Quote

To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

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
Keep
Prevent
Imperial
Three
Maintain
Barbarians
Together
Strategy
Imperatives
Back
Ancient
Dependence
Vassals
Among
Empires
Tributaries
Coming
Brutal
Pliant
Security
Protected
Collusion
Age
Grand
Terminology

More quotes by Zbigniew Brzezinski

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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 Brzezinski
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Russia can be either an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both. . . . Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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Today, with America being a beleaguered global power, in part because of its own mistakes, it is absolutely essential that the American democracy refocuses its concerns towards global issues and does not approach its own specific problems on the basis of, to some extend, self-induced fear.
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Shortly, the public will be unable to reason or think for themselves. They'll only be able to parrot the information they've been given on the previous night's news.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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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.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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Technology will make available to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised.....techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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American power worldwide is at its historic zenith.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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America has exercised its power to insist on elections in Palestine, which Hamas did win. Once they won, we then engaged in a policy not only of ostracism, but by financial boycott, in effect of undermining it, and creating more tension and radicalism and poverty in Gaza, which was susceptible to exploitation by Hamas.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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I think if NATO haven't expanded, we would have a no-man's zone between the E.U. and NATO and Russia, and that would be very dangerous.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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Global stability - economic as well as political - is at risk.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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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.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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With its declining population, with people moving out of the Far East, with an enormously powerful China in the east, I think the real destiny of Russia is to become closer to the West.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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In fact, an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia - is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian - and hence infidel - control.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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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 Brzezinski
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It is conceivable that at some point a truly united and powerful European Union could become a global political rival to the United States.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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I don't think there is an implicit obligation for the United States to follow like a stupid mule whatever the Israelis do. If they decide to start a war, simply on the assumption that we will be automatically drawn into it, I think it is the obligation of friendship to say you're not going to be making national decisions for us
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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I'm perfectly willing to say no more Iraqs, which means no more unilateral starting of the war on false claims, false information, and a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the situation in the region.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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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.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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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.
Zbigniew Brzezinski