Une parole franche

Zbigniew Brzezinski: From Grand Chessboard to Obama Advisor. Part One

 

By Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

 

 

Zbigniew Brzezinski has arguably been the most influential of all the American foreign policy thinkers in the post-Cold War period. The penetration of his ideas today may be noted in various specific policies of the Obama administration. We see Brzezinski’s hand in relentless pressure upon American allies to increase their contributions in men and materiel to the fight in Afghanistan. We see it in NATO expansion to the borders of the Russian Federation, meaning support for eventual membership of Ukraine and Georgia, and the principle that no non-member country may have a veto power over who is admitted to the North Atlantic alliance. We see it in US calls for Europe to admit Turkey into the European Union. We see it in the policy of taking charge of diversification of Europe’s energy supplies, the strong advocacy of the Nabucco gas pipeline and a ‘Southern Corridor’ energy strategy.

 

Although Brzezinski holds no patent on these ideas, and other centrist thinkers and statesmen have advocated one or another of them for a variety of separately argued reasons, they fit into a global strategy for the post-Cold War period which Brzezinski formulated in the 1990s as he proposed to perpetuate the unparalleled primacy of the United States in world affairs that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. His unique presentation of the interconnectedness of issues, the persuasiveness of his argumentation, and his staying power – his ability to remain active and influential in Washington whatever the administration – set him apart.

 

Brzezinski’s career goes back more than four decades before the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was the consummate Cold Warrior and one of the major tasks in this essay will be to determine to what extent his thinking after 1992 marked a break with his strategic concepts before the new age, to what extent it is new wine in old bottles.

 

Brzezinski’s first calling has been scholarship and university teaching. He took his doctorate at Harvard, writing a dissertation on the national minorities in the Soviet Union. Nearly all the foreign policy thinkers I am examining here are professional political scientists, but Zbigniew Brzezinski is virtually the only career-long Sovietologist, He is surely the scholar best equipped to do country risk analysis himself using the tools of a senior intelligence officer. As he moved on to be a practitioner and major actor in international affairs, his writings moved from being scholarly to being genuine primary sources on the issues and the personalities in the news.

 

 

In the 1950s Brzezinski was already one of the pioneering describers and analysts of totalitarianism as practiced in the Soviet Union. He worked in tandem with then senior professor Carl Friedrich. From Harvard, he moved to Columbia University where his teaching affiliation spanned three decades, from 1960-89, He headed Columbia’s Institute on Communism. Now he holds a teaching post at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and is a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

 

Among the general public, Brzezinski has probably been best known for his second career as a public servant in Washington. His route to Washington came through his acquaintance with banker and globalist David Rockefeller who at the time was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and was impressed by Brzezinski’s writings. When Rockefeller created the Trilateral Commission in 1972 as a center for leading businessmen, scholars and statesmen from the United States, Japan and Europe to gather periodically to promote common interests, he appointed Brzezinski as its first American director. And among the members whom Brzezinski is said to have brought into the Trilateral Commission was then governor of the State of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who was also impressed by the academic’s writings. In the 1976 electoral campaign Brzezinski provided Carter with guidance on foreign policy matters which helped to differentiate the candidate from the Kissinger-Nixon-Ford foreign policy of accommodation with the Soviet Union. This counsel was an influential factor in the electoral results and Brzezinski was brought along to the capital when Carter was swept into power. Brzezinski’s most senior position and the time of his greatest prominence was his service as National Security Advisor to President Carter from 1976 -1980.

 

Although a committed Democrat in terms of his domestic policy preferences, Brzezinski broke with the party repeatedly when he believed its standard bearer was not capable of defending the national interest properly. Following the Carter presidency, Brzezinski went on to serve successive Republican as well as Democratic administrations. He performed various assignments for Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., so that he always remained current in his contacts worldwide. During President Bill Clinton’s second term, he was especially close to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who had been one of his graduate students at Columbia and was later a staff member in his National Security office team. During this period Brzezinski was dispatched on an important mission to Azerbaijan to promote a major gas pipeline and so help implement strategies which he otherwise outlined in his writings. Today he describes himself as one of President Obama’s foreign policy advisors.

 

Among both the general public and specialists, it is common to speak of Brzezinski as the Democratic Kissinger. Indeed there are numerous parallels in their careers. Both leveraged their Harvard doctoral degrees and scholarly credentials to become National Security Advisors. Of course, in the popular imagination, Kissinger had the greater career, since he went on to become Secretary of State, serving both President Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford. As the third ranking U.S. government official, Kissinger had greater public exposure and he reaped greater public recognition, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the war with North Viet Nam.

 

However, the reality of influence on power over time tells a rather different story. With the defeat of Gerald Ford by Jimmy Carter, Kissinger’s standing in Washington waned and never returned to its former glory, though he was invited to participate in various security forums, as protocol demanded.  The consultancy established in his name in New York served a prestigious clientele of corporate and foreign government leaders. His welcome in the nation’s capital had worn thin.

 

This is so because Kissinger’s policy of realism, or Realpolitik in foreign affairs which was the guideline of the Nixon years, and in particular what his domestic opponents called a condominium with the Soviet Union, plus the opening to the People’s Republic of China and a seeming disregard for values such as human rights, earned him the enmity of a broad swathe of American politicians both on the Right and on the Left who considered it cynical and out of keeping with optimistic and high-minded American traditions. Indeed it was these very policies of Kissinger and Nixon which spurred the founding in 1979 of what came to be known as Neoconservatism by idealists who insisted that the nation’s mission was to win the Cold War in the name of freedom and democracy, not just manage it.

 

Thus the incoming administration of Ronald Reagan had not much use for Kissinger's policies, and the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton which followed in the ‘90s held his legacy in still less esteem.* (*As Yogi Berra said, it ain’t over till it’s over.’ Right up to this day, Brzezinski and Kissinger are competing for influence over the Obama.administration. See Kissinger’s recent prominent role in the Committee for US Policy on Russia which prepared the way for the Obama-Medvedev summit on April 1^st and a rapprochement with Russia. Brzezinski has meanwhile spoken out for a much less accommodative policy, though as in the past supporting measures to reduce the respective nuclear arsenals.).

 

Meanwhile, as we shall see, the ideas which Brzezinski put forward in the post-Cold War period were a blend of what passes for patriotic, hard-nosed toughness and assertiveness against authoritarian regimes which the American public on both sides of the aisles has consistently found attractive. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and many of the high level staff in the Clinton administration clearly shared Brzezinski’s thinking on the way forward.

 

To be sure, even the highly adaptable Mr Brzezinski was unwilling to stand with the administration of George W. Bush once it veered off on its unilateralist path following 9/11. For those eight years he provided counsel on foreign policy to leading Democrats and positioned himself to once again be an authoritative voice in the inner circles of the next administration.

 

During all of this time, despite his advancing age, Brzezinski continued to travel widely, staying both informed and relevant. He maintained a freshness of thinking, a readiness to reason with his audience, that suggests a man in his 50s rather than his chronological age.

 

And yet as he has constantly evolved, remained open to reevaluating his positions every several years in keeping with the changing world dynamics, there are constants in his interests and in his methodology as a political scientist, just as his alter ego Kissinger has retained his own constants from the outlook expressed in his doctoral dissertation on Metternich to his latest recommendations to incoming President George W. Bush in Does America Need a Foreign Policy?

 

For all of these reasons, we will take our time considering Brzezinski’s writings. I propose to examine here first his seminal work in the post-Cold War period – The Grand Chessboard – which came out roughly in the same time period as Sam Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and had a worldwide influence that was not dissimilar. The book was translated into 19 languages.

 

It is not my intention to follow the twists and turns in the positions taken by our prominent thinkers in detail. By the nature of the genre, political science tracts have a relatively short shelf life and the best known authors are often prolific. Therefore we will fast forward from Chessboard to his monograph Second Chance written a decade later which picks up where Chessboard left off and gives a score card on how the US responded to an historic window of opportunity to provide worldwide leadership as the sole remaining superpower. In Second Chance, Brzezinski examines in detail the first 3 post Cold War presidencies of George Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

 

I also propose to draw on his 2008 book America and the World, which records conversations with Brzezinski and Brent Snowcroft, his Republican counterpart as National Security Advisor (under George Bush, Sr), responding to questions posed by a moderator, Washington Post journalist David Ignatius. This work is useful precisely because the narrative was guided, and Brzezinski was encouraged to reveal more about himself than he allows in his own writings, which tend to be quite impersonal.

 

What are the questions before us?

 

First of all, I propose to examine whether Brzezinski is truly the realist, the single-minded defender of his nation’s interests which he projects by his austere, soldierly appearance, from the crew cut on down, and by the hawkish yet coldblooded statements he has issued regularly for the past half century. Or are we dealing with a more emotional, possibly less rational personality?

 

When this question was put to him by David Ignatius in 2008, Brzezinski waffled, saying: “..I don’t know whether I’m a realist or an idealist – I don’t classify myself…It seems to be that if you’re engaged in statecraft, you have to address the realities of power…..but that is not enough. Power has to be driven by principle and this is where the element of idealism comes in…And you try to strike a balance between the use of power to promote national security and interests, and trying to improve the human condition.” [America and the World, p. 241]

 

Given the way Neoconservative idealism has held sway in the American foreign policy establishment during the post-Cold War period with the support of both Republicans and Democrats, it will be useful to pin down Mr Brzezinski and find the precise balance between idealism and realism in his thinking.

 

To the extent that he may be an idealist, of what does this idealism consist? In this regard, I intend to violate the conventions of polite discourse for the sake of greater clarity. I will engage in a brief ad hominem investigation, asking whether Brzezinski, the idealist, might not just be the great Polish Romantic of our age.

 

Secondly, as mentioned above, we will consider the relationship between his past conceptual work and his post-Cold War thinking. This means tracing continuity of such formulations as the trilateral concept (US-Europe-Far East) which was meant to promote the centrality of our dealings with allies, the major industrial democracies, and only thereafter to allow us to invest our efforts in developing relations with other world powers. Then there is Brzezinski’s handling of the Russian issue which, despite his professions to the contrary, in fact seems to determine his approach to a great many other policy questions including relations with allies.

 

As with all the thinkers under review, I intend to devote some attention to the methodology of Brzezinski’s scholarship. He is not distracted by grand historical, political and philosophical schemes as often is the habit of American political scientists, who like to march us back to Plato and show off their erudition. Brzezinski is more down to earth. When you sift through his works, you uncover his debt to widely held notions of causality: a mixture of economics, demographics and intellectual currents. Indeed, one of the most interesting dimensions of Brzezinski’s writings is the interplay of determinism and voluntarism, which is the counterpoint to the strands of realism and idealism in his personality.

 

The Grand Chessboard: Overview

 

The book is both descriptive of the landscape of international relations at the time of writing in 1997 and prescriptive, offering a very lucid way forward across bilateral and multilateral relations with the world’s leading powers based on a carefully reasoned geopolitical strategy.

 

Grand Chessboard is written in the style of realism – focusing on national interest of the U.S. and the other players. The very image of a chessboard is value neutral and seemingly unemotional. We accept the hierarchical value of the chess pieces as they are conventionally designated in terms of military and economic power. There would appear to be little room for sentimental attachments, no distractions with side issues like the political structures of the nation states and the sources of legitimacy of their elites.

 

Indeed a blurb from Professor Sam Huntington, doyen of the American foreign policy community, printed on the back cover of the 1998 paperback edition which I read suggests that Brzezinski fully satisfied the expectations arising from the framing of his monograph:

 

“The Grand Chessboard is the book we have been waiting for: a clear-eyed, tough-minded, definitive exposition of America’s strategic interests in the Post-Cold War world. A masterful synthesis of historical, geographical, and political analysis, it is geostrategic thinking in the grand tradition of Bismarck”

 

The objective of the chess match Brzezinski has prepared for us is for the United States to maintain the status of sole remaining superpower which followed from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, enjoying uncontested leadership of the international community.

 

In a book in which the author reasons at great length and most impressively with his readers rather than lecturing them, perhaps the least argued element is precisely why the United States should strive to maintain its worldwide primacy. Brzezinski addresses this question mainly in the very last chapter of his book, and we will return to it. Let us first examine his general theses on what being Number One means and how to stay there as long as possible even in the face of emerging powers in other parts of the world and the necessarily declining relative U.S. power in the decades to come.

 

Brzezinski tells us that the United States now has greater power than any country accumulated before, a power which might be called imperial, though it differs from empires of the past in a number of significant ways. This is the first truly global empire and one which is domiciled outside of Eurasia, which for the past 500 years has been the center of power. Moreover, the U.S. empire is unique in world history because of the pluralistic, open nature of America itself, which it reflects. It is an empire built not on territorial conquest and direct control but on international financial institutions and regional or bilateral military alliances which the U.S. dominates. For the U.S. to maintain its primacy or hegemony, it must extend and consolidate its position in Eurasia, which is what the book is all about.

 

The author breaks Eurasia. down into four regions: Europe, in the western extremity; China and Japan in the Far East; and two regions in the middle, Russia and what he calls the ‘Eurasian Balkans,’ meaning Central Asia, the Caucasus and the northern tier of the Middle East - Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey.

 

Brzezinski’s description of the political landscape on the eastern and western ends of the Eurasian land mass is both judicious and very insightful, drawing on in-depth knowledge of the countries under examination and the dynamics of their interaction both with one another and with the United States.

 

The Grand Chessboard: Europe

 

Within his main chapter dedicated to Europe, Brzezinski states flatly that it is America’s ‘natural ally’ and also America’s ‘essential geopolitical bridgehead on the Eurasian continent.’ He highlights the French-German partnership as the foundation for the European Union and guarantor of its continued successful territorial expansion and political integration. He explains the ambitions of these two lead nations, how they needed one another to succeed in the European project, so that America could not choose between them without damaging the common interest.

 

These facts may seem commonplace for anyone living on the Old Continent, but they carry several important messages to his American readers who have preferred dealing with the Germans and found the French claims on European leadership and their frequent sparring with the U.S. to be irksome. He says it would be profoundly unwise to overlook the constructive role played by France in Europe and even in NATO because they have been unfailingly loyal to the Atlantic Alliance whenever the chips were down. Moreover, the French have played an indispensable role locking democratic Germany into Europe.

 

For these reasons he urges America to stand back somewhat and let the German-French leaders get on with their tasks. Brzezinski even acknowledges the merit of the French argument for greater democracy within NATO and a less dominant role there for the United States. Second, he insists that Great Britain cannot serve as a vehicle of American influence in Europe because from the signing of the Rome Treaty to our own day Britain has marginalized itself in Europe. Indeed he says the last vestiges of the ‘special relationship’ with Britain should be scrapped. This teaching is a major affront to the popular image of Britain held by many Americans.

 

Brzezinski says that it is in America’s own interests to support expansion of the European Union since it necessarily extends the U.S. ‘bridgehead’ in Eurasia. At the time of his writing this meant the ongoing cooptation of the Central European states recently freed from Soviet rule In his concluding chapter he adds that their joining would not only shore up Europe’s eastern flank but would have the added advantage of providing the U.S. with greater leverage within the EU. What he no doubt had in mind was the enthusiastically pro-American spirit of these countries in gratitude for America’s role in their liberation, and the dilution of integration efforts so long as the founding EU members were wholly focused on preparatory work to bring candidates up to the high political and economic standards of the Union. All of this would make it all the easier for the U.S. to prevent Europe from becoming a counterweight or challenge to American geopolitical interests too early. In the medium term, he expected that upon the conclusion of this process of expansion and integration Europe could come to be a compatible partner with which the U.S. would share decision making on security matters.

 

How far should the eastward expansion of Europe and NATO go? In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski was already looking to the extension of NATO membership to the Baltic states, which was at the time a particularly prickly issue with Russia since, unlike Hungary or Poland, for example, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia had been constituent republics of the Soviet Union and had common borders with the Russian Federation. It was in this book that he presented the now very familiar notion guiding our present day debate over Georgia and Ukraine:

 

“The bottom line guiding the progressive expansion of Europe has to be the proposition that no power outside of the existing transatlantic system has the right to veto the participation of any qualified European state in the European system – and hence also in its transatlantic security system – and that no qualified European state should be excluded a priori from eventual membership in either the EU or NATO.”

 

He also answered unequivocally how any disagreements with Russia over this process should be handled:

 

“If a choice has to be made between a larger Euro-Atlantic system and a better relationship with Russia, the former has to rank incomparably higher to America.”

 

In 1997, Ukraine was still wallowing in domestic corruption scandals and had an unpromising economic future given its concentration in heavy industry - metallurgy and chemicals - which were then out of favor on the markets. From the perspective of a reader today, it is therefore all the more remarkable that Brzezinski placed special importance on the eventual extension of EU and NATO membership to Ukraine, which he expected would become timely already within the period 2005-2010.

 

This advocacy, which appears now to be almost prophetic, was founded on geopolitical strategic considerations vis-à-vis Russia and a belief in the transformational role for U.S. policy during the time-limited window of opportunity of its ascendancy on the world stage.

 

The logic of admitting Ukraine to NATO and the EU which Brzezinski adduced in 1997 and has been repeating ever since centers mainly on his belief that Russia will move, as it should, towards Europe and towards democracy only when it is coaxed and, where necessary, coerced by removing its other options, and in particular options feeding its nostalgia for empire. According to Brzezinski, Ukraine, with its population of 52 million, was essential to Russia if it were to maintain an illusion of empire. Defending Ukrainian independence from Russia and drawing it into Europe would have the additional benefit of moving Europe’s geopolitical ‘pivot’ well to the East; failing that, the lot would fall to Poland.

 

Given the present debate between Europe and the United States over EU candidacy as a consolation for countries like Ukraine or Georgia which are denied membership in NATO due to differences of opinion within the alliance over their suitability, it is very pertinent to consider the logic and the sequence set out by Brzezinski in this very context of expansion. Brzezinski was arguing in 1997 only a one-way linkage: that NATO protection must follow if an EU candidacy were offered [page 84].

 

In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski said that it was too early to fix the ultimate limits of Europe, though it had to move beyond the Charlemagne’s Europe of the Cold War to embrace the territory of the shared Christian tradition, meaning not only the lands once under the Roman papacy but also Byzantium and Russian Orthodoxy. For reasons which he laid out in the separate chapter on Russia and which we will explore shortly, Brzezinski put off the extension of Europe to the Urals for the indefinite future, at least one generation away.* (*It is interesting to note that in an article Brzezinski published two years earlier in Foreign Affairs, ‘A Plan for Europe: How to Expand NATO,’ January/February 1995, he specifically adopted Charles de Gaulle’s vision of Europe reaching to the Urals as a possible objective for the year 2020). He also foresaw the eventual extension of Europe and NATO into the Caucasus, to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan some time after Russia achieved some form of association or membership in those bodies. No reason was given for that delay.

 

© Gilbert Doctorow 2009

 

To be continued