Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski; born March 28, 1928) is a Polish-American political scientist and geostrategist, who served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966–68 and was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977–81. Brzezinski belongs to the realist school of international relations, standing in the geopolitical tradition of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth28 March 1928
CountryUnited States of America
As in all things, it is terribly important to have a sense of priorities in what you do. And to make certain that priorities do not clash.
What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
The first and most important is to emphasize the enduring nature of the alliance relationship particularly with Europe which does share our values and interests even if it disagrees with us on specific policies.
I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, not as Democrats attacking the administration, but as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety?
We should seek to cooperate with Europe, not to divide Europe to a fictitious new and a fictitious old.
To increase the zone of peace is to build the inner core of a stable international zone.
Let's cooperate and challenge the administration to cooperate with us because within the administration there are also moderates and people who are not fully comfortable with the tendencies that have prevailed in recent times.
We need to ask who is the enemy, and the enemies are terrorists.
Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam.
We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.
I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the Khmer Rouge. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him. But China could.
If they had them, and they were armed to the teeth with them, why didn't they use them? ... If they didn't use them and hid them, that means they were deterred. And how do you hide all of these hundreds and hundreds of weapons with which they're armed?
Maybe we're better off with him sitting in New York at the U.N. than with him having an important post either in the State Department or in the National Security Council in the White House, actually shaping American policy.