http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_BrzezinskiZbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (born March 28, 1928, Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish-American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman.
He served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. He was known for his hawkish foreign policy (more favorable toward armed intervention) at a time when the Democratic Party was increasingly dovish (less favorable toward armed intervention). He is a foreign policy realist, and considered to be the Democrats' response to Henry Kissinger, also a realist, who served under President Nixon.<1>
Major foreign policy events during his office included: the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and severing of ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan); the signing of the SALT II arms control treaty; the brokering of the Camp David Accords; the transition of Iran to a non-pro-Western Islamic state (the "loss" of Iran); encouraging reform in Eastern Europe; emphasizing human rights in U.S. foreign policy; and arming mujaheddin in Afghanistan to prompt, and then to counter, a Soviet invasion.
He is currently a professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
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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 administration. On the one hand, he supported it as seemingly the only alternative to the Democrat's pacifism, but he also strongly criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly "Black & White" terms.
He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of Martial Law in Poland in 1981, and more so of Western European acquiescence to the imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed Vice President George Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland, which aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.
In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President’s Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force, and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party (coincidentally hurting the career of his former student Madeline Albright, who was Dukakis's foreign policy advisor). Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Gorbachev's reforms and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades. He said there were five possibilities for USSR: 1. Successful pluralization, 2. Protracted crisis, 3. Renewed stagnation, 4. Coup (KGB, Military) and 5. The explicit collapse of the Communist regime. He said #5 "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than alternative 2 (p. 245). He also predicted chances of some form of communism existing in Soviet in 2017 was a little more than 50% (p. 243). Finally when the end does come in a few more decades it will be "most likely turbulent" (p. 255). In the event the Soviet system collapsed totally in 1991 without bloodshed.
In 1989 the Communists failed to mobilize support, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre. 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 Eastern Europe were losing power.
Strobe Talbott, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for TIME magazine entitled "Vindication of a Hardliner."
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 administration. On the one hand, he supported it as seemingly the only alternative to the Democrat's pacifism, but he also strongly criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly "Black & White" terms.
He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of Martial Law in Poland in 1981, and more so of Western European acquiescence to the imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed Vice President George Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland, which aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.
In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President’s Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force, and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party (coincidentally hurting the career of his former student Madeline Albright, who was Dukakis's foreign policy advisor). Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Gorbachev's reforms and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades. He said there were five possibilities for USSR: 1. Successful pluralization, 2. Protracted crisis, 3. Renewed stagnation, 4. Coup (KGB, Military) and 5. The explicit collapse of the Communist regime. He said #5 "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than alternative 2 (p. 245). He also predicted chances of some form of communism existing in Soviet in 2017 was a little more than 50% (p. 243). Finally when the end does come in a few more decades it will be "most likely turbulent" (p. 255). In the event the Soviet system collapsed totally in 1991 without bloodshed.
In 1989 the Communists failed to mobilize support, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre. 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 Eastern Europe were losing power.
Strobe Talbott, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for TIME magazine entitled "Vindication of a Hardliner."
In 1990 Brzezinski warned against post-Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the Gulf War, arguing that the U.S. would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union, and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the Arab world. 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 Serbia in the Yugoslavian civil war. He also began to speak out against Russian oppression in Chechnya. Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin to Boris Yeltsin. In this vein, he became one of the foremost advocates of NATO expansion.
After 9/11 Brzezinski was criticized for his role in the formation of the mujaheddin network, which would later become Al Qaeda. He asserted that rightful blame ought to lay at the feet of the Soviet Union, whose invasion he claimed radicalized the relatively stable Muslim society.
Brzezinski also became a leading critic of the Bush administration's "war on terror." Some painted him as a neoconservative because of his links to Paul Wolfowitz and his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, which frankly discussed U.S. empire. He wrote The Choice in 2004 which expanded upon The Grand Chessboard but sharply criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski
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