This previous June, a younger Ukrainian pastor lamented to me how a Republican presidential victory would finish US army assist to his embattled nation. Inspecting this led me again to Reinhold Niebuhr, a Reformed Protestant minister from Missouri. Making use of Niebuhr to present occasions is difficult. He sought American victory in World Battle II and the Chilly Battle, however opposed US involvement in Vietnam. But, primarily based on Niebuhr’s vital contribution to Worldwide Relations scholarship, I consider he would help arming Ukraine. Niebuhr argued that turning the opposite cheek is a Christian response to non-public mistreatment, however turning a blind eye when an harmless nation is brutalized will not be. Salvation would come from exterior historical past, he wrote, however till then there isn’t any regulation over nations, solely between them.
An aggressive state can solely be stopped by different nations, Niebuhr argued within the 1932 guide that largely launched his IR philosophy – Ethical Man and Immoral Society:
The selfishness of human communities have to be considered an inevitability. The place it’s inordinate it may be checked solely by competing assertions of curiosity; and these might be efficient provided that coercive strategies are added to ethical and rational persuasion.
Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria was the catalyst for Niebuhr’s worldview. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was equally preemptive and brutal. Japan’s pretense was defending Japanese in Manchuria and guarding in opposition to Western cultural and geopolitical encroachment. Putin has supplied related justifications for his invasion. The League of Nations and Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing warfare couldn’t cease the Japanese. Likewise, neither the United Nations nor the 1994 Budapest Memorandum – during which Russia dedicated to respect Ukraine’s territory if it gave up nuclear weapons – might dissuade Putin.
Though some had been stunned by Putin’s full-scale invasion, a Moldovan pastor pal advised me he was not as a result of hubris and chauvinism so permeated Russian tradition they had been mirrored in its chief. Thus Niebuhr’s “immoral society” was achieved. In 1944’s The Youngsters of Mild and the Youngsters of Darkness Niebuhr defined that though all states act in self-interest there are distinctions. The “Youngsters of Mild” acknowledge they have to be disciplined by the next regulation, however the “Youngsters of Darkness” acknowledge nothing above their very own corrupt self-interest. Niebuhr feared a German and Japanese victory would harm the upper legal guidelines of Christianity and democracy. Immediately, victory by Moscow’s Youngsters of Darkness would extinguish the Youngsters of Mild within the second-largest nation in Europe.
In 1991, writer Phillip Yancey was in a delegation of American Christian leaders invited to assist the disintegrating Soviet Union discover a ethical basis. Within the 2024 guide What Went Flawed, Yancey and co-author John Bernbaum recount how after preliminary strikes towards capitalism, democracy and freedom of faith, Russia relapsed into totalitarianism. In Yancey’s phrases: “The seeds of democracy have little probability to outlive when the cultural soil is rock exhausting and soaked with the blood of its personal folks.” Yancey shifted his work to Ukraine and found extra real plurality and a fierce independence proven in mass protests that ousted Moscow-backed governments.
For many who argue Ukraine can be corrupt, contemplate Niebuhr’s “non-Utopian liberalism”. In a New York Instances opinion piece titled “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Lengthy Shadow” Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr (1992) mentioned Niebuhr persuaded him:
Unique sin gives a far stronger basis for freedom and self-government than illusions about human perfectibility … His warnings in opposition to utopianism, messianism and perfectionism ring a bell at this time. We can not play the position of God to historical past, and we should attempt as greatest we will to achieve decency, readability and proximate justice in an ambiguous world.
What of Niebuhr’s opposition to Vietnam? He defined in a 1969 interview with The New Republic that he feared America risked squandering the facility and status received in WWII for a nation “incapable of both democracy or integral nationhood”. If we assist Ukrainians preserve their nationhood, they’ve certainly demonstrated by way of pro-democracy actions and overachievement in combating Russia that they’ll preserve it.
As for US overseas coverage pursuits, the US now faces two nice energy adversaries in China and Russia. Ukrainians are prepared and in a position to proceed weakening the latter with weapons that we provide. Based mostly on the file Niebuhr left of his philosophical journey, I consider he would need America to proceed arming Ukraine. As a result of he would see it not as one other Vietnam, however as Manchuria once more. Contemplate in closing this quote from Niebuhr’s The Nation interview (2014), with Putin’s identify substituted for Hitler’s:
If Hitler is defeated ultimately it is going to be as a result of the disaster has woke up in us the need to protect a civilization during which justice and freedom are realities, and given us the data that ambiguous strategies are required for the ambiguities of historical past.
Additional Studying on E-Worldwide Relations
