Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes (40 Quotes)


    We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure, perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States.

    Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively.

    I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena - the loss of U.S. international credibility, the growing U.S. international isolation.

    Given that a more authentic Iraqi political leadership is finally beginning to push aside the earlier US-hand-picked choices, the time is ripe to adopt a strategy for terminating US military presence in the country.

    Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.


    We're going to have a very universal, very catholic with a small 'c' editorial board,


    I think we haven't had a real serious national debate in this country as to what this issue is about, ... And we're dealing with kind of general slogans and images, a great deal of fear and panic. But I think that the Democrats are very much at fault in not generating a genuine debate. And I think the administration has been disingenuous in its argumentation.

    I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, not as Democrats attacking the administration, but as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety?

    We should be therefore supporting a larger Europe, and in so doing we should strive to expand the zone of peace and prosperity in the world which is the necessary foundation for a stable international system in which our leadership could be fruitfully exercised.

    We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

    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.


    Doing it all by ourselves on our terms, ignoring the rest of the world, shouting loudly that if you're not with us, you are against us, is not going to be a very successful policy,

    War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

    Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers.


    According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979.

    We cannot have that relationship if we only dictate or threaten and condemn those who disagree.

    Bipartisanship helps to avoid extremes and imbalances. It causes compromises and accommodations. So let's cooperate.

    In addition to the internationalization of Iraq we have to transfer power as soon as is possible to a sovereign Iraqi authority.



    We should seek to cooperate with Europe, not to divide Europe to a fictitious new and a fictitious old.

    To increase the zone of peace is to build the inner core of a stable international zone.

    It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam.

    We have to make a really cold judgement. Would the consequence of civil war be more devastating than the consequences of staying the course

    Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not be translated defacto into a policy of support for a really increasingly brutal repression, colonial settlements and a new wall.

    If they had them, and they were armed to the teeth with them, why didn't they use them ... If they didn't use them and hid them, that means they were deterred. And how do you hide all of these hundreds and hundreds of weapons with which they're armed.

    I think there is going to be no peace in the Middle East unless the United States steps forward.


    I think it is a powerful statement. It raises fundamental issues of morality, trust.

    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.

    Not to mention the fact that of course terrorists hate freedom. I think they do hate. But believe me, I don't think they sit there abstractly hating freedom.

    A policy of simultaneously getting our allies to negotiate with the Iranians for major Iranian concessions while we at the same time condemn them internationally and allocate funds to destabilize them politically is not a policy that will be successful.

    Maybe we're better off with him sitting in New York at the U.N. than with him having an important post either in the State Department or in the National Security Council in the White House, actually shaping American policy.

    Let's cooperate and challenge the administration to cooperate with us because within the administration there are also moderates and people who are not fully comfortable with the tendencies that have prevailed in recent times.

    The first and most important is to emphasize the enduring nature of the alliance relationship particularly with Europe which does share our values and interests even if it disagrees with us on specific policies.

    But if Russia is to be part of this larger zone of peace it cannot bring into it its imperial baggage. It cannot bring into it a policy of genocide against the Chechens, and cannot kill journalists, and it cannot repress the mass media.

    There are major disappointments with the outcomes of Solidarity corruption, and major pockets of economic backwardness and even poverty. By and large, though, if there were a choice between the life Poles led in the 1970s and 1980s and now, nobody but a lunatic would say they wanted to have back what they had before.


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