Richard Cohen in the Washington Post:

This is a tricky, auspicious moment for a young president. [Obama] is ending one century, beginning another. Concisely, he essentially laid out his approach to foreign policy in a blurb for a recently reissued book by the late theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. He wrote that he took away from Niebuhr's works "the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain." He added that "we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction."

This, then, is the Obama Doctrine: wisely, to have none at all.

Tags: Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Cohen, Washington Post

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 and is filed under Barack Obama, Politics, The Opinionsphere. Comments are closed; the conversation is kept as it was.