The Irony of American History Reprint edition Edition

Written almost 70 years ago, the prescience of this work only becomes more remarkable with age. Although some of the specifics are dated, it is easy to forget this was the product of a Cold War environment; it is at least as relevant and insightful today as it was at the time of its composition. A sharp disdain for communist philosophy is evident throughout, but failures of this approach have piled up in his wake, only solidifying his central thesis. Perhaps most compelling in Niebuhr's work is his commentary on the factors that could lay low democracy. Informed by Christian theology, his consideration of how moral and political systems interact is particularly engaging, and may make the subject matter more interesting for some who would otherwise find it a bit dry.

"Simply put, [this] is the most important book ever written on American foreign policy." Thus writes Andrew Bacevich in his introduction to the newly reissued book written by Reinhold Niebuhr in 1952. Bacevich is a Niebuhr scholar and author of the just published book, "The Limits of Power". He was largely responsible for getting "Irony" reissued.

The timing of this book becoming available, as well as of Bacevich's own book, couldn't be better. Niebuhr was a pastor, teacher, activist, moral theologian and prolific author. He was a towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930's through the 1960's. He was, at various points in his career, a Christian Socialist, a pacifist, an advocate of U.S. intervention in World War II, a staunch anti-communist, an architect of Cold War liberalism, and a sharp critic of the Vietnam War.

The Irony of American History traces the course of American idealism and exceptionalism from its very beginnings in the providential thinking of the Pilgrims who settled Massachusetts. Written early in the Cold War, Niebuhr devotes much of his analysis to comparing and contrasting Marxian communism and the "bourgeois" liberalism, or liberal democracy of America. While he clearly argues that the liberal project of democracy offers more to the "common good" of the community than does Marxism, both have the seeds of their destruction in the illusions they hold. So-called "Niebuhrian realism" is the ability to see through such illusions as a condition for avoiding the worst pitfalls they carry.

Alas, one of the greatest of these pitfalls is the American tendency to suppose that we can manage history. As Niebuhr writes: "The illusions about the possibility of managing historical destiny from any particular standpoint in history, always involves, as already noted, miscalculations about both the power and the wisdom of the managers and of the weakness and the manageability of the historical 'stuff' which is to be managed." He goes on to point out that "In the liberal versions of the dream of managing history, the problem of power is never fully elaborated. ...On the whole, [American government] is expected to gain its ends by moral attraction and limitation. Only occasionally does an hysterical statesman suggest that we must increase our power and use it in order to gain the ideal ends, of which providence has made us the trustees."

Is it not painfully evident that we reached one of those "occasional moments" after 9/11 when "hysterical statesmen" - Bush and Cheney, et al - argued for a profound increase in the power to gain the "ideal ends" of bringing "freedom" to Iraq and the Middle East since we are the obvious "trustees" of this freedom?

Herein lies the element of "irony", the philosophical and spiritual core of Niebuhr's arguments. The first element of irony, Niebuhr points out, "is the fact that our nation has, without particularly seeking it, acquired a greater degree of power than any other nation of history" and we "have created a 'global' political situation in which the responsible use of this power has become a condition of survival of the free world."

He continues: "But the second element of irony lies in the fact that a strong America is less completely master of its own destiny than was a comparatively weak America, rocking in the cradle of its continental security and serene in its infant innocence. The same strength which has extended our power beyond a continent has also interwoven our destiny with the destiny of many peoples and brought us into a vast web of history in which other wills, running in oblique or contrasting directions to our own, inevitably hinder or contradict what we most fervently desire. We cannot simply have our way, not even when we believe our way to have the 'happiness of mankind' as its promise."

In Iraq we have met the enemy and "it is us". Not enough of us understood that "we cannot simply have our way" in the exercise of American power, which is thought to be essentially military power, to head off the folly in which we are buried and the prospect of a war without end.

Writing all this in 1952 with the cataclysmic dangers of the Cold War becoming a hot war, Niebuhr foresaw the increasing globalization of the world and the danger of not recognizing and accepting the limits of our power to bring freedom and happiness to the rest of the world, especially through military means.

This slender book of 173 pages is loaded with these prescient observations warning us clearly of the catastrophic dangers that can follow from a failure to understand the limits of our power of our exceptionalism and of the illusion that we can manage all this history to accomplish our supposedly moral and "good" ends for other nations.

When you finish reading this book you will then want to read Bacevich's book, "The Limits of Power", in which he essentially channels Niebuhr's understanding and traces the history of the last 60 years in which the Bush-Cheney foreign policy has become simply an extension of the direction American foreign policy has taken, primarily from the Reagan administration onward.

I'm not a scholar so I must confess that I read this book with a dictionary close at hand and in some instances read paragraphs several times to understand what the author is trying to say. The book was written during the Cold War and America's confrontation with communism. But much of this book can be applied to the America of today. Well worth the read.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of American policy after the Second World War. Peofessor Niebuhr defines communism, liberalism, and American capitalism with an insight rarely encountered. He explains the problem with communism in having politcal and economic power in the same hands, while promoting the illusion that man controls history and that the 'destruction of private property' will solve all of a nation's problems. At the same time he acknowledges that Marx et al did want to produce a better world. American policy, he asserts, is more pragmatic than it's ideal of pure capitalism. Its pragmatism allows it to incorporate social programs that its theory would not include, and thus solves social and economic problems here that were only addressed by revolution in countries like Russia. There is much more, but read it yourself and find out.

This book was amazing. For a work that was written in the early 50s it is still relevant today, and you can see how American Leadership continues to make the same mistakes. Past is Prelude, and we ignore history and its lesson at our own peril and seemingly often.

It is no wonder under our current President who reads literature like this, our foreign policy is so much more effective and well thought out versus our Prior President.

It is also an amazing book in that it can make you think and assess your own behaviors in situations and allow you avoid slipping into your own ironic history.

The re-issue of this book by the University of Chicago Press is very timely. Not only does its view of American character and mission fit the O'Bama era, it insists on a Christian Realism about the national destiny and international relations in the long view that is in sharp contrast to the absolutist religious claims that have been so shrill in the last few decades.

Both the left and the right have something to hear from this book, precisely now. A realistic modesty about America's opportinities and responsibilities among the nations is advocated here -- one that does not simply sell out to either the overly-fearful nationalists or the overly self-righteous America-bashers on the left.

Definitely a book for the times.

Jay Wilcoxen
University Churh, Chicago

Thoughtful and insightful

Absolutely brilliant, and profoundly thought-provoking. Niebuhr's analysis is amazingly prescient, and reveals much of the national psychology that has underlain American action in the world over the past century. It is a must-read for students of history and philosophy alike!