PETER BEINART, Associate professor of journalism and
political science at the City University of New York, has written a very
interesting piece:
“The mid-20th
century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr often argued that the greatest danger to
American foreign policy was America’s presumption of innocence. If the United
States recognized its sinfulness, it would accept moral limits on its power. If
it didn’t, it might become like the Soviet Union, convinced that no matter how
brutally it behaved, it was serving a higher good. “Pride and
self-righteousness of powerful nations,” Niebuhr wrote, “are greater hazard to
their success than the machinations of their foes.””