He warned that "idealists" who ignore power dynamics actually make the world more dangerous by being unprepared for real-world tyrants. A Legacy of "The Father of Us All"
He believed individuals could be moral, but groups—especially nations—are almost always selfish. He called this "Moral Man and Immoral Society". Reinhold Niebuhr and International Relations Th...
Niebuhr’s "International Relations theory" (though he never wrote a single textbook on it) rests on a few haunting truths about human nature: He warned that "idealists" who ignore power dynamics