As the Allied powers drew closer to victory, Niebuhr foresaw the need for a democratic theory that would foster the responsible exercise of American power in a radically altered postwar world. He maintained that the democratic system of checks and balances was uniquely effective at harnessing the human potential for good and restraining the human potential for evil. Yet past variants of democratic theory had proven too naïve in their assessments of evil to calibrate these checks and balances properly. Building a more stable world order required democracies to take seriously the deeply
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