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Zbigniew Brzezinski’s take on Russia, Iran and China
Reflections on his interviews with Charlie Rose from 2004 to 2011
One of the more astounding things about the US political establishment since the Bill Clinton administration is how much the quality of the leadership has degenerated.
I am not referring to the soft targets of a string of low-quality, low-impact, even disastrous POTUSes from Clinton to Trump – anyone who has watched late night shows from Jon Stewart to John Oliver can get much more entertaining critiques than someone writing on Substack. After all, the POTUSes are the frontmen to distract the general population.
Instead, I refer to the supposedly wise men (almost exclusively men in such capacities) that whisper in their ears and advise on national security and foreign policy issues, mainly the National Security Advisor.
While Marco Rubio, the incumbent NSA among his many official titles, is uniquely ill-qualified, he is merely another in a long-line of underwhelming individuals who filled this role in the last decade – Michael Flynn, John Bolton, and Jake Sullivan.
Once upon a time, the role was filled with heavy hitters. Whatever their shortcomings and even criminalities, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski stood out as towering strategic thinkers who have served in such roles.
George Kennan, the Mr. X who wrote the famous Long Telegram, was of the same caliber though he never reached the highest echelon in the power structure as Kissinger and Brzezinski.
No successors in the US national security establishment since Zbig have even come close to the intellectual chops or strategic insights of these two individuals.
Both are European Jews and pro-Israel (both died well before the atrocious genocide being committed now so pre-Israel didn’t carry the same stink yet) but neither is the kind of fervent Zionist as John Bolton of the Christian Zionist variety. Both advocated a more rational and balanced approach in the Middle East, including with Iran.
Brzezinski, the author of the famous geopolitical strategy book Grand Chessboard, was a key player in history. He served as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981.
During his tenure, momentous events took place – the US and China established formal diplomatic relationship (Jan 1979), the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah (Jan 1979), and the USSR invaded Afghanistan (Dec 1979).
Brzezinski played a critical role in all these historic events, especially in the Soviet-Afghanistan war where his strategy to help the Mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union and turn Afghanistan into the Soviet’s Vietnam eventually led to the downfall of the USSR.
While a hard-core anti-communist, Brzezinski was not a triumphalist and realized the limits of US power and the transient nature of its unipolar hegemony. His views on Russia were colored by his Polish heritage, but he realized it’s a mistake to alienate Russia, treat it as a defeated nation, and exclude it from Europe.
Similarly, he advocated pursuing reconciliation with Iran despite the very traumatic hostage crisis. He was even quite tolerant with Iran’s nuclear ambition. He opposed Israel’s plan to bomb Iran during Obama’s time in office (yes, that was the plan more than 15 years ago).
Brzezinski strongly advocated a collaborative, at least a non-antagonistic competitive relationship, between the US and China as he understood China would inevitably return to its historical role in Asia regardless of US objections. He believed it was in the US national interest to maintain a positive relationship with a peer superpower.
Brzezinski was clear-eyed that the post-Cold War unipolar US hegemony was transitory and couldn’t be sustained. Instead of sharing the permanent “full-spectrum dominance” delusion of the neocons and the liberal interventionists, he counselled for diplomacy and smart strategic trade-offs to preserve US advantages without pursuing a zero-sum game with other great powers.
In the 1997 Grand Chessboard book, he presciently warned US policy makers that "the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition, united not by ideology but by complementary grievances."
Less than 3 decades later, the aggressive pursuit of hegemonic dominance by successive US administrations have caused that exact scenario.
In a few days, when Putin, Kim, and Pezeshkian join President Xi in Beijing for the September 3 military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the defeat of the Japanese, Brzezinski’s geopolitical nightmare will have come to reality.
What set Kissinger and Brzezinski apart from the incompetent and arrogant US national security establishment since the Clinton administration is that both have profound knowledge of history and a deep understanding of the fleeting nature of power. Both came from humble backgrounds and knew the disasters of war.
They were well-versed in Chinese history and had extensive interactions with successive generations of Chinese leaders (Brzezinski met President Xi when he was the Vice President under Hu Jintao). Kissinger, in particular, showed astute insights in his book On China.
I ran across an old collection of Charlie Rose’s interviews with Brzezinski on Russia, Iran, and China from 2004 to 2011. His views are more relevant today than ever and much more sensible than most pundits could master, maybe with the exception of the courageous Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Here is a link to that video and watch his 2011 comments on what relationship the US should build with China, from the 54th minutes onwards.
What you see is the ultimate realist who articulated how the US should interact with other major powers from a perspective of true American national interest. Brzezinski’s advice is enlightening, in sharp contrast with the mindless ideological hawks in Washington today.
As a realist practitioner, Brzezinski vastly outmatched the faux realist theorist John Mearsheimer who still clings to the delusional notion that containing China is in the best interest of the US and it has the capability to do that. (100) John Mearsheimer is a crackpot realist - by Hua Bin
It is truly sad that the US power elite no longer has the kind of intellectual caliber and strategic acumen of individuals like Brzezinski. As a result, we live in a more dangerous world.
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Both Brezezinski and Kissinger were foreigners employed by the Crown to manage its US empire and its foreign policy. The current situation of hard talking extremely ideological empty suits in secretary/ministerial positions in EuroAmerica from Analena Blabbercok to Kajsa Kallas to Maro Rubio and the unbelievably unqualified Pete Hegseth is for the domestic audience to satiate the tribal urges of the extremely polarised woke-antiwoke national populations with fire and brimstone speech - it is inwardly oriented theatrics much like barely high school educated Indian PM Narendra Modis (his actual education is a state secret) hug and embrace and my phrand Dolund like talk is deliberately staged to satiate the below 70IQ uneducated illiterate sectarian rabble in Hindi-speaking/culturally aligned India that whole global leadership is fawning around their superman demigod Muslim vanquishing leader and he is their personal friend. It affects the just functionally intelligent middle/upper middle classes also. I ḥad a senior partner a Punjabi with family in the US working with us in Singapore tell me that Modi and Donald Trump are such pals that they chat with each other on WhatsApp every night. Just imagine the critical intelligence of a 45 something old adult man with two teenage children. There has been a remarkable lowering of global IQ and critical thinking ability worldwide especially in the democratic world outside China after the social media revolution. One important reason why most of the content on China's domestic version of TikTok Douying is brain stimulating educational content. Theatrics targeted at polarised audiences spread through WhatsAPP and Facebook video clips is what this all about. Another point is that the post-Thatcher post Reagan western world the CIA has captured the bureaucracies of all political parties in EuroAmerica (where the actual "selection" takes place to replace development oriented patriots which arch neoliberals. Beyond policy and laws they used to influence through lobbying, corporations have virtually taken over not only local administration but even foreign policy and defense policy of most EuroAmerican countries. With peak neoliberalism making the state redundant except for social engineering and international subterfuge -- that too for corporate interests.
Good write-up. A small note: Brzezinski was not Jewish. He was from a family of Catholic Polish aristocrats.