Last June, a young Ukrainian pastor lamented to me that a Republican president’s victory would cut off American military aid to his embattled country. Researching this brought me back to Reinhold Niebuhr, a Reformed Protestant pastor in Missouri. Applying Niebuhr to current events is tricky. He sought American victory in World War II and the Cold War but opposed American intervention in Vietnam. However, based on Niebuhr’s important contributions to international relations scholarship, I believe he would support arming Ukraine. Niebuhr argued that while turning the other cheek is the Christian response to personal abuse, turning a blind eye when an innocent nation is brutalized is not. Salvation, he wrote, would come from outside history, but until then there would be no laws for nations, only between nations.
An aggressive state can only be stopped by other states, Niebuhr argued in his 1932 book that primarily introduced his IR philosophy. Moral Man and Immoral Society:
Selfishness in human communities must be considered inevitable. If it is excessive, it can only be confirmed by competing interest claims. And this can only be effective if coercive methods are added to moral and rational persuasion.
Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 became a catalyst for Niebuhr’s worldview. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was similarly preemptive and brutal. Japan’s pretext was to protect the Japanese people in Manchuria and prevent Western cultural and geopolitical encroachment. President Putin offered a similar justification for his invasion. The League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlawed war, could not stop the Japanese. Likewise, neither the United Nations nor the 1994 Budapest Memorandum of Understanding, which promised to respect Ukrainian territory if Russia gave up its nuclear weapons, could persuade Putin.
While some people were surprised by President Putin’s all-out aggression, a Moldovan pastor friend said that was not the case because arrogance and nationalism had so permeated Russian culture that it was reflected in its leaders as well. In this way, Niebuhr’s ‘immoral society’ was achieved. In the 1944s Children of Light and Children of Darkness Niebuhr explained that all countries act in their own self-interest, but there are differences. While the “Children of Light” recognize that they must be disciplined by a higher law, the “Children of Darkness” recognize nothing but their own corrupt self-interest. Niebuhr feared that German and Japanese victories would undermine the higher laws of Christianity and democracy. Today, the victory of the children of darkness in Moscow will annihilate the children of light in Europe’s second largest country.
In 1991, author Phillip Yancey was among a delegation of American Christian leaders invited to help the collapsing Soviet Union find its moral foundations. In the 2024 book What’s wrong?Yancey and co-author John Bernbaum detail how Russia returned to totalitarianism after an initial move toward capitalism, democracy, and religious freedom. in Yancey says: “If the cultural soil is as hard as rock and soaked with the blood of its own people, there is little chance that the seeds of democracy will survive.” Yancey moved his work to Ukraine and discovered a truer plurality and fierce independence on display in the mass protests that ousted the Moscow-backed government.
For those who argue that Ukraine is also corrupt, consider Niebuhr’s “non-utopian liberalism.” From a New York Times opinion piece: “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Long Shadow” Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr (1992) said that Niebuhr persuaded him.
Original sin provides a much stronger basis for freedom and self-government than the illusion of human perfection. His warnings against utopianism, messianism, and perfectionism are very relevant today. We cannot play God in history; we must do our best to achieve dignity, clarity, and approximation of justice in an ambiguous world.
What are Niebuhr’s objections to Vietnam? He explained in Interview with The New Republic, 1969 He feared that the United States risked squandering the power and prestige it gained in World War II for a nation “that neither a democracy nor a full-fledged nation could have.” We have clearly demonstrated through our excessive achievements in the pro-democracy movement and in the fight against Russia that if we help Ukrainians maintain their nationality, they will maintain their nationality.
Regarding American foreign policy interests, the United States currently faces two great power adversaries: China and Russia. The Ukrainians are willing and able to continue to weaken the latter with the weapons we supply. According to Niebuhr’s notes in his philosophical journey, I believe he wants the United States to continue to arm Ukraine. Because he would see it not as another Vietnam, but as Manchuria again. Consider this closing quote from Niebuhr: The Nation Interview (2014), replacing Hitler’s name with Putin’s name:
If Hitler is ultimately defeated, it will be because the crisis awakened in us the will to preserve a civilization where justice and freedom are a reality and gave us the recognition that the ambiguity of history requires an ambiguous method.
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