1. For a discussion of traditions that have historically influenced the conduct of American foreign policy, see Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Routledge, 2002), and Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (New York: Mariner Books, 1997).
2. McGeorge Bundy, “Foreign Policy: From Innocence to Engagement,” in Paths of American Thought, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Morton White (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961).
3. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (New York: Scribner, 1960), xiii.
4. For an overview of Niebuhr’s views of sin and human nature, see Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 1, Human Nature, and vol. 2, Human Destiny (New York: Scribner, 1964).
5. It should be noted that Niebuhr was a vocal pacifist during his early years, but the evil realities of Nazism made him change his position. For this reference, see Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist,” in The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, ed. Robert McAfee Brown (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 111.