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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?

Zbigniew Brzezinski

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Zbigniew Brzezinski
Age: 89 †
Born: 1928
Born: March 28
Died: 2017
Died: May 26
Author
Critic
Former National Security Advisor
Geopolitician
Pedagogue
Political Scientist
Strategist
University Teacher
Warszawa
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński
Zbig
World
Liberation
Central
Europe
Moslems
Cold
Stirred
War
Empire
History
Empires
Ends
Collapse
Important
Soviet

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We shouldn't overdramatize the current disagreements with the Russians. They are real, but they're not really all that threatening. And the notion that we're moving back to some Cold War I think is really an exaggerated judgment.
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One has to define very clearly what one's objectives are, determine in advance how much one is prepared to pay to achieve that objective and then act accordingly.
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The Israelis have taken a lot of security measures which reduce significantly the ability of Iran to inflict truly severe pain in Israel. But America is vulnerable with 100,000 troops in Iraq and more than half of that in Afghanistan, and we depend heavily on access to Middle Eastern oil. We're sitting targets for debilitating Iranian retaliation.
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Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.
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The scope of America's global hegemony is admittedly great, but its depth is shallow, limited by both domestic and external restraints.
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Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.
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Let's face it: The Jewish community is the most active political community in American society.
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The fact is that one significant way the Iranians have a posture different from the North Koreans, the North Koreans basically are saying we have a nuclear program. We are seeking weapons. We have produced weapons. We're proud of the fact that we have weapons.
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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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Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war in Afghanistan, unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
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Russia's only real geostrategic option - the option that would give Russia a realistic international role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself - is Europe.
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The American people have to think hard about their definition of the meaning of the good life, that hedonistic, materialistic society of high levels of consumption, increasing social inequality is not a society that can be part of the solution of the world's problems.
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Acting alone in a world that's alive in political stirring is to condemn oneself to isolation and probably protracted warfare of the kind that can be dissipating.
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Too rich to be relevant to the world's poor, [Europe] attracts immigration but cannot encourage imitation. Too passive regarding international security. Too self-satisfied, it acts as if its central political goal is to become the worlds most comfortable retirement home. Too set in its ways, it fears multicultural diversity
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Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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The Israelis are becoming increasingly like the white supremacist South Africans, viewing the Palestinians as a lower form of life, not hesitating to kill a great many of them and justifying this on the grounds that they are being the objects of terrorism, which is true.
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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.
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