Abstract or Keywords
Gustav Niebuhr pointed to Obama's Cairo speech to the Arab world, in which the president acknowledged the U.S. role in undermining and helping to overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran in the 1950s and avoided a "clash of civilizations" framework that can imply that the United States is free of moral stain. In Oslo, Obama summarized the theory as follows: Over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers, clerics, and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war.\n In office, Obama has often acted like a traditional political realist, calibrating American interests country-bycountry and avoiding moral pronouncements about democracy or human rights.