QUESTIONS

Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw the problem of political order in global terms. No doubt this was partly the result of personal experience, for both of them traveled widely for young men of their day, and both came to maturity in a society that was having its expectations reshaped by the shock of global war and worldwide economic depression. Personal experience was reinforced for both men by participation in Protestant ecumenism, which before, during, and after the Second World War sought to make a united witness to the theological conditions for lasting world peace. Bonhoeffer, in the secrecy of a resistance group, thought about what the world might be like after the war. Niebuhr and the political realists whom he influenced lived to help shape it.

A decade after the end of the Second World War, Niebuhr thought that the world was still in the beginning stages of global integration. Order on a global scale was needed to repair the disorder left after two world wars, organize the rapid growth of postwar trade and communication, and control the new threat posed by nuclear weapons. The necessary institutions and practices, however, were only slowly taking shape in the United Nations and regional security organizations, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

One problem, as Niebuhr saw it, was that democracy, which provided the best reconciliation of freedom with the requirements of community, had arrived at its solution to this problem gradually, over time and by experiment.