Where Have All the Geostrategists Gone?

On first impression I thought Brzezinski’s non-answer was boastful. But in retrospect, Zbig (as he was known) was just being honest. The Polish-born strategist, most famous as Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, evaded easy categorization. He was the Democrats’ Cold War sage who found admirers on Ronald Reagan’s foreign-policy team; an inveterate Russia hawk who was an arch-nemesis of neoconservatism in the George W. Bush years; and an early backer of Barack Obama.

Once, while shuttling between meetings in steamy Beijing during the summer of 2010, I asked Zbigniew Brzezinski who his single biggest foreign-policy influence was. I was the great man’s research assistant back then and was awkwardly looking to fill the time. He paused for a moment, looking almost puzzled. “Nobody, really,” he answered.

Once, while shuttling between meetings in steamy Beijing during the summer of 2010, I asked Zbigniew Brzezinski who his single biggest foreign-policy influence was. I was the great man’s research assistant back then and was awkwardly looking to fill the time. He paused for a moment, looking almost puzzled. “Nobody, really,” he answered.

On first impression I thought Brzezinski’s non-answer was boastful. But in retrospect, Zbig (as he was known) was just being honest. The Polish-born strategist, most famous as Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, evaded easy categorization. He was the Democrats’ Cold War sage who found admirers on Ronald Reagan’s foreign-policy team; an inveterate Russia hawk who was an arch-nemesis of neoconservatism in the George W. Bush years; and an early backer of Barack Obama.

Brzezinski is often compared to his contemporary and rival, Henry Kissinger. They were both European émigrés with thick accents and shared a professional path of star-academic-turned-national-security-advisor. But the two approached U.S. strategy from completely different perspectives. Kissinger, a German-born scholar of old-world European diplomacy, held a pessimistic view of the trajectory of the United States and inflated view of the USSR, seeking a balance of power between them through detente.