Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski ' onMouseout='HidePop("42205")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Warsaw">Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
) is an
AmericanThe people of the United States, U.S. Americans, or simply Americans or American people, are citizens or nationals of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
political scientist,
geostrategistGeostrategy, a subfield of geopolitics, is a type of foreign policy guided principally by geographical factors as they inform, constrain, or affect political and military planning...
, and
statesmanA statesman or stateswoman or statesperson is usually a politician or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career in politics or government at the national and international level. As a term of respect, it is usually left to supporters or commentators to use the term...
who served as United States National Security Advisor to
PresidentThe President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in the United States by influence and recognition...
Jimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
from 1977 to 1981. Known for his hawkish
foreign policyA country's foreign policy, also called the international relations policy, is a set of goals outlining how the country will interact with other countries economically, politically, socially and militarily, and to a lesser extent, how the country will interact with non-state actors...
at a time when the
Democratic PartyThe Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. It is the oldest political party in continuous operation in the United States and it is one of the oldest parties in the world. In the U.S...
was increasingly dovish, he is a foreign policy "realist" and considered by some to be the Democrats' response to
RepublicanThe Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the Grand Old Party or the GOP, despite being the younger of the two major parties. In the U.S...
Henry KissingerHenry Alfred Kissinger , is a German-born American political scientist, diplomat, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration....
.
Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of
relationsSino-American or U.S.-China relations refers to international relations between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China . Most analysts have characterized present Sino-American relations as complex and multi-faceted, with the United States and the People's Republic of China...
with the
People's Republic of ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
(and the severing of ties with the
Republic of ChinaThe Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan, is a state in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition and jurisdiction over China into a democratic state with limited international recognition and jurisdiction only over Taiwan and minor islands, though it...
), the signing of the second
Strategic Arms Limitation TreatyThe Strategic Arms Limitation Talks refers to two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union-the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. There were two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT II...
(SALT II), the brokering of the
Camp David AccordsThe Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States President Jimmy...
, the transition of
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
from an important US
client stateClient state is one of several terms used to describe the subordination of one state to a more powerful state in international affairs. It is the least specific of these terms and may be treated as a broad category which includes satellite state, puppet state, neo-colony, protectorate, vassal...
to an anti-Western
Islamic RepublicIslamic republic is the name given to several states in the Muslim world including the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Islamic...
, encouraging
dissidentA dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
s in
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
and emphasizing certain human rights in order to undermine the influence of the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
, the arming of the
mujahideenA Mujahideen is a person who is fighting for freedom. The plural is mujahideen . The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad ....
in
AfghanistanThe Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country in south central Asia. It is variously described as being located within Central Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East...
to fight against the Soviet-allied Afghan government to increase the probability of Soviet invasion and later entanglement in a
VietnamThe Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975...
-style war, and later to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the
Torrijos-Carter TreatiesThe Torrijos-Carter Treaties are two treaties signed by the United States and Panama in Washington, D.C., on September 7, 1977, abrogating the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty of 1903. The treaties guaranteed that Panama would gain control of the Panama Canal after 1999, ending the control of the canal...
relinquishing overt US control of the
Panama CanalThe Panama Canal is a ship canal which joins the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific ocean. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, it had an enormous impact on shipping between the two oceans, replacing the long and treacherous route via the Drake Passage and Cape Horn...
after 1999.
He is currently professor of American foreign policy at
Johns Hopkins UniversityThe Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the
Center for Strategic and International StudiesThe Center for Strategic and International Studies is a bipartisan Washington, D.C., foreign policy think tank. The center was founded in 1964 by Admiral Arleigh Burke and Ambassador David Manker Abshire, originally as part of Georgetown University...
, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the
PBSThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. However, its operations are largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
program
The NewsHour with Jim LehrerThe NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is an evening television news program broadcast weeknights on PBS in the United States. Unlike most other evening newscasts in the country, each edition is an hour long. The program also runs longer segments than most other news outlets in the U.S., with in-depth...
.
Early years
Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, in 1928. His family, members of the lesser nobility (or "
szlachtaSzlachta is the noble class in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the increasingly polonized territories under their control . The nobility arose in the late Middle Ages and existed through the 18th century and into the 20th century...
" in Polish), bore the Traby
coat of armsA coat of arms, more properly called an armorial achievement, armorial bearings or often just arms for short, in European tradition, is a design belonging to a particular person and used by them in a wide variety of ways. Historically, they were used by knights to identify them apart from enemy...
and hailed from
BrzeżanyBerezhany is a city located in the Ternopil Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Berezhanskyi Raion , and rests about 100 km from Lviv and 50 km from the oblast capital, Ternopil. The city has a population of about 20,000, and is about 400 m above sea level...
in
GaliciaGalicia is a historical region in East-Central Europe, currently divided between Poland and Ukraine, named after the Ukraіniаn city of Halych. The nucleus of historic Galicia is formed of three regions of western Ukraine: Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk.-Tribal area:The region has a turbulent...
. This town is thought to be the source of the family name. Brzezinski's father was
Tadeusz BrzezińskiTadeusz Brzeziński was a Polish consular official and the father of President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski....
, a Polish diplomat who was posted to
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
from 1931 to 1935; Zbigniew Brzezinski thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis. From 1936 to 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to the Soviet Union during Stalin's
Great PurgeGreat Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of...
.
In 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. In 1939, the
Molotov-Ribbentrop PactThe Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and signed in...
was agreed to by
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
and the Soviet Union; subsequently the two powers
invaded PolandThe Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II...
. The 1945
Yalta ConferenceThe Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D...
between the
AlliesIn general, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose. In English usage, those who share a common goal and whose work toward that goal is complementary may be viewed as allies for various purposes even when...
allotted Poland to the Soviet sphere of influence, meaning Brzezinski's family could not safely return to their country.
Rising influence
After attending prep school in
MontrealMontreal is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Originally called Ville-Marie , the city takes its present name from Mont-Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, whose name was also initially given to the island on which the...
, Brzezinski entered
McGill UniversityMcGill University is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
in 1945 to obtain both his
BABachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
and MA degrees (received in 1949 and 1950 respectively). His Master's
thesisA dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for a degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
focused on the various
nationA nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin. The development and conceptualization of the nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries,...
alities within the Soviet Union. Brzezinski's plan for doing further studies in
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
in preparation for a diplomatic career in
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
fell through, principally because he was ruled ineligible for a scholarship he had won that was only open to persons with
British subjectIn British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings. The current definition of the term British subject is contained in the British Nationality Act 1981.- Prior to 1949 :...
status. Brzezinski then went on to attend
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
to work on a
PhDPHD may refer to:* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian reform organization* PHD, a track on The Crystal Method album Tweekend* PHD finger, a protein sequence* PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company...
, focusing on the Soviet Union and the relationship between the
October RevolutionTheOctober Revolution , also known as the Soviet Revolution or Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution. It began with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Julian calendar...
, Lenin's state, and the actions of Stalin. He received his doctorate in 1953; the same year, he traveled to
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
and met
Jan Nowak-JezioranskiJan Nowak-Jeziorański was a Polish journalist, writer, politician, social worker and patriot. He served during the Second World War as one of the most notable resistance fighters of the Home Army...
, head of the Polish desk of
Radio Free EuropeRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is an international broadcast organization that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe and Middle Asia. RFE/RL is supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, with the US Secretary of State among its members. It is funded by the...
. He later collaborated with
Carl J. FriedrichCarl Joachim Friedrich was a German-American professor and political theorist....
to develop the concept of
totalitarianismTotalitarianism is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single party or faction, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
and apply it to the Soviets in 1956.
As a Harvard professor he argued against Dwight Eisenhower and
John Foster DullesJohn Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism around the world...
's policy of
rollback"Rollback" was a term used by American foreign policy thinkers during the Cold War. It was defined as using military force to "roll back" communism in countries where it had taken root.- Rollback during the Cold War :...
, saying that antagonism would push
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
further toward the Soviets. The Polish strike and
Hungarian RevolutionHungarian Revolution may refer to:* The Hungarian Revolution of 1848.* The Hungarian Revolution of 1919, which led to the formation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic headed by Béla Kun.* The Hungarian Revolution of 1956....
in 1956 lent some support to Brzezinski's idea that the Eastern Europeans could gradually counter Soviet domination. In 1957, he visited Poland for the first time since he left as a child, and it reaffirmed his judgment that splits within the
Eastern blocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
were profound.
In 1958 he became a United States citizen, although he probably also continues to be considered a Polish citizen under Polish law. Despite his years of residence in Canada and the presence of family members there, he never became a Canadian citizen.
In 1959 Brzezinski was not granted tenure at Harvard, and he moved to
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
to teach at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
. Here he wrote
Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, which focused on Eastern Europe since the beginning of the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
. He also became a member of the
Council on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
in New York and attended meetings of the
Bilderberg GroupThe Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an unofficial, annual, invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of great influence in the fields of politics, business, banking, and media....
.
During the 1960 US presidential elections, Brzezinski was an advisor to the
John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
campaign, urging a non-antagonistic policy toward Eastern European governments. Seeing the Soviet Union as having entered a period of stagnation, both economic and political, Brzezinski predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union along lines of nationality (expanding on his master's thesis).
Brzezinski continued to argue for and support
détenteDétente is a French term, meaning a relaxing or easing; the term has been used in international politics since the early 1970s. Generally, it may be applied to any international situation where previously hostile nations not involved in an open war de-escalate tensions through diplomacy and...
for the next few years, publishing "Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe" in
Foreign AffairsForeign Affairs is an American magazine on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
, and supporting non-antagonistic policies after the
Cuban Missile CrisisThe Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in October 1962, during the Cold War. In Russia, former Eastern Bloc, and communist countries , it is termed the "Caribbean Crisis" , while in Cuba it is called the "October Crisis"...
, on the grounds that such policies might disabuse Eastern European nations of their fear of an aggressive
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
and pacify Western Europeans fearful of a superpower condominium along the lines of the
Yalta ConferenceThe Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D...
.
In 1964, Brzezinski supported Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign and the
Great SocietyThe Great Society was a set of domestic programs proposed or enacted in the United States on the initiative of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education,...
and
civil rights policiesThe Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places, and employment...
, while on the other hand he saw Soviet leadership as having been purged of any creativity following the ousting of Khrushchev. Through Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, Brzezinski met with
Adam MichnikAdam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1968-1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...
, the future Polish
SolidaritySolidarity is a Polish trade union federation founded in September 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard, and originally led by Lech Wałęsa.Solidarity was the first non-Communist-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country...
activist.
Brzezinski continued to support engagement with Eastern European governments, while warning against
De GaulleCharles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II...
's vision of a "Europe from the
AtlanticThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres , it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface and about one-quarter of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek...
to the Urals." He also supported the
Vietnam WarThe Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975...
. From 1966 to 1968, Brzezinski served as a member of the Policy Planning Council of the US Department of State (President Johnson's 7 October 1966 "Bridge Building" speech was a product of Brzezinski's influence).
Events in
CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
further reinforced Brzezinski's criticisms of the right's aggressive stance toward Eastern European governments. His service to the Johnson administration, and his fact-finding trip to
VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
made him an enemy of the New Left, despite his advocacy of de-escalation of the US' involvement in the war.
For the 1968 US presidential campaign, Brzezinski was chairman of the
Hubert HumphreyHubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
Foreign Policy Task Force. He advised Humphrey to break with several of President Johnson's policies, especially concerning Vietnam, the
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, and
condominiumIn international law, a condominium is a political territory in or over which two or more sovereign powers formally agree to share equally dominium and exercise their rights jointly, without dividing it up into 'national' zones.Although a condominium has always been...
with the USSR.
Brzezinski called for a pan-
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
an conference, an idea that would eventually find fruition in 1973 as the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Meanwhile he became a leading critic of both the Nixon-
KissingerHenry Alfred Kissinger , is a German-born American political scientist, diplomat, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration....
détente condominium, as well as
McGovernGeorge Stanley McGovern is a former United States Representative, Senator, and Democratic presidential nominee. McGovern lost the 1972 presidential election in a landslide to Richard Nixon. As a decorated World War II combat veteran, McGovern was known for his opposition to the Vietnam...
's
pacifismPacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes or gaining advantage. Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved; to calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war;...
.
In his 1970 piece
Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski argued that a coordinated policy among developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic
inequalityIn mathematics, an inequality is a statement about the relative size or order of two objects, or about whether they are the same or not .*The notation a < b means that a is less than b....
. Out of this thesis, Brzezinski co-founded the
Trilateral CommissionThe Trilateral Commission is a private organization, established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan. It was founded in July 1973 at the initiative of David Rockefeller, who was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time...
with
David RockefellerDavid Rockefeller Sr. is an American banker, statesman, globalist, and the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family. He is the youngest and only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the only surviving grandchild of billionaire oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. ...
, serving as director from 1973 to 1976. The Trilateral Commission is a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics primarily from the United States,
Western EuropeWestern Europe is the collection of countries in the westernmost region of Europe, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a cultural entity—the region lying west of Central Europe...
and
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three most industrially advanced regions of the
capitalist* The word capitalist was first used by Arthur Young in his 1792 work Travels 1787–89; undertaken with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, etc. of the kingdom of France in the sense of one who owns capital, and was more precisely defined by Karl Marx in Das Kapital as one who owned working...
world. Brzezinski selected
GeorgiaGeorgia is a state in the United States. One of the original Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution, it had been the last of the Thirteen Colonies to be established, in 1733. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January...
governor
Jimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
as a member.
Government
Jimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential campaign to a skeptical media and proclaimed himself an "eager student" of Brzezinski. Brzezinski became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975. He became an outspoken critic of the Nixon-Kissinger over-reliance on détente, a situation preferred by the USSR, favoring the
Helsinki processthumb|300px|[[Erich Honecker]] and [[Helmut Schmidt]] in Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki 1975....
instead, which focused on
human rightsHuman rights refer to the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the...
,
international lawPublic international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states, analogous entities, such as the Holy See, and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
and peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe. Carter engaged Ford in foreign policy debates by contrasting the Trilateral vision with Ford's détente.
After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski
National Security AdvisorThe Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief adviser to the President of the United States on national security issues...
. Earlier that year, major labor riots broke out in Poland, laying the foundations for
SolidaritySolidarity is a Polish trade union federation founded in September 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard, and originally led by Lech Wałęsa.Solidarity was the first non-Communist-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country...
. Brzezinski began by emphasizing the "Basket III" human rights in the Helsinki Final Act, which inspired
Charter 77Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in Czechoslovakia from 1977 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, many of its members...
in
CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
shortly thereafter.
Brzezinski had a hand in writing parts of Carter's inaugural address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet
dissidentA dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
s. The Soviet Union and Western European leaders both complained that this kind of rhetoric ran against the "code of détente" that Nixon and Kissinger had established. Brzezinski ran up against members of his own
Democratic PartyThe Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. It is the oldest political party in continuous operation in the United States and it is one of the oldest parties in the world. In the U.S...
who disagreed with this interpretation of détente, including
Secretary of StateThe United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence. The current Secretary of...
Cyrus VanceCyrus Roberts Vance was the United States Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1980. He approached foreign policy with an emphasis on negotiation over conflict and a special interest in arms reduction. In April 1980, Vance resigned in protest of Operation Eagle Claw, the...
. Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to
Strategic Arms Limitation TalksThe Strategic Arms Limitation Talks refers to two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union-the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. There were two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT II...
(SALT), whereas Brzezinski favored doing both at the same time. Brzezinski then ordered
Radio Free EuropeRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is an international broadcast organization that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe and Middle Asia. RFE/RL is supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, with the US Secretary of State among its members. It is funded by the...
transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies.
West GermanWest Germany is a common English name for the period of the Federal Republic of Germany between its' formation in May 1949 to German reunification in October 1990, when the German Democratic Republic was dissolved and the five states on its territory joined the Federal Republic of Germany,...
chancellor
Helmut SchmidtHelmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting...
objected to Brzezinski's agenda, even calling for the removal of Radio Free Europe from German soil.
The State Department was alarmed by Brzezinski's support for East German dissidents and objected to his suggestion that Carter's first overseas visit be to Poland. He visited
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
, met with
CardinalA cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually a bishop, of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and making themselves available...
Stefan Wyszynski (against the objection of the U.S. Ambassador to Poland), recognizing the
Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
as the legitimate opposition to Communist rule in Poland.
By 1978, Brzezinski and Vance were more and more at odds over the direction of Carter's foreign policy. Vance sought to continue the style of détente engineered by Nixon-Kissinger, with a focus on
arms controlArms control is an umbrella term for restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation, and usage of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction...
. Brzezinski believed that détente emboldened the Soviets in
AngolaAngola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean. The exclave province of Cabinda has a border with the Republic of the...
and the
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, and so he argued for increased military strength and an emphasis on human rights. Vance, the State Department, and the media criticized Brzezinski publicly as seeking to revive the Cold War.
Brzezinski advised Carter in 1978 to engage the People's Republic of China and traveled to
BeijingBeijing is a metropolis in northern China and the capital of the People's Republic of China...
to lay the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the two countries. This also resulted in the severing of ties with the United States' longtime anti-Communist ally the
Republic of ChinaThe Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan, is a state in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition and jurisdiction over China into a democratic state with limited international recognition and jurisdiction only over Taiwan and minor islands, though it...
. Also in 1978, Polish Cardinal
Karol WojtyłaPope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła served as Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death almost 27 years later. His was the second-longest pontificate; only Pope Pius IX served longer...
was elected Pope John Paul II—an event which the Soviets believed Brzezinski orchestrated.
1979 saw two major strategically important events: the overthrow of US ally the
Shah of IranMohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, , was the emperor of Iran from 16 September 1941, until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The
Iranian RevolutionThe Iranian Revolution of 1979 or 1979 Islamic Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution...
precipitated the
Iran hostage crisisThe Iranian hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 53 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American embassy in support of the Iranian Revolution.The...
, which would last for the rest of Carter's presidency. Brzezinski anticipated (some have claimed he even engineered) the Soviet invasion, and, with the support of
Saudi ArabiaSaudi Arabia , is an Arab country and the largest country of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Jordan on the northwest, Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south...
,
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
and the PRC, he created a strategy to undermine the Soviet presence. See below under "Major Policies - Afghanistan."
Using this atmosphere of insecurity, Brzezinski led the US toward a new arms buildup and the development of the
Rapid Deployment ForcesIn 1977, a presidential directive called for the establishment of a mobile force capable of responding to worldwide contingencies that would not divert forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or Korea. A concerted effort to establish the envisioned force was not made until 1979, after...
—policies that are both more generally associated with
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
now. In 1980, Brzezinski planned
Operation Eagle ClawOperation Eagle Claw was a United States military operation that attempted to rescue 52 American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1980. The attempt was aborted when three helicopters that were part of the operation were damaged or forced to return to the carrier USS...
, which was meant to free the hostages in
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
using the newly created
Delta ForceThe 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta — commonly known as Delta, Delta Force or the Combat Applications Group by the United States Department of Defense, is an elite Special Operations Force and an integral element of the Joint Special Operations Command...
and other
Special ForcesSpecial forces and special operations forces are generic terms for elite highly-trained military teams/units that conduct specialized operations such as reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, direct action and counter-terrorism actions.In the United States, the term special operations forces is...
units. The mission was a failure and led to Secretary Vance's resignation.
Brzezinski was criticized widely in the press and became the least popular member of Carter's administration.
Edward KennedyEdward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected in November 1962, he was elected nine times and served for 46 years in the U.S. Senate. At the time of his death, he was the second most senior member of the Senate, and...
challenged President Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, and at the
conventionThe 1980 National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party nominated President Jimmy Carter for President and Vice President Walter Mondale for Vice President...
Kennedy's delegates loudly booed Brzezinski. Hurt by internal divisions within his party and a stagnant domestic economy, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide.
Brzezinski, acting under a
lame duckA lame duck is an elected official who is approaching the end of his or her tenure, and especially an official whose successor has already been elected.The status can be due to*having lost a re-election bid...
Carter presidency, but encouraged that Solidarity in Poland had vindicated his style of engagement with Eastern Europe, took a hard-line stance against what seemed like an imminent Soviet invasion of Poland. He even made a midnight phone call to Pope John Paul II—whose visit to Poland in 1979 had foreshadowed the emergence of Solidarity—warning him in advance. The US stance was a significant change from previous reactions to Soviet repression in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
After power
Brzezinski left office concerned about the internal division within the Democratic party, arguing that the dovish McGovernite wing would send the Democrats into permanent minority.
He had mixed relations with the
Reagan administrationThe United States Presidency of Ronald Reagan, also known as the Reagan Administration, was a Republican administration headed by Ronald Reagan from January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989. Reagan was the first U.S. president since Dwight D...
. On the one hand, he supported it as an alternative to the Democrats'
pacifismPacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes or gaining advantage. Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved; to calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war;...
, but he also criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly black-and-white terms.
He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of
martial law in PolandMartial law in Poland refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush the political opposition against the Communist rule in Poland...
in 1981, and more so of Western European acquiescence to its imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed US vice-president George H.W. Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland that aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.
In 1985, under the
ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President's
Chemical WarfareChemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons to kill, injure, or incapacitate an enemy....
Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the
NSCThe White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the President of the...
-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory BoardThe President's Intelligence Advisory Board is an advisor to the Executive Office of the President of the United States. According to its self-description, it "...provides advice to the President concerning the quality and adequacy of intelligence collection, of analysis and estimates, of...
.
In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party. Brzezinski published
The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Gorbachev's reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades. He said there were five possibilities for the Soviet Union: successful pluralization, protracted crisis, renewed stagnation, coup (by the
KGBThe KGB was the national security agency of the USSR. From 1954 until 1991, the Committee for State Security was the Communist state's premier secret police, internal security, and espionage organization, whose coat of arms—the Shield and the Sword—illustrate a national military hierarchy...
or Soviet military), or the explicit collapse of the Communist regime. He called collapse "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than protracted crisis. He also predicted that the chance of some form of communism existing in the Soviet Union in 2017 was a little more than 50% and that when the end did come it would be "most likely turbulent". In the event, the Soviet system collapsed totally in 1991 following Moscow's crackdown on
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
's attempt to declare independence, the
Nagorno-Karabakh WarThe Nagorno-Karabakh War was an armed conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the small enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by the Republic of Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan...
of the late 1980s, and scattered bloodshed in other republics. This was a less violent outcome than Brzezinski and other observers anticipated.
In 1989 the Communists failed to mobilize support in Poland, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the
Katyn MassacreThe Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps...
. This served as an opportunity for him to ask the Soviet government to acknowledge the truth about the event, for which he received a standing ovation in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Ten days later, the Berlin Wall fell, and Soviet-supported governments in Eastern Europe began to totter.
Strobe TalbottNelson Strobridge "Strobe" Talbott III is an American foreign policy analyst associated with Yale University and the Brookings Institution, a former journalist associated with Time magazine and diplomat who served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001.-Early life:Born in Dayton, Ohio...
, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for
TIMETime is a component of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects...
magazine entitled
Vindication of a Hardliner.
In 1990 Brzezinski warned against post–Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the
Gulf WarThe Persian Gulf War , known also as the Gulf War, the First Gulf War,or often as the Second Gulf War and by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as The Mother of all Battles, or commonly as Desert Storm, for the military response...
, arguing that the US would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the
Arab worldThe Arab World refers to Arabic-speaking countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast...
. He expanded upon these views in his 1992 work
Out of Control.
However, in 1993 Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a country located in both Central and Southeastern Europe. Its territory covers the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and central part of the Balkans...
in the Yugoslavian civil war. He also began to speak out against Russia's
First Chechen WarThe First Chechen War, also known as the War in Chechnya, was a conflict between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought from December 1994 to August 1996...
, forming the
American Committee for Peace in ChechnyaFounded in 1999, the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya is the only private, non-governmental organization in North America exclusively dedicated to promoting the peaceful resolution of the Second Chechen war...
. Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent
Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich Putin was the second President of Russia and is the current Prime Minister of Russia as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus...
after
Boris YeltsinBoris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999....
. In this vein, he became one of the foremost advocates of NATO expansion.
Post 9/11
After the
September 11, 2001 attacksThe September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by Al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners...
Brzezinski was criticized for his role in the formation of the Afghan mujaheddin network, some of which later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda. He asserted that blame ought to be laid at the feet of the Soviet Union's invasion which radicalized the relatively stable Muslim society. However, Brzezinski is also accused of having "knowingly increased the probability that they (the Soviet Union) would invade" by supporting Afghan rebels before the invasion and drawing the Soviets into an "Afghan trap".
Brzezinski was a leading critic of the
George W. Bush administrationThe Presidency of George W. Bush began on his inauguration on January 20, 2001 as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
's "war on terror." Some painted him as a neoconservative because of his friendship with
Paul WolfowitzPaul Dundes Wolfowitz is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank, and former Dean of The Paul H...
and his 1997 book
The Grand Chessboard. However in 2004, Brzezinski wrote
The Choice, which expanded upon
The Grand Chessboard but sharply criticized the
George W. BushGeorge Walker Bush was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000....
's foreign policy. He defended the book
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign PolicyThe Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is the title of a book by John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Relations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, published in late August 2007 by...
and was an outspoken critic of the 2003
invasion of IraqThe Iraq War, also known as the Occupation of Iraq or Operation Iraqi Freedom, is an ongoing military campaign which began on March 20, 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a multinational force led by troops from the United States and the United Kingdom.Prior to the war, the governments of the United...
.
In August 2007, Brzezinski endorsed Democratic presidential candidate
Barack ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii...
. He stated "recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world." Also saying, "What makes Obama attractive to me is that he understands that we live in a very different world where we have to relate to a variety of cultures and people." In September 2007 during a speech on the Iraq war, Obama introduced Brzezinski as "one of our most outstanding thinkers," but some questioned his criticism of the
Israel lobby in the United StatesThe term Israel lobby in the United States is a term to describe the diverse coalition of groups and individuals who seek to influence United States foreign policy in support of Israel or its government policies...
. In a September 2009 interview with
The Daily BeastThe Daily Beast is a news reporting and opinion website published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. About one-third of its content is original, while the rest is aggregated links to articles written by other news outlets. The Daily Beast was launched October 6, 2008,...
In a September 2009, Brzezinski replied to a question about how aggressive President Obama should be in insisting Israeli not conduct an air strike on Iran saying: "We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?" This was interpreted as supporting the U.S. downing Israeli jets to prevent an attack on Iran.
Personal life
Brzezinski is married to Czech-American sculptor Emilie Benes (grand-niece of the second Czech president,
Edvard BenešEdvard Beneš was a leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second President of Czechoslovakia. He was known to be a skilled diplomat.- Youth :...
), with whom he has three children. His son,
Mark BrzezinskiMark Brzezinski is an American lawyer and foreign policy expert. He is the son of Polish-born former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and the grandson of Polish diplomat Tadeusz Brzeziński. His sister is Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the morning talk show Morning Joe.Brzezinski...
(b. 1965), a lawyer who served on President Clinton's National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe, is a partner in
McGuire Woods LLPMcGuireWoods is a major United States law firm based in Richmond, Virginia. Founded in 1834 in Charlottesville, Virginia the firm now has more than 900 attorneys and advisers in 20 offices in the United States, Europe and Asia.-History:...
. His daughter,
Mika BrzezinskiMika Emilie Leonia Brzezinski is a television news journalist at MSNBC. Brzezinski is co-host of MSNBC's weekday morning program, Morning Joe, where she provides regular commentary and reads the news headlines for the program. Additionally, she reports for NBC Nightly News and serves as...
(b. 1967), is a television news journalist and a regular anchor on
MSNBCMSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States and available in both the US and Canada. Its name is a combination of "MSN" and "NBC"....
. His son Ian served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and
NATOThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization ); ), also called "the Atlantic Alliance", is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on April 4, 1949...
and is now a Principal at
Booz Allen HamiltonBooz Allen Hamilton, or more commonly Booz Allen, is a private consulting firm headquartered in Tysons Corner, unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, with 80 other offices throughout the nation...
.
As Carter's National Security Advisor
President Carter chose Zbigniew Brzezinski for the position of National Security Adviser (NSA) because he wanted an assertive intellectual at his side to provide him with day-to-day advice and guidance on foreign policy decisions. Brzezinski would preside over a reorganized National Security Council (NSC) structure, fashioned to ensure that the NSA would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process.
Brzezinski's task was complicated by his (hawkish) focus on East-West relations in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights.
Initially, Carter reduced the NSC staff by one-half and decreased the number of standing NSC committees from eight to two. All issues referred to the NSC were reviewed by one of the two new committees, either the Policy Review Committee (PRC) or the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC). The PRC focused on specific issues, and its chairmanship rotated. The SCC was always chaired by Brzezinski, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve. Carter believed that by making the NSA chairman of only one of the two committees, he would prevent the NSC from being the overwhelming influence on foreign policy decisions it was under Kissinger's chairmanship during the Nixon administration. The SCC was charged with considering issues that cut across several departments, including oversight of intelligence activities, arms control evaluation, and crisis management. Much of the SCC's time during the Carter years was spent on SALT issues.
The Council held few formal meetings, convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the 8 years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Instead, Carter used frequent, informal meetings as a decision-making device, typically his Friday breakfasts, usually attended by the Vice President, the secretaries of State and Defense, Brzezinski, and the chief domestic adviser. No agendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of the decisions actually agreed upon. Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of notes. Brzezinski also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action. President Carter enjoyed these reports and frequently annotated them with his own views. Brzezinski and the NSC used these Presidential notes (159 of them) as the basis for NSC actions.
From the beginning, Brzezinski made sure that the new NSC institutional relationships would assure him a major voice in the shaping of foreign policy. While he knew that Carter would not want him to be another Kissinger, Brzezinski also felt confident that the President did not want Secretary of State Vance to become another Dulles and would want his own input on key foreign policy decisions.
Brzezinski's power gradually expanded into the operational area during the Carter Presidency. He increasingly assumed the role of a Presidential emissary. In 1978, for example, Brzezinski traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for normalizing
U.S.-PRC relationsSino-American or U.S.-China relations refers to international relations between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China . Most analysts have characterized present Sino-American relations as complex and multi-faceted, with the United States and the People's Republic of China...
. Like Kissinger before him, Brzezinski maintained his own personal relationship with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Brzezinski had NSC staffers monitor State Department cable traffic through the Situation Room and call back to the State Department if the President preferred to revise or take issue with outgoing State Department instructions. He also appointed his own press spokesman, and his frequent press briefings and appearances on television interview shows made him a prominent public figure, although perhaps not nearly as much as Kissinger had been under Nixon.
The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's "independence" but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition. An NSC
working groupA working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...
on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Only then did he decide to abandon SALT II ratification and pursue the anti-Soviet policies that Brzezinski proposed.
The
Iranian revolutionThe Iranian Revolution of 1979 or 1979 Islamic Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution...
was the last straw for the disintegrating relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. As the upheaval developed, the two advanced fundamentally different positions. Brzezinski wanted to control the revolution and increasingly suggested military action to prevent Khomeini from coming to power, while Vance wanted to come to terms with the new Islamic Republic of Iran. As a consequence, Carter failed to develop a coherent approach to the Iranian situation. In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission to rescue the US hostages in March 1980, undertaken over his objections, was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinski and Vance.
Major policies
During the 1960s Brzezinski articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc and persuaded President Johnson, while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, to adopt in October 1966 peaceful engagement as US strategy, placing
détenteDétente is a French term, meaning a relaxing or easing; the term has been used in international politics since the early 1970s. Generally, it may be applied to any international situation where previously hostile nations not involved in an open war de-escalate tensions through diplomacy and...
ahead of
German reunificationGerman reunification is the process in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and Berlin was united into a single city-state. The start of this process is commonly referred to by former citizens of the GDR as die Wende...
and thus reversing prior US priorities.
During the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of his political involvement, Brzezinski participated in the formation of the Trilateral Commission in order to more closely cement US-Japanese-European relations. As the three most economically advanced sectors of the world, the people of the three regions could be brought together in cooperation that would give them a more cohesive stance against the communist world.
While serving in the White House, Brzezinski emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive. With Jimmy Carter in Camp David, he assisted in the attainment of the
Israel-Egypt Peace TreatyThe 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty was signed in Washington, DC, United States, on March 26, 1979, following the 1978 Camp David Accords...
. He actively supported Polish
SolidaritySolidarity is a Polish trade union federation founded in September 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard, and originally led by Lech Wałęsa.Solidarity was the first non-Communist-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country...
and the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion, and provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union. He played a leading role in normalizing US-PRC relations and in the development of joint strategic cooperation, cultivating a relationship with
Deng XiaopingDeng Xiaoping was a prominent Chinese politician, statesman, theorist, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng became a reformer who led China towards market economics...
, for which he is thought very highly of in mainland China to this day.
In the 1990s he formulated the strategic case for buttressing the independent statehood of
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
, partially as a means to ending a resurgence of the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, and to drive Russia toward integration with the
WestThe Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term that can have multiple meanings depending on its context...
, promoting instead "geopolitical pluralism" in the space of the former Soviet Union. He developed "a plan for Europe" urging the expansion of NATO, making the case for the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states. He also served as
William ClintonWilliam Clinton may refer to:*William de Clinton, 1st Earl of Huntingdon *William Henry Clinton , British general*Bill Clinton , 42nd President of the United States...
's emissary to
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan , formally the Republic of Azerbaijan , is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south...
in order to promote the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline. Further, he led, together with
Lane KirklandJoseph Lane Kirkland was a US labor union leader who served as President of the AFL-CIO for over sixteen years.-Biography:...
, the effort to increase the endowment for the US–sponsored Polish-American Freedom Foundation from the proposed $112 million to an eventual total of well over $200 million.
He has consistently urged a US leadership role in the world, based on established alliances, and warned against
unilateralistUnilateralism is any doctrine or agenda that supports one-sided action. Such action may be in disregard for other parties, or as an expression of a commitment toward a direction which other parties may find agreeable...
policies that would destroy US global credibility and precipitate US global isolation.
Afghanistan
Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
and
AfghanistanThe Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country in south central Asia. It is variously described as being located within Central Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East...
, which were run by
Pakistani security servicesThe Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence is the largest intelligence service in Pakistan...
with financial support from the CIA and Britain's MI6. This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces to overthrow the secular communist
People's Democratic Party of AfghanistanThe People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was a communist party established on the 1 January, 1965. While a minority, the party helped former president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, to overthrow his cousin, Mohammed Zahir Shah, and established Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan...
government in Afghanistan, which had been destabilized by coup attempts against
Hafizullah AminHafizullah Amin was the second President of Afghanistan during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan....
, the power struggle within the Soviet-supported
ParchamParcham was the name of one of the factions of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The Parcham faction seized power in the country after toppling Hafizullah Amin....
faction of the PDPA and a subsequent Soviet military intervention.
Years later, in a 1997
CNNCable News Network, almost always referred to by its initialism CNN, is an U.S. cable news network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first network to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States...
/
National Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located within The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of...
interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets in 1979:
- We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions
International sanctions are actions taken by countries against others for political reasons, either unilaterally or multilaterally.There are three types of sanctions....
focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the SaudisSaudi Arabia , is an Arab country and the largest country of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Jordan on the northwest, Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south...
, the EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
ians, the British, the ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again—for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the CzechoslovakCzechoslovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.
Milt Bearden wrote in
The Main Enemy that Brzezinski, in 1980, secured an agreement from King
Khalid of Saudi Arabia*Bandar bin Khalid*Abdallah bin Khalid*al-Jauhara bint Khalid*Nuf bint Khalid*Mudhi bint Khalid*Fahd bin Khalid*Saud bin Khalid*Hussa bint Khalid*Faysal bin Khalid*Sa'd bin Khalid*al-Bandari bint Khalid*Misha'il bint Khalid*Nura bint Khalid...
to match US contributions to the Afghan effort dollar for dollar and that
Bill CaseyWilliam D. Casey is a Canadian politician. He is a former Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons....
would keep that agreement going through the Reagan administration.
In 1998, Brzezinski was interviewed by the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur on the topic of Afghanistan. He revealed that CIA support for the mujaheddin had started before the 1979 Soviet invasion. Brzezinski saw the invasion as an opportunity to embroil the Soviet Union in a bloody conflict comparable to the US experience in
VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
. He referred to this as the "Afghan Trap" and viewed the end of the Soviet empire as worth the cost of strengthening militant Islamic groups.
He went on to say in that interview, "What is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of
Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
and the end of the
cold warThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
?" When the interviewer questioned him about
Islamic fundamentalismIslamic fundamentalism Arabic: usul , is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah.Definitions of the term vary...
representing a world menace, Brzezinski said, "Nonsense!"
In his 1997 book
The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski says that assistance to the Afghan resistance was a tactic designed to bog down the Soviet army while the United States built up a deterrent military force in the
Persian GulfThe Persian Gulf, in the Southwest Asian region, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Historically and commonly known as the Persian Gulf, this body of water is sometimes controversially referred to as the Arabian Gulf by most Arab states or simply The...
to prevent Soviet political or military penetration farther south (see the
Carter DoctrineThe Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf region...
).
In a footnote in his 2000 book
The Geostrategic Triad, Brzezinski notes:
- The full story of the productive U.S.-China cooperation directed against the Soviet Union (especially in regard to Afghanistan), initiated by the Carter Administration and continued under Reagan, still remains to be told.
A memo from Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Carter on December 26, 1979, discusses the implications of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on US foreign policy, especially regarding
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
.
Iran
Facing a
revolutionThe Iranian Revolution of 1979 or 1979 Islamic Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution...
, the
ShahMohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, , was the emperor of Iran from 16 September 1941, until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
of Iran sought help from the United States. Iran occupied a strategic place in US policy in the Middle East, acting as an important ally and a buffer against Soviet influence in the region. The US ambassador to Iran,
William H. SullivanWilliam Healy Sullivan is a career United States Foreign Service officer, and served as United States Ambassador to Laos in 1964, the Philippines in 1973, and Iran from 1977 to 1979....
, recalls that Brzezinski "repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully." These reassurances would not, however, amount to substantive action on the part of the United States. On November 4, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would "back him to the hilt." At the same time, certain high-level officials in the State Department decided that the Shah had to go, regardless of who replaced him. Brzezinski and US Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger (formerly Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford) continued to advocate that the US support the Shah militarily. Even in the final days of the revolution, when the Shah was considered doomed no matter what the outcome of the revolution, Brzezinski still advocated a US invasion to keep Iran under US influence. President Carter could not decide how to appropriately use force and opposed another US-backed
coup d'etatA coup d'état , or coup for short, is the sudden unconstitutional deposition of a legitimate government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another, either civil or military...
. He ordered the
aircraft carrierAn aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power great distances without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...
ConstellationUSS Constellation , a Kitty Hawk-class supercarrier, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the "new constellation of stars" on the flag of the United States....
to the
Indian OceanThe Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by South Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean...
but ultimately allowed a regime change. A deal was worked out with the Iranian generals to shift support to a moderate government, but this plan fell apart when Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers swept the country, taking power on February 12, 1979.
China
Shortly after taking office in 1977, President Carter again reaffirmed the United States' position of upholding the
Shanghai CommuniqueThe Joint Communiqué of the United States of America and the People's Republic of China, also known as the Shanghai Communiqué , was an important diplomatic document issued by the United States of America and the People's Republic of China. on February 27, 1972 during President Richard Nixon's...
. The United States and People's Republic of China announced on December 15, 1978, that the two governments would establish diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. This required that the US sever relations with the
Republic of ChinaThe Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan, is a state in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition and jurisdiction over China into a democratic state with limited international recognition and jurisdiction only over Taiwan and minor islands, though it...
on
TaiwanTaiwan , also known as Formosa , is the largest island of the Republic of China in East Asia. Taiwan is located east of the Taiwan Strait, off the southeastern coast of mainland China...
. Consolidating US gains in befriending communist China was a major priority stressed by Brzezinski during his time as National Security Advisor.
The most important strategic aspect of the new US-Chinese relationship was in its effect on the Cold War. China was no longer considered part of a larger Sino-Soviet bloc but instead a third pole of power due to the
Sino-Soviet SplitThe Sino–Soviet split was the gradual worsening of relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...
, helping the United States against the Soviet Union. A notable example, discussed above, was Chinese assistance in Brzezinski's efforts to draw the USSR into a Vietnam-style conflict in Afghanistan.
In the
Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic RelationsThe Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations of January 1, 1979, established official relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China....
dated January 1, 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from
TaipeiTaipei is the largest city in Taiwan and has served as the de facto capital of the Republic of China since the Chinese Civil War in 1949. It is situated on the Danshui River, almost at the northern tip of the island, about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean...
to
BeijingBeijing is a metropolis in northern China and the capital of the People's Republic of China...
. The US reiterated the Shanghai Communique's acknowledgment of the PRC position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; Beijing acknowledged that the US would continue to carry on commercial, cultural, and other unofficial contacts with Taiwan. The
Taiwan Relations ActThe Taiwan Relations Act is an act of the United States Congress passed in 1979 after the establishment of relations with the People's Republic of China and the breaking of relations between the United States and the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan by President Jimmy Carter...
made the necessary changes in US domestic law to permit unofficial relations with Taiwan to continue.
In addition the severing relations with the ROC, the Carter administration also agreed to unilaterally pull out of the
Sino-American Mutual Defense TreatySino-American Mutual Defense Treaty was a treaty between the United States of America and the Republic of China; it was signed on December 2, 1954 and came into force on March 3, 1955....
, withdraw US military personnel from Taiwan, and gradually reduce arms sales to the Republic of China. There was widespread opposition in the US Congress, notably from Republicans, due to the Republic of China's status as an anti-Communist ally in the Cold War. In
Goldwater v. CarterGoldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996 , was a United States Supreme Court case which was the result of a lawsuit filed by Senator Barry Goldwater and other members of the United States Congress challenging the right of President Jimmy Carter to unilaterally nullify the Sino-American Mutual Defense...
,
Barry GoldwaterBarry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. He was also a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He was known as "Mr...
made a failed attempt to stop Carter from terminating the mutual defense treaty.
PRC Vice-premier
Deng XiaopingDeng Xiaoping was a prominent Chinese politician, statesman, theorist, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng became a reformer who led China towards market economics...
's January 1979 visit to Washington, DC, initiated a series of high-level exchanges, which continued until the Tiananmen Square massacre, when they were briefly interrupted. This resulted in many bilateral agreements, especially in the fields of scientific, technological, and cultural interchange and trade relations. Since early 1979, the United States and the PRC have initiated hundreds of joint research projects and cooperative programs under the Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, the largest bilateral program.
On March 1, 1979, the United States and People's Republic of China formally established embassies in Beijing and Washington. During 1979, outstanding private claims were resolved, and a bilateral trade agreement was concluded. US vice-president
Walter MondaleWalter Frederick Mondale is an American politician and member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He was the 42nd Vice President of the United States under President Jimmy Carter, a two-term United States Senator from Minnesota, and the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1984...
reciprocated vice-premier Deng's visit with an August 1979 trip to China. This visit led to agreements in September 1980 on maritime affairs, civil aviation links, and textile matters, as well as a bilateral consular convention.
Brzezinski encouraged China to give succour to the
Khmer RougeThe Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the totalitarian ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan....
in
CambodiaThe Kingdom of Cambodia , formerly known as Kampuchea , is a country in South East Asia with a population of over 14 million people. The kingdom's capital and largest city is Phnom Penh...
, as a counter to growing Vietnamese influence in
IndochinaIndochina, or the Indochinese Peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly east of India, south of China.The word has French origins, Indochine, and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory to bordering countries.Historically, the countries of...
.
As a consequence of high-level and working-level contacts initiated in 1980, US dialogue with the PRC broadened to cover a wide range of issues, including global and regional strategic problems, political-military questions—including
arms controlArms control is an umbrella term for restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation, and usage of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction...
, UN and other multilateral organization affairs, and international narcotics matters.
Cambodia
In 1981 Brzezinski revealed that he encouraged the Chinese to support
Pol PotSaloth Sar or Minh Hai, , widely known as Pol Pot, , was the leader of the Cambodian communist movement known as the Khmer Rouge and was Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976–1979....
. This was part of a wider policy of forcing the Vietnamese out of
CambodiaThe Kingdom of Cambodia , formerly known as Kampuchea , is a country in South East Asia with a population of over 14 million people. The kingdom's capital and largest city is Phnom Penh...
by funding anti-Vietnamese guerrilla groups that the U.S. helped create. Between 1979 and 1981, the World Food Program, which was under US influence, provided nearly $12 million in food aid to
ThailandThe Kingdom of Thailand is an independent country that lies in the heart of Southeast Asia.It is bordered to the north by Laos and Burma, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and Burma...
. Much of this aid made its way to the
Khmer RougeThe Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the totalitarian ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan....
.
In January 1980 the US started funding Pol Pot while he was in exile. The extent of this support was $85 million from 1980 to 1986.
Brzezinski's support of the Khmer Rouge was a continuation of the friendly relations the US had with the Khmer Rouge during the presidency of
Gerald FordGerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
. Kissinger had already asked Thailand's foreign minister in 1975 to tell the Khmer Rouge that the US would be friends with them.
Brzezinski himself however denied that his administration helped China fund Pol Pot in a letter he sent to the New York Times in 1998.
Arab-Israeli conflict
On October 10, 2007 Brzezinski along with other influential signatories sent a letter to President
George W. BushGeorge Walker Bush was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000....
and Secretary of State
Condoleezza RiceCondoleezza Rice is a professor, diplomat, author, and national security expert. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and the second to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
titled 'Failure Risks Devastating Consequences'. The letter was partly an advice and a warning of the failure of an upcoming US-sponsored Middle East conference scheduled for November 2007 between representatives of
IsraelisIsraelis , are citizens or nationals of the modern state of Israel. Israel is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds including most numerously Jews, Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Druze, Circassians, and others...
and Palestinians. The letter also suggested to engage in "a genuine dialogue with
HamasHamas is a Palestinian Islamic socio-political organization which includes a paramilitary force, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
" rather than to isolate it further.
Ending détente
Presidential Directive 18 on US National Security, signed early in Carter's term, signaled a fundamental reassessment of the value of
détenteDétente is a French term, meaning a relaxing or easing; the term has been used in international politics since the early 1970s. Generally, it may be applied to any international situation where previously hostile nations not involved in an open war de-escalate tensions through diplomacy and...
, and set the US on a course to quietly end Kissinger's strategy.
Nuclear strategy
Presidential Directive 59, "Nuclear Employment Policy", dramatically changed US targeting of nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union. Implemented with the aid of Defense Secretary
Harold BrownHarold Brown , American scientist, was U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1977 to 1981 in the cabinet of President Jimmy Carter. He had previously served in the Lyndon Johnson administration as U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary and Secretary of the Air Force.While Secretary of Defense, he insisted in...
, this directive officially set the US on a countervailing strategy .
Arms control
- See also: Arms Control
Arms control is an umbrella term for restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation, and usage of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction...
Academia
Brzezinski was on the faculty of
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
from 1953 to 1960, and of
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
from 1960 to 1989 where he headed the Institute on Communist Affairs. He is currently a professor of foreign policy at the
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International StudiesThe Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies , a division of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., is one of the world's most prestigious and leading graduate schools devoted to the study of international affairs, economics, diplomacy, and policy research and...
at
Johns Hopkins UniversityThe Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
in Washington, D.C.
As a scholar he has developed his thoughts over the years, fashioning fundamental theories on international relations and
geostrategyGeopolitics is the art and practice of using political power over a given territory. Traditionally, the term has applied primarily to the impact of geography on politics, but its usage has evolved over the past century to encompass a wider connotation....
. During the 1950s he worked on the theory of
totalitarianismTotalitarianism is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single party or faction, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
. His thought in the 1960s focused on wider Western understanding of disunity in the Soviet Bloc, as well as developing the thesis of intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union. During the 1970s he propounded the proposition that the Soviet system was incapable of evolving beyond the industrial phase into the "technetronic" age.
By the 1980s, Brzezinski argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadowed
communismCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
's end. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he spent the 1990s warning that global discord may get out of control and formulating a geostrategy for U.S. global preponderance.
Geostrategy
Brzezinski laid out his most significant contribution to post–Cold War geostrategy in his 1997 book
The Grand Chessboard. He defined four regions of
EurasiaEurasia is a large landmass covering about 52,990,000 km
2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface...
and in which ways the United States ought to design its policy toward each region in order to maintain its global primacy. The four regions are:
- Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
(the Democratic Bridgehead)
- Russia (the Black Hole)
- The Caucasus
The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region between at the border of Europe and Asia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain ....
and Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
(the Eurasian BalkansThe Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
)
- East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about , or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe, though some categorize Tibet, Xinjiang,...
(the Far Eastern Anchor)
In this book Brzezinski claims the United States is the first, only, and last truly global "superpower": "America is now Eurasia's arbiter, with no major Eurasian issue soluble without America's participation or contrary to America's interests."
In his subsequent book,
The Choice, Brzezinski updates his geostrategy in light of
globalizationGlobalization describes an ongoing process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communication and exchange....
, the
September 11, 2001 attacksThe September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by Al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners...
, and the intervening six years between the two books.
Public life
Brzezinski is a past member of the board of directors of
Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international secular non-governmental organisation which defines its mission as "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated." Founded in London in 1961, AI...
, the
Council on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
, the
Atlantic CouncilThe Atlantic Council is a Washington, D.C. think tank and public policy group whose mission is to "promote constructive U.S. leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the central role of the Atlantic community in meeting the international challenges of the 21st century." Founded...
, and the
National Endowment for DemocracyThe National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is a U.S. non-profit organization that was founded in 1983, to promote democracy by providing cash grants funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress...
.
He was formerly a director of the
Trilateral CommissionThe Trilateral Commission is a private organization, established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan. It was founded in July 1973 at the initiative of David Rockefeller, who was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time...
, now serving only on the executive committee, and was formerly a boardmember of
Freedom HouseFreedom House is a Washington-based international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
. He is currently a trustee and counselor for the
Center for Strategic and International StudiesThe Center for Strategic and International Studies is a bipartisan Washington, D.C., foreign policy think tank. The center was founded in 1964 by Admiral Arleigh Burke and Ambassador David Manker Abshire, originally as part of Georgetown University...
, a board member for the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus, on the advisory board of America Abroad Media, and on the advisory board of
Partnership for a Secure AmericaThe Partnership for a Secure America is a policy center in the United States. It describes its mission as "recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy."...
.
Film appearance
Brzezinski appears as himself in the 2009 documentary
Back Door Channels: The Price of PeaceBack Door Channels: The Price of Peace , directed by Harry Hunkele, is an American documentary film about the interplay between the official government channels and the men who acted largely behind the scenes during the course of peace process between Israel and Egypt.-Synopsis:The film posits that...
.
Major works by Brzezinski
- The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956)
- Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses . The current director...
(1967), ISBN 0-674-82545-4
- Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era, New York: Viking Press (1970), ISBN 0-313-23498-1
- Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981, New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux (March 1983), ISBN 0-374-23663-1
- Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest, Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press (June 1986), ISBN 0-87113-084-X
- Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1989), ISBN 0-02-030730-6
- Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century, New York: Collier (1993), ISBN 0-684-82636-4
- The Grand Chessboard
The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives is one of the major works of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor under the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Regarding the landmass of Eurasia as the center of global power, Brzezinski...
: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic Books (October 1997), ISBN 0-465-02726-1, subsequently translated and published in nineteen languages
- The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Basic Books (March 2004), ISBN 0-465-00800-3
- Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower
Zbigniew Brzezinski was President Carter's National Security advisor andremains a scholar of American foreign policy as a professor atthe School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.In Second Chance, Dr...
, Basic Books (March 2007), ISBN 0-465-00252-8
- America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy , Basic Books (September 2008), ISBN 0-465-01501-8
Other books and monographs
- Russo-Soviet Nationalism, M.A. Thesis, McGill University (1950)
- Political Control in the Soviet Army: A Study on Reports by Former Soviet Officers, New York, Research Program on the U.S.S.R (1954)
- with Carl J. Friedrich, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956)
- Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics, New York: Praeger (1962)
- with Samuel Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an American political scientist who gained prominence through his Clash of Civilizations thesis of a post-Cold War new world order.-Biographical details:...
, Political Power: USA/USSR, New York: Viking Press (April 1963), ISBN 0-670-56318-8
- Alternative to Partition: For a Broader Conception of America's Role in Europe, Atlantic Policy Studies, New York: McGraw-Hill (1965)
- The Implications of Change for United States Foreign Policy, Department of State (1967)
- International Politics in the Technetronic Era, Sofia University Press (1971)
- The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan, New York: Harper and Row (1972), ISBN 0-06-010468-6
- with P. Edward Haley, American Security in an Interdependent World, Rowman & Littlefield (September 1988), ISBN 0-8191-7084-4
- with Marin Strmecki, In Quest of National Security, Boulder: Westview Press (September 1988), ISBN 0-8133-0575-6
- The Soviet Political System: Transformation or Degeneration, Irvington Publishers (August 1993), ISBN 0-8290-3572-9
- with Paige Sullivan, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Documents, Data, and Analysis, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe (1996), ISBN 1-56324-637-6
- The Geostrategic Triad : Living with China, Europe, and Russia, Center for Strategic & International Studies (December 2000), ISBN 0-89206-384-X
Selected essays and reports
- with David Owen, Michael Stewart, Carol Hansen, and Saburo Okita, Democracy Must Work: A Trilateral Agenda for the Decade, Trilateral Commission (June 1984), ISBN 0-8147-6161-5
- with Brent Scowcroft
Brent Scowcroft was the United States National Security Advisor under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush and a Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force. He also served as Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon and as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security...
and Richard W. MurphyRichard William Murphy is an American diplomat.After graduating from The Roxbury Latin School in 1947, he received BAs from Harvard University in 1951 and from Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge in 1953. From 1953 to 1955, he served in the U.S...
, Differentiated Containment: U.S. Policy Toward Iran and Iraq, Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1997), ISBN 0-87609-202-4
- U.S. Policy Toward Northeastern Europe: Report of an Independent Task Force, Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1999), ISBN 0-87609-259-8
- with Anthony Lake
Anthony Lake, or William Anthony Kirsopp Lake is a retired American diplomat, political figure, and academic. He has been a foreign policy advisor to many Democratic U.S. presidents and presidential candidates, and served as National Security Advisor under U.S. President Bill Clinton from 1993 to...
, F. Gregory, and III Gause, The United States and the Persian Gulf, Council on Foreign Relations Press (December 2001), ISBN 0-87609-291-1
- with Robert M. Gates, Iran: Time for a New Approach, Council on Foreign Relations Press (February 2003), ISBN 0-87609-345-4
Further reading
- Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos, Kissinger and Brzezinski: The NSC and the Struggle for Control of U.S. National Security Policy, Palgrave Macmillan (June 1991), ISBN 0-312-05743-1
- Patrick Vaughan
Patrick Vaughan is an American historian and scholar, currently teaching at the Institute for American Studies and Polish Diaspora at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He specializes in the history of the Cold War and America’s use of “soft power” to achieve its foreign policy aims...
(1999) "Beyond Benign Neglect: Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Polish Crisis of 1980." Polish Review (1): 3–28
- Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Dreams and Reality, Toronto 1984, ISBN 0-9691756-0-4
- Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Kanada, Kanada, Warszawa 1986, ISBN 83-7021-006-6
- Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Korzenie sa polskie, Warszawa 1992, ISBN 83-7066-406-7
- Aleksandra Ziółkowska Boehm: The Roots Are Polish, Toronto 2004, ISBN 0-920517-05-6
- Andrzej Bernat, Pawel Kozlowski: Zycie z Polska, Warszawa 2004, ISBN 83-7386-084-3
External links
- Interview about US relations with China for the WGBH series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
- Brzezinski at CSIS
- Brzezinski at Jamestown
- Brzezinski at the Trilateral Commission
- The Modern History Project: Zbigniew Brzezinski
- CNN Cold War - Profile: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski
- NNDB Profile of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Notable Names Database
- Profile: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
- Booknotes interview with Brzezinski on The Grand Failure, April 2, 1989.
- Cold War: interview with Brzezinski, The National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located within The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of...
, June 13, 1997.
- Zbigniew Brzezinski. A geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
, The Council on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
, September 1997.
- Brzezinski: NATO enlargement is central to secure Euro-Atlantic alliance, United States Information Service, October 10, 1997.
- Interview with Brzezinski: CIA's intervention in Afghanistan, Le Nouvel Observateur
Le Nouvel Observateur is a weekly French newsmagazine. It is the most prominent French general information magazine based in Paris in terms of audience and circulation ....
, January 1998.
- Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I started the Mujahedeen
- The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
- Kissinger & Brzezinski discuss the surveillance plane standoff with China, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. However, its operations are largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
, April 4, 2001.
- Geopolitically Speaking: Brzezinski on Eurasia Azerbaijan International, Winter 1995 (3.4).
- Geopolitically Speaking: Brzezinski on the Caucasus Azerbaijan International, Summer 1997 (5.2).
- Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy in Eurasia
- Zbigniew Brzezinski. Confronting Anti-American Grievances, New York Times, September 1, 2002.
- Neal Conan. Brzezinski discusses his participation in the 1978 Camp David, Talk of The Nation, National Public Radio
National Public Radio is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, signed into law...
, September 16, 2003.
- Zbigniew Brzezinski. We are going to live in an insecure world, October 28, 2003.
- Brzezinski on repercussions for diplomacy and the war on terror, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. However, its operations are largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
, March 19, 2004.
- History Makers Series: Conversation with Brzezinski, The Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
, March 24, 2004.
- Zbigniew Brzezinski. Speaker's notes: Threats, Dangers, and Uncertainties, Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
. October 12, 2004.
- Marie-Laure Germon. Brzezinski: "The Neo-Conservative Formula Doesn't Work", Le Figaro
Le Figaro is one of the leading French morning daily newspapers. Its editorial line is conservative and has generally been supportive of the Rally for the Republic political party and its successor, the Union for a Popular Movement...
, October 18, 2004.
- Arthur Lepic. Brzezinski: the Empire’s Adviser, Voltaire Network
The Réseau Voltaire is an international non-profit organisation, based in Paris. It states that it aims at promoting freedom and secularism , that is separation of church and state, faith and politics. Chaired by Thierry Meyssan, new changes in the group's political orientation led to a split in...
, October 22, 2004.
- Zbigniew Brzezinski.The Dilemma Of The Last Sovereign (PDF-140KB), The American Interest, Autumn 2005.
- Brzezinski to chair RAND center for Middle East public policy advisory board, RAND
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company and currently financed predominantly by the U.S. government, a private endowment, predominantly pharmaceutical corporations,...
Military Corporation, December 8, 2005.
- Brzezinski's role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Payvand News, March 10, 2006.
- Air Strike on Iran Could ‘Merit the Impeachment of the President’, April 26, 2006.
- The Christopher J. Makins Lecture by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, May 31, 2006.
- Former National Security Advisors Clash on Iraq Policy, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. However, its operations are largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
, February 1, 2007.
- Brzezinski's Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 1, 2007
- A road map out of Iraq, LA Times, February 11, 2007
- Terrorized by 'War on Terror', Washington Post, March 25, 2007.
- Transcript: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft interviewed by Charlie Rose, International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English-language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 35 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 180 countries...
, June 18, 2007.
- Brzezinski: U.S. in danger of 'stampeding' to war with Iran, CNN
Cable News Network, almost always referred to by its initialism CNN, is an U.S. cable news network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first network to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States...
, September 24, 2007