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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.

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
Today
Specific
Country
Countries
Really
Meaning
Number
Nominally
Numbers
Nominal
Word
Relatively
Often
Sovereignty
Used
Sovereign

More quotes by Zbigniew Brzezinski

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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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Global stability - economic as well as political - is at risk.
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In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason.
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Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.
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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. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
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I think the United States is currently a kind of wonder - wonderland with the president Trump speaking on subjects of his choice, some of which are entertaining, but none of which are very strategically substantive.
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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.
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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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The legitimacy of the leadership depends on what that country thinks of its leaders. When we lay off, more and more Iranians tend to be critical of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The more abusive we are and the more pressure we put on them, the more nationalism fuses with fundamentalism in Iran.
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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.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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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
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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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 Brzezinski
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It's perfectly natural to desire more troops when engaged in a military operation facing serious obstacles, and the more troops you have, probably, the [lower the] risk of causalities.
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.
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I happen to think that as the Ukraine moves to the West, towards the E.U., eventually towards NATO, it will pave the way also for Russia moving towards the West. Because it will become a logical extension of the same process, and it will eliminate any imperial ambitions.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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The Israeli-Palestinian problem becomes very acute with Gaza dominated by Hamas. With the possibility of the conflict escalating, not only in terms of Gaza but also the Hezbollah and Lebanon, with the continuing crisis in Iraq, which is very dynamic and unpredictable and which could get out of hand, and maybe even escalate and enlarge.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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I was confident about America and the idea that in America people can become American without masking their ethnic identity.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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Hard power makes sense under some circumstances. But there's not a universal solution to global problems. A major country like the United States has to have a broadly-conceived program for effective international action, influence and cooperation with others.
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
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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