Zbigniew Brzeziński Quotes (35 quotes)

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Between Two Ages

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Zbigniew Brzeziński: 35 quotes2 likes

Famous Zbigniew Brzeziński Quotes

“We have a large public that is very ignorant about world affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Morning Joe (July 13, 2011).

“History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

The New York Times, January 18, 1981 Quotation of the Day http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/18/nyregion/quotation-of-the-day-227621.html?scp=28&sq=Brzezinski&st=nyt. <br class="br">Variant: History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy.

“Like so many empires before it, the Soviet Union eventually imploded and fragmented, falling victim not so much to a direct military defeat as to disintegration accelerated by economic and social strains.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Source: The Grand Chessboard (1997), Chapter 1, Hegemony Of A New Type, p. 9.

“The key institutions of Soviet power - though weakened, demoralized, and corrupted - were still there. Symbolic of that reality and of the lingering hold of the Communist past was the historic centerpiece of Moscow: the continued presence of the Lenin mausoleum.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Source: The Grand Chessboard (1997), Chapter 4, The Black Hole, p. 104.

“Benchmarks are targets that have to be fulfilled. They cannot be fulfilled in an indefinite period of time, so there are timetables in benchmarks.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

PBS NewsHour, October 26, 2006 PBS Newshour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec06/iraq_10-25.html (2006). On the "benchmarks" used by George W. Bush.

“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, 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.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris (15-21 January 1998). (Brzezinski has repeatedly http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04252012-175722/unrestricted/WHITE_THESIS.pdf denied https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGjAsQJh7OM having said this, and no such memo exists. https://books.google.com/books?id=ToYxFL5wmBIC&q=deep+skepticism#v=snippet&q=deep%20skepticism&f=false) <br class="br">Disputed

Zbigniew Brzeziński Quotes about the world

“This is a highly motivated, good country. It is driven by good motives. But it is also a country with an extremely simplistic understanding of world affairs, and with still a high confidence in America’s capacity to prevail, by force if necessary. (…) This is a country of good emotions, but poor knowledge and little sophistication about the world.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Interview in The National Interest - Brzezinski on the Syria Crisis, Interview in The National Interest http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/brzezinski-the-syria-crisis-8636 (June 24, 2013).

“With the more endowed nations constrained by their own higher technological capacity for self-destruction as well as by self interest, war may have become a luxury that only the poor peoples of this world can afford.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Conclusion, p. 213.
The Grand Chessboard (1997)

“The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U. S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Source: The Grand Chessboard (1997), Chapter 5, The Eurasian Balkans, p. 125.

“The dynamic character of China's nonstatist economic transformation, including its social openness to the rest of the world, is not mutually compatible in the long run with a relatively closed and bureaucratically rigid Communist dictatorship.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Source: The Grand Chessboard (1997), Chapter 6, The Far Eastern Anchor, p. 161.

“I am very worried that most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Spokespersons of US Right 'In Most Cases Stunningly Ignorant, Interview in Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,733079,00.html, December 6, 2010.

“…'world peace' imposed by a dominant power assisted by a few partners is unlikely… only world peace driven by a recognition of the threat to everyone's survival is the most likely source of salvation…”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Time, The Answers Issue (July 2015), p. 49.

Zbigniew Brzeziński Quotes about people

“[American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Spokespersons of US Right 'In Most Cases Stunningly Ignorant, Interview in Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,733079,00.html (December 6, 2010).

“I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the 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.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Elizabeth Becker, When The War Was Over..., 1979, p. 435 http://books.google.com/books?id=3NHoI2HoFiQC&pg=PA435&lpg=PA435&dq=%22i+encouraged+the+chinese+to+support+pol+pot%22+becker&source=web&ots=XLHBFETcFH&sig=kznWEHGxoTAgUR-BTChSThlGrpk (Brzezinski responded in the letter the NYT http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/22/opinion/l-pol-pot-s-evil-had-many-faces-china-acted-alone-605387.html clarifying his postion at the time: "China acted alone [... Becker's article] asserts flatly as if it was a fact that the Carter Administration "helped arrange continued Chinese aid" to Pol Pot.[...] we told the Chinese explicitly that in our view Pol Pot was an abomination and that the United States would have nothing to do with him directly or indirectly."). <br class="br">Disputed

“You have to ask yourself, 'What was the desire of the people who, after more than 40 years of Soviet oppression, became free?' They didn’t want to be pawns between a residual West that ended somewhere on the borders of the old West Germany and a resurgent Russia. They wanted to be part of the democratic West and, eventually, of the European Union. Those are perfectly legitimate aspirations. This is no threat to Russia –- except to those Russians who cannot conceive of Russia as anything else but a dominant empire that rules not only over the Russian people but over those adjoining Russian territory.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński

Interview in The Huffington Post - NATO Should Stop Putin From Restoring Czarist Empire, Zbigniew Brzezinski Says http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/zbigniew-brzezinski-nato-putin-ukraine_n_5760068.html (September 3, 2014). Commenting on criticisms of NATO expansion to Eastern Europe.