Democracy promotion is out of fashion. Its failure in Iraq and uncertain future in Afghanistan, coupled with the disappointments of the Arab Spring and Color Revolutions, have led some scholars and policymakers to conclude that democracy cannot work in some countries, or that the process of building one is so uncertain and fraught with risk as to be not worth the gamble. In any case, a growing chorus is calling for the abandonment of democracy promotion as a goal of U.S. foreign policy. President Barack Obama in his 2009 speech in Cairo said, “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other.”
Alongside this growing disenchantment with democracy promotion comes a surge of interest in the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, the prominent and respected mid-20th century theologian, public intellectual, and founder of the school of Christian realism. Niebuhr was dissatisfied with the cultural Christianity of his day; he grew to reject the simplistic argument that Christian ethics lead to socialist politics and pacifist foreign policy. To him, the gospel of Jesus Christ requires us to be more realistic about how the world works and to take greater responsibility for fighting its injustices.
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