Zbigniew Brzeziński: Quotes about people

“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.").
Disputed

People , Question , Support , Help

“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)

War , People , World

“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.

People , Parting

“[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).

People , Search , Understanding , Dependency

“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.

People , World , Justice , Intelligence