Zbigniew Brzezinski

Early years

Zbigniew Brzeziński was born in Warsaw, Poland, on March 28, 1928 into a Roman Catholic szlachta family bearing the Trąby coat of arms, originally from Brzeżany, Tarnopol Voivodeship (then part of Poland, currently in Ukraine). The town of Brzeżany is thought to be the source of the family name. Brzeziński's parents were Leonia (née Roman) Brzeziński and Tadeusz Brzeziński, a Polish diplomat who was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935; Zbigniew Brzeziński thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis. From 1936 to 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, and was later praised by Israel for his work helping Jews escape from the Nazis.

In 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to Montreal as a consul general. The Brzeziński family lived near the Polish Consulate-General, on Stanley Street. In 1939, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was agreed to by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; subsequently the two powers and Slovakia invaded Poland. The 1945 Yalta Conference among the Allies allotted Poland to the Soviet sphere of influence. The Second World War had a profound effect on Brzeziński, who stated in an interview: "The extraordinary violence that was perpetrated against Poland did affect my perception of the world, and made me much more sensitive to the fact that a great deal of world politics is a fundamental struggle."

Academia

After attending Loyola College in Montreal, Brzeziński entered McGill University in 1945 to obtain both his Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees (received in 1949 and 1950 respectively). His Master's thesis focused on the various nationalities within the Soviet Union. Brzeziński's plan for pursuing further studies in the United Kingdom in preparation for a diplomatic career in Canada fell through, principally because he was ruled ineligible for a scholarship he had won that was only open to British subjects. Brzeziński then attended Harvard University to work on a doctorate with Merle Fainsod, focusing on the Soviet Union and the relationship between the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin's state, and the actions of Joseph Stalin. He received his Ph.D. in 1953; the same year, he traveled to Munich and met Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, head of the Polish desk of Radio Free Europe. He later collaborated with Carl J. Friedrich to develop the concept of totalitarianism as a way to characterize more accurately and powerfully, and to criticize the Soviets in 1956.

Brzeziński was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1953 to 1960, and of Columbia University from 1960 to 1972 where he headed the Research Institute on Communist Affairs. He was Senior Research Professor of International Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

As a Harvard professor, he argued against Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's policy of rollback, saying that antagonism would push Eastern Europe further toward the Soviets. The Polish protests followed by the Polish October and the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 lent some support to Brzeziński's idea that the Eastern Europeans could gradually counter Soviet domination. In 1957, he visited Poland for the first time since he left as a child, and his visit reaffirmed his judgement that splits within the Eastern bloc were profound. He developed ideas that he called "peaceful engagement". Brzeziński became a naturalized American citizen in 1958.

Very soon after Harvard awarded an associate professorship in 1959 to Henry Kissinger instead of to him, Brzeziński moved to New York City to teach at Columbia University. There he wrote Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, which focused on Eastern Europe since the beginning of the Cold War. He also taught future Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who like Brzeziński's wife Emilie was of Czech descent, and whom he also mentored during her early years in Washington. He also became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and joined the Bilderberg Group.

The Trilateral Commission

In his 1970 piece Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzeziński argued that a coordinated policy among developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic inequality. Out of this thesis, Brzeziński co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, serving as director from 1973 to 1976. The Trilateral Commission is a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics primarily from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three most industrially advanced regions of the capitalist world. In 1974, Brzeziński selected Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter as a member.

Advisor to President Carter

Carter announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential campaign to a skeptical media and proclaimed himself an "eager student" of Brzeziński. Brzeziński became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975. He became an outspoken critic of the Nixon-Kissinger over-reliance on détente, a situation preferred by the Soviet Union, favoring the Helsinki process instead, which focused on human rights, international law and peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe. Brzeziński was considered to be the Democrats' response to Republican Henry Kissinger. Carter engaged his incumbent opponent for the presidency, Gerald Ford, in foreign policy debates by contrasting the Trilateral vision with Ford's détente.

After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzeziński National Security Advisor. Earlier that year, major labor riots broke out in Poland, laying the foundations for Solidarity. Brzeziński began by emphasizing the "Basket III" human rights in the Helsinki Final Act, which inspired Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia shortly thereafter.

Brzeziński assisted with writing parts of Carter's inaugural address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet dissidents. The Soviet Union and Western European leaders both complained that this kind of rhetoric ran against the "code of détente" that Nixon and Kissinger had established. Brzeziński ran up against members of his own Democratic Party who disagreed with this interpretation of détente, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), whereas Brzeziński favored doing both at the same time. Brzeziński then ordered Radio Free Europe transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies. West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt objected to Brzeziński's agenda, even calling for the removal of Radio Free Europe from German soil.

The State Department was alarmed by Brzeziński's support for dissidents in East Germany and objected to his suggestion that Carter's first overseas visit be to Poland. He visited Warsaw and met with Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński (against the objection of the U.S. Ambassador to Poland), recognizing the Catholic Church as the legitimate opposition to communist rule in Poland.

National Security Advisor

President Carter chose Brzeziński for the position of National Security Adviser (NSA) because he wanted an assertive intellectual at his side to provide him with day-to-day advice and guidance on foreign policy decisions. Brzeziński would preside over a reorganized National Security Council (NSC) structure, fashioned to ensure that the NSA would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process.

Initially, Carter reduced the NSC staff by one-half, and decreased the number of standing NSC committees from eight to two. All issues referred to the NSC were reviewed by one of the two new committees, either the Policy Review Committee (PRC) or the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC). The PRC focused on specific issues, and its chairmanship rotated. The SCC was always chaired by Brzeziński, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve. Carter believed that by making the NSA chairman of only one of the two committees, he would prevent the NSC from being the overwhelming influence on foreign policy decisions it had been under Kissinger's chairmanship during the Nixon administration.

The SCC was charged with considering issues that cut across several departments, including oversight of intelligence activities, arms control evaluation, and crisis management. Much of the SCC's time during the Carter years was spent on SALT issues. The Council held few formal meetings, convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the eight years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Instead, Carter used frequent, informal meetings as a decision-making device—typically his Friday breakfasts—usually attended by the Vice President, the secretaries of State and Defense, Brzeziński, and the chief domestic adviser.

No agendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of the decisions actually agreed upon. Brzeziński was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of notes. Brzeziński also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action. President Carter enjoyed these reports and frequently annotated them with his own views. Brzeziński and the NSC used these presidential notes (159 of them) as the basis for NSC actions.

Major policies

During the 1960s, Brzeziński articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc, and while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, persuaded President Lyndon B. Johnson to adopt (in October 1966) peaceful engagement as U.S. strategy, placing détente ahead of German reunification and thus reversing prior U.S. priorities.

During the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of his political involvement, Brzeziński participated in the formation of the Trilateral Commission in order to more closely cement U.S.–Japanese–European relations. As the three most economically advanced sectors of the world, the people of the three regions could be brought together in cooperation that would give them a more cohesive stance against the communist world.

While serving in the White House, Brzeziński emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive. With Jimmy Carter in Camp David, he assisted in the attainment of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty.

Communists under the leadership of Nur Muhammad Taraki seized power in Afghanistan on April 27, 1978. The new regime—divided between Taraki's extremist Khalq faction and the more moderate Parcham—signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in December of that year. Taraki's efforts to improve secular education and redistribute land were accompanied by mass executions (including of many conservative religious leaders) and political oppression unprecedented in Afghan history, igniting a revolt by mujahideen rebels.

Following a general uprising in April 1979, Taraki was deposed by Khalq rival Hafizullah Amin in September. Amin was considered a "brutal psychopath" by foreign observers; even the Soviets were alarmed by the brutality of the Afghan communists, and suspected Amin of being an agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), although that was not the case. By December, Amin's government had lost control of much of the country, prompting the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan, execute Amin, and install Parcham leader Babrak Karmal as president.

President Carter was surprised by the invasion, as the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community during 1978 and 1979—reiterated as late as September 29, 1979—was that "Moscow would not intervene in force even if it appeared likely that the Khalq government was about to collapse." Indeed, Carter's diary entries from November 1979 until the Soviet invasion in late December contain only two short references to Afghanistan, and are instead preoccupied with the ongoing hostage crisis in Iran. In the West, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was considered a threat to global security and the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf.

After power

Brzeziński left office concerned about the internal division within the Democratic party, arguing that the dovish McGovernite wing would send the Democrats into permanent minority. Ronald Reagan invited him to stay on as his National Security Adviser, but Brzeziński declined, feeling that the new president needed a fresh perspective on which to build his foreign policy. He had mixed relations with the Reagan administration. On the one hand, he supported it as an alternative to the Democrats' pacifism. On the other hand, he also criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly black-and-white terms.

By the 1980s, Brzeziński argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadowed communism's end.

He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and more so of the Western European acquiescence to its imposition in the name of stability. Brzeziński briefed U.S. vice president George H. W. Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland that aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.

In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzeziński served as a member of the President's Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the U.S. National Security Council–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, Brzeziński was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force, endorsing Bush for president, and breaking with the Democratic party. Brzeziński published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades. He said there were five possibilities for the Soviet Union: successful pluralization, protracted crisis, renewed stagnation, coup (by the KGB or Soviet military), or the explicit collapse of the Communist regime. He called collapse "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than protracted crisis.

He also predicted that the chance of some form of communism existing in the Soviet Union in 2017 was a little more than 50% and that when the end did come it would be "most likely turbulent". Conflicts such as Nagorno-Karabakh crisis and Soviet attempts to reinstate its authority in Lithuania and other republics were much less violent than Brzeziński and other observers anticipated. In the event, the Soviet system collapsed totally after the abortive August coup of 1991 launched against Gorbachev failed.

Later years

After his role as National Security Adviser came to a close, Brzeziński returned to teaching, but remained an influential voice in international relations. Polish politician Radosław Sikorski wrote that to Poles, Brzeziński was considered "our statesman" and his was one of the most revered voices in Poland: "During the decades when Poland was stuck against her will behind the Iron Curtain, he and the Polish pope were the two most important voices for a free Poland abroad. After liberation, he acted as an adviser and champion of the new democracies on their way to rejoining Western institutions."

Though he rose to national prominence as a member of the Carter administration, Brzeziński avoided partisan politics and sometimes later voted Republican. In the 1988 election, he endorsed George H. W. Bush for president over Democrat Michael Dukakis.

Brzeziński argued against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was outspoken in the then-unpopular opinion that the invasion would be a mistake. As recalled by David Ignatius, "Brzeziński paid a cost in the insular, self-reinforcing world of Washington foreign policy opinion, until it became clear to nearly everyone that he (joined in this Iraq War opposition by Scowcroft) had been right." He later called President George W. Bush's foreign policy "catastrophic."

Brzeziński was a leading critic of the George W. Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror. In 2004, Brzeziński wrote The Choice, which expanded upon his earlier work,The Grand Chessboard (1997), and sharply criticized George W. Bush's foreign policy. In 2007, in a column in The Washington Post, Brzeziński excoriated the Bush administration, arguing that their post-9/11 actions had damaged the reputation of the United States "infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks" and destroyed any chance of uniting the world to defeat extremism and terrorism. He later stated that he had "visceral contempt" for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who supported Bush's actions in Iraq. In 2006, he defended John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt after their arguments about the Israel lobby attracted intense criticism.

In August 2007, Brzeziński endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He stated that Obama "recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world" and that "What makes Obama attractive to me is that he understands that we live in a very different world where we have to relate to a variety of cultures and people." In September 2007 during a speech on the Iraq war, Obama introduced Brzeziński as "one of our most outstanding thinkers", but some pro-Israel commentators questioned his criticism of the Israel lobby in the United States.

Personal life

Zbigniew Brzeziński was married to Czech-American sculptor Emilie Benešová (grand-niece of the second Czechoslovak president, Edvard Beneš), with whom he had three children. His elder son, Ian Brzeziński (b. 1963), is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program and is on the Atlantic Council's Strategic Advisors Group. Ian also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO (2001–2005) and was a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton. His younger son, Mark Brzeziński (b. 1965), is a lawyer who served on President Clinton's National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe, and has served as the U.S. ambassador to Sweden (2011–2015) and Poland (2022–2025). His daughter, Mika Brzezińska (b. 1967), is a television news presenter and co-host of MSNBC's weekday morning program, Morning Joe, where she provides regular commentary and reads the news headlines for the program.

He was deeply Roman Catholic.

Public life

Zbigniew Brzeziński was a member of the Atlantic Council and the National Endowment for Democracy. At the time of his death, he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Honorary Council of the European Academy of Diplomacy.

He was also referred to by the nickname "Zbig".

Film appearances

Zbigniew Brzeziński appeared as himself in several documentary films and TV series, such as: the 1997 film Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror, directed by David Pultz; Episodes 17 (Good Guys, Bad Guys), 19 (Freeze) and 20 (Soldiers of God) of the 1998 CNN series Cold War produced by Jeremy Isaacs; the 2009 documentary Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace; and the 2014 Polish biographical film Strateg (The Strategist) directed by Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska and produced by TVN. The 2014 Polish film Jack Strong features Krzysztof Pieczyński as Zbigniew Brzeziński.

Death

Zbigniew Brzeziński died at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, on May 26, 2017, at the age of 89. His funeral was held June 9 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew in Washington, D.C. Former President Carter and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were among those who gave eulogies, while attendees included international diplomats and emissaries; journalists Carl Bernstein, Chuck Todd and David Ignatius; 100-year-old Gen. Edward Rowny; former National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice; and former National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster.

"If I could choose my seatmate, it would be Dr. Zbigniew Brzeziński", Carter said of his international flights on Air Force One. Former National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, aged 94, was unable to attend, but a note he sent during the eulogy said: "The world is an emptier place without Zbigniew Brzeziński pushing the limits of his insights."

Honors

Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1981

Grand Cross of the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, 1998

Order of the White Eagle, 1995

Second Class of the Cross of the President of the Slovak Republic, 2002

Grand Officer of the Order of the Star of Romania, 2006

Honorary citizenship of the City of Gdańsk, 2002

Grand Officer of the Order of the Three Stars, 2007

Works

Major works by Brzezinski

The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956. ISBN 978-0674732674.

Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. ISBN 978-0674825451.

Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era. New York: Viking Press, 1970. ISBN 978-0313234989.

Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983. ISBN 978-0374236632.

Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0871130846.

Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century. New York: Collier Books, 1990. ISBN 978-0020307303.

Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century. New York: Collier Books, 1993. ISBN 978-0684826363.

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York: Basic Books, 1997. ISBN 0465027253. Translated and published in nineteen languages.

The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership. New York: Basic Books, 2004. ISBN 978-0465008001.

Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower. New York: Basic Books, 2007. ISBN 978-0465002528.

America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy. New York: Basic Books, 2008. ISBN 978-0465015016.

Other books and monographs

Russo-Soviet Nationalism (thesis). Montreal, Quebec: McGill University (1950).

Political Control in the Soviet Army: A Study on Reports by Former Soviet Officers. Studies on the USSR, no. 6. New York: Research Program on the USSR (1954). OCLC 1743232.

Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, with Carl J. Friedrich. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956). OCLC 654233383.

Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics. New York: Praeger (1962).

Political Power: USA/USSR, with Samuel Huntington. New York: Viking Press (April 1963). ISBN 0670563188.

Alternative to Partition: For a Broader Conception of America's Role in Europe. Atlantic Policy Studies, New York: McGraw-Hill (1965).

International Politics in the Technetronic Era. Volume 1 of Research Papers series, Tokyo Jōchi Daigaku Institute of International Relations. Sofia University Press (1971). 34 p.

The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan. New York: Harper and Row (1972). ISBN 0060104686.

American Security in an Interdependent World, with P. Edward Haley. Rowman & Littlefield (September 1988). ISBN 0819170844.

In Quest of National Security, with Marin Strmecki. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press (September 1988). ISBN 0813305756.

The Soviet Political System: Transformation or Degeneration. Irvington Publishers (August 1993). ISBN 0829035729.

Zbigniew Brzeziński, Bibliografia i Rysunki [Zbigniew Brzeziński, Bibliography and Drawings]. Łódź: Correspondance des arts (1993).

Book contributions

"After Srebrenica." (August 7, 1995). In: The Black Book of Bosnia: The Consequences of Appeasement, by the writers and editors of The New Republic. Edited by Nader Mousavizadeh. Afterword by Leon Wieseltier. New York: BasicBooks (1996), pp. 153–157. ISBN 978-0465098354.

Selected articles and essays

"Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe", with William Griffith. Foreign Affairs, vol. 39, no. 4 (Spring 1961), p. 647. doi:10.2307/20029518. JSTOR 20029518.

"Cincinnatus and the Apparatchik", with Samuel P. Huntington. World Politics, vol. 16, no. 1 (October 1963), pp. 52–78. doi:10.2307/2009251. JSTOR 2009251.

"The Implications of Change for United States Foreign Policy." Department of State Bulletin, vol. LVII (57), no. 1462 [8255] (July 3, 1967), pp. 19–23. U.S. Department of State.

"U.S. Foreign Policy: The Search for Focus." Foreign Affairs, vol. 51, no. 4 (July 1973), pp. 708–727. doi:10.2307/20038014. JSTOR 20038014.

"A Geostrategy for Eurasia." Foreign Affairs, vol. 76, no. 5 (September/October 1997), pp. 50–64.

"Russia Would Gain by Losing Chechnya."[link removed] New York Times (November 1999), p. A35.

"Balancing the East, Upgrading the West; U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Upheaval." Foreign Affairs, vol. 91, no. 1 (January/February 2012), pp. 97–104.

"Toward a Global Realignment." American Interest, vol. 11, no. 6 (July/August 2016). Full issue.

Reports

Democracy Must Work: A Trilateral Agenda for the Decade, with David Owen, Michael Stewart, Carol Hansen, and Saburo Okita. Trilateral Commission (June 1984). ISBN 0814761615.

Differentiated Containment: U.S. Policy Toward Iran and Iraq, with Brent Scowcroft and Richard W. Murphy. Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1997). ISBN 0876092024.

The United States and the Persian Gulf, with Anthony Lake, F. Gregory, and III Gause. Council on Foreign Relations Press (December 2001). ISBN 0876092911.

Iran: Time for a New Approach, with Robert M. Gates. Council on Foreign Relations Press (February 2003). ISBN 0876093454.