Interview-with-Gregory Moore

Reinhold Niebuhr’s ideas about ethics, social justice, and foreign policy have been hugely influential for American political thought, and this has been true across the political spectrum, from progressive social justice activists to neo-conservatives. A one-time leader in the Socialist party, Neibuhr worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to found Americans for Democratic Action. Jimmy Carter took inspiration from his ideas about love and justice, and Barack Obama has praised him as one of his favorite philosophers. His theories have also influenced neoconservatives, many of whom cited his work to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yet, Niebuhr never published a single, comprehensive book on his approach to international relations, and, because he was so prolific, one would have to sift through volumes of his work to try to construct such a unified vision. This book distills Niebuhr’s disparate and heretofore difficult-to-access work on international relations into one concise and accessible volume. Drawing from the wellsprings of Niebuhr’s Christian social thought, the volume explores the depths of Niebuhr’s views on human nature, race, collective life, U.S. foreign policy, Just War Theory, Cold War era containment, globalization, and the U.N. It then applies his approach to contemporary foreign policy issues such as the 2003 Iraq War, the Responsibility to Protect, and the rise of China. The book also considers Niebuhr’s contribution to IR theory and contextualizes it in the present day revival of classical Realism with a multivariate, existentialist twist. Ultimately, the book asserts that Niebuhr’s notion of a fallible, self-interested view of human nature, his dialectical approach, and a related moral dualism run throughout his work on politics and international relations as they did through the rest of his work.

I encountered Niebuhr's work during my MA program in international relations at the University of Virginia (US).  I found his work brilliant.  His work played a formative role in my own development as an intellectual and an academic.  Yet much of his work on politics and international relations was not easily accessible.  I wrote the book to make his work accessible to a wider audience, and to bring his thought into the 21st century. 

I relied heavily on archival research for the biographical chapter.  For the other chapters I drew from his own writings as well as information from my archival research.  I included three case studies on more recent international events/phenomena (the 2003 Iraq War, the rise of China, and the Responsibility to Protect), drawing from his work to extrapolate a position on these events/issues that would be logical with his writings/thought.  I also scoured recent international relations theory literature so as to assess his theoretical contributions to historical IR theory, as well as contextualizing his work in today's IR theory discourse.

I had a bit of support from Zhejiang University, where I worked previously, and support from UNNC, so as to conduct the research.  In particularly I appreciate the support of FHSS and IS research and travel grants so as to conduct the archival research in 2018 and to purchase research materials.

I am working on two other books.  I have a contract on a book with Routledge on international relations research methods, and am pretty far along on another book on China-US relations.

The research on this project began during my master's degree, in 1990-91, leading to my MA dissertation.  Approximately seven years ago I picked the project up again and began to expand it, to turn it into a book.  It's been a long road, but has finally come to light.  Good research takes time.  That should be acknowledged.  I'd just tell students to work hard, persevere, see it through to the end.