Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (born 28 March 1928) Polish-American political scientist

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"This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy."
- Memo to President Carter following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979)

"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."
- The Grand Chessboard (1997)

"In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geostrategy involves the purposeful management of geostrategically dynamic states and the careful handling of geopolitically catalytic states, in keeping with the twin interests of America in the short-term: preservation of its unique global power and in the long-run transformation of it into increasingly institutionalized global cooperation. To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."
- The Grand Chessboard (1997)

"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?"
- In an interview in the French newspaper, Le Nouvel Observateur

"...foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition. That has been the tradition since the days of Truman and Vandenberg all the way until recent times." —Address to the New American Strategies Conference, October 28, 2003

"It was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." —Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

"I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thailand|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." (1979)

"We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war."
- On the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

"The president himself has to make, in a speech addressed to the nation, a careful, reasoned case, without sloganeering, on the specifics of the threat. Detailed evidence needs to be presented that the threat is both grave and imminent. An explanation is also needed as to why one member of 'the axis of evil' is seen as more menacing than the others."
- On George W. Bush's axis of evil and the war on terror