Zbig: The Strategy and Statecraft of Zbigniew Brzezinski Edited by Charles Gati with a foreword by President Jimmy Carter, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, 253 pages, $29.95
It was appropriate for a renowned academic such as Charles Gati, a senior fellow at The Foreign Policy Institute and a professorial lecturer of Russian and Eurasian Studies at The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (Sais) in Washington DC, to edit a volume on a formidable American strategist who left his mark on contemporary US diplomacy.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Zbig for friend and foe alike, lived through a chequered period of history and dealt with complicated issues of international affairs even before he agreed to serve the United States as president Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser from 1977 to 1981.
He was and still is often compared to his predecessor, Henry Kissinger, although the two men stood at different ends of the spectrum. Both were shrewd, calculating, intellectually rigorous and, of course, displayed complex personalities, though the Polish-born academic displayed more confidence than the German-native.
Moreover, whereas Kissinger served a volatile and corrupt president (Richard Nixon) — followed by a deft management of the truncated Gerald Ford term — Brzezinski worked with an unusually moral head of state. For, despite its perceived shortcomings — Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy was perceived by hawks as a disaster on account of the Iran hostage crisis even if the Georgian accomplished more in one term than most presidents do in two — the Carter administration was unique in the 20th century, as it adopted the kinds of norms that others only spoke about.
Regrettably, while American foreign policy in the post-Second World War era reached its pinnacle in the early 1980s, the credit for the Cold War victory went to Ronald Reagan, even if the groundwork was clearly done earlier. In the event, while it was safe to assume that Zbig displayed all the qualities of a cold warrior throughout his adult life, his strategic calculations translated Carter’s outlook, to better protect and defend changing US interests.
In this highly readable volume of reflections on the legendary Cold Warrior by fellow academics and several journalists, Brzezinski comes to life as Justin Vaïsse, David C. Engerman, Mark Kramer, David Rothkopf, Warren I. Cohen and Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Robert A. Pastor, William B. Quandt, Robert Hunter, James Thomson, Patrick Vaughan, Marin Strmecki, James Mann, David Ignatius, Adam Garfinkle, Stephen F. Szabo, Francis Fukuyama and Charles Gati, offer their takes on various concerns that preoccupied Zbig.
Gati’s vivacious introduction and concluding one-on-one interview with Brzezinski provide lucid frames for the book. Over three decades of government service are evaluated in frank tones, though the statesman’s decades of public speaking engagements, which continue to this day, further highlight his many accomplishments and largely colour our view of the man.
Since space is limited and because Brzezinski’s work covered the entire globe, one could offer but a few snippets on some of the best aspects contained in this useful book. For example, it is fascinating to read that, in October 1989, Zbig spoke at a conference in Moscow — at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, no less — when he rhetorically asked “whether the Soviet Union will retain a presence in Europe” (p. 153) over the long term. His prescient comment materialised two years later when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Likewise, while Brzezinski built an enthralling reputation at the NSC, with some of his devoted staffers judging “his exuberant Russophobia, ... illustrated by his anti-Soviet antics on the Great Wall” in 1978 (p.93), as apt for his Chinese government nickname: “The Polar Bear Tamer.”
To give Brzezinski his due, one must also highlight his two overarching concerns, namely a singular focus on liberty, which escaped Kissinger, and his unabashed opposition to gratuitous warfare. Few can doubt his commitment to the long-term goals of stability and freedom, aptly coloured by what the son of a Polish diplomat witnessed when both Nazi Germany and Soviet military invaded and occupied his homeland, before spreading their venom elsewhere.
Courageously, Brzezinski rejected totalitarianism and espoused American open society, despite all of its shortcomings. Moreover, while he may have held hawkish views about Communism, Brzezinski believed in “peaceful engagement”, a strategy based on using military force as a secondary tool. To be sure, while he supported military intervention in the Vietnam War, it would have never occurred to him to abandon nearly a million loyal Vietnamese as Kissinger did.
Remarkably, Brzezinski became a vocal opponent of president George W. Bush’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq, and was one of the few who spoke out against the deceit — weapons of mass destruction — that packaged that intervention.
James Mann’s chapter in this book, titled “The Makings of a Dove,” addresses Brzezinski’s criticisms of the 1991 US military intervention in Iraq. Interestingly, Mann, a leading thinker in his own right with a superlative book on the neo-conservative merchants who “guided” the US into the Iraqi marshes [“Rise of the Vulcans”], affirms how Brzezinski “no longer needed to be a cold war warrior.”
As these essays confirm, there is no “sharper, clearer, more strategic thinker alive today than Zbig Brzezinski”, and this fascinating book offers an excellent retrospective of his numerous accomplishments.
The editor’s lengthy interview with the Zbig adds its own value to the volume as it allows the reader to benefit from the strategist’s insights. That section alone is a worthwhile feature of this expertly edited study and will leave few unimpressed.
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the author of the recently published Legal and Political Reforms in Saudi Arabia (London: Routledge, 2013)