rightly points out, “were not yet known to either Morgenthau or Niebuhr other than in a nascent form, but which have since arisen in more prominent focus.” See “Three Open Questions in Contemporary Mogenthau Research” in G. O. Mazur, Twenty-Five Year Memorial Commemoration, 280–95.

¹⁰⁹ Shinn, “The Continuing Conversation between Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr,” in G. O. Mazur, ed., One Hundred Year Commemoration to the Life of Hans Morgenthau: 1904–2004 (New York: Semenenko Foundation, 2004), 65. Curiously there was an element of confusion with respect to Morgenthau's view of ethics. In In Defense of the National Interest (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1951) Morgenthau rather stridently claimed, “The United States flatters itself that in its dealing with other countries it seeks no selfish advantage but is inspired by universal moral principles” (93). Over his career Morgenthau had continually ridiculed the pretentiousness of nations, including America, yet ironically he later came to see America in highly moral terms. In 1970 Shinn posed the question: “What I must ask is whether his famed realism does not require some criticism of a romanticized conception of America's origins” – a comment Shinn makes after dealing with Morgenthau's having come to view America as being a “moral example” for the world. See Roger Shinn, “Hans Morgenthau: Realist and Moralist,” Worldview, 13, 1 (Jan. 1970), 12. This Wilsonian turn seems out of character for Hans Morgenthau, who was not only rightly suspicious of all national pretensions, but who also knew extremely well how prone America was to seeing itself with a moral halo. Shinn's complete statement merits inclusion here. He writes, “What might not have been expected is the intimate connection he (Morgenthau) draws between American identity and moral purpose, a connection so close that one might ask whether Morgenthau the realist may not have some unsettling criticisms to make of Morgenthau the idealist. … I find Morgenthau far more attractive because of his undisguised ethical concern. What I must ask is whether his famed realism does not require some criticism of a romanticized conception of America's origins.” Ibid., 11 and 12.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., 12.

¹¹¹ Morgenthau, Scientific Man Versus Power Politics, vi.

¹¹² Frei, 177. Morgenthau's quote comes from his manuscript “The Realist and the Idealist Views of International Relations: A Realist's Interpretation,” lecture at the US Army College in Carlisle Barracks, PA, 28 Sept. 1959, HJM-B170, 15. Indeed, in his 1962 discussion with Niebuhr, Morgenthau responded to the question “Has ethics anything whatsoever to do with foreign policy in the practical sense?” by replying, “Of course it has. This is one of the old chestnuts that there are two compartments: one is foreign policy and the other is ethics. Neither I, nor you, nor anybody else can act without considerations of morality. Neither can a statesman. Surely the making of foreign policy, as a human act, is involved with moral decision. This is inevitable because man is a moral being – the statesman, too.” The War/Peace Report, 4.

¹¹³ Thompson, Masters of International Thought, 85.

¹¹⁴ Morgenthau, “The Demands of Prudence,” in idem, The Restoration of American Politics, 16. The article first appeared in Worldview, June 1960.

¹¹⁵ Morgenthau, Scientific Man Versus Power Politics, 202–03.

¹¹⁶ Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th edn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 4.

¹¹⁷ To a large extent both Morgenthau and Kennan are left with the skilled, morally inclined statesman and “prudence” as ethical guidelines for international power politics. When Kennan advanced prudence as the proper disposition for the statesman he seemed to be restricting it as a procedure for acting strictly within the boundaries of national self-interest – actions in which one is guided by the circumstances one faces, and not by anything extraneous to that. On the other hand, he and Morgenthau both seemed to see prudence in terms fraught with moral considerations. Robert C. Good insisted that “in denying the application of any criteria for directing or judging state behavior other than those derived from state necessity, the realist must end up the cynic. But Kennan and Morgenthau are anything but cynics. Indeed, their views of policy and international politics are replete with norms that serve to direct and judge interest. One difference between these realists and Niebuhr is that while Niebuhr openly acknowledges his transcendental norms, Kennan and Morgenthau tend to conceal them.” Robert C. Good, “National Interest and Moral Theory: The ‘Debate’ among Contemporary Political Realists,” in Roger Hilsman and Robert C. Good, eds., Foreign Policy in the Sixties: The Issues and Instruments (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 281.

¹¹⁸ Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. 2 (London: Nisbet & Co. Ltd., 1943), 86.

¹¹⁹ Niebuhr, “Reply to Interpretation and Criticism,” in Kegley, Reinhold Niebuhr, 512.

¹²⁰ Niebuhr, , “Our Moral and Spiritual Resources for International Cooperation,” Social Action, 22 (Feb. 1956), 18–19Google Scholar.

¹²¹ Shinn, “The Continuing Conversation between Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr,” 86 and 87.

¹²² Morgenthau insisted that a choice between national interest and moral choice totally devoid of moral dignity was bogus as regards international affairs. He contended that the choices statesmen must make are between moral principles that take cognizance of political realities and those that do not – the latter having no bearing on politics. What we find is Morgenthau's restricting morality to national societies if for no other reason than the fact that there is no machinery with which to enforce “what is morally required in international affairs,” namely “an effective system of restraints” by means of which international morality would be even possible. In Defense of the National Interest, 33.

¹²³ Thompson, “The Political Philosophy of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 242.

¹²⁴ Ibid., 242.

¹²⁵ Niebuhr, “Moralists and Politics,” Christian Century, 6 July 1932, 858.

¹²⁶ Thompson, Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics, 25.

¹²⁷ Thompson, “The Political Philosophy of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 240 and 241.

¹²⁸ Thompson, “Beyond National Interest: A Critical Evaluation of Reinhold Niebuhr's Theory of International Politics,” Review of Politics, 17, 2 (April 1955), 183.

¹²⁹ See ibid., 183–88; and Thompson, “The Political Philosophy of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 240–46.

¹³⁰ Thompson, “The Political Philosophy of Reinhold Niebuhr,” 243–44.

¹³¹ Ibid., 186, 187 and 188.