Brzezinski, One of the Last Grand Strategists

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a lifelong Cold War hawk who was deeply suspicious of the Soviet Union. The invasion of Poland by Russian and German troops in 1939 left a lasting impression on the young immigrant, who was only 11 at the time. And Brzezinski’s Polish heritage gave him an exceptional understanding of the resentment towards Moscow felt by the suppressed nationalities in the Soviet republics and the broader Eastern bloc.

Brzezinski’s life mirrored that of his friend and rival, Henry Kissinger. Both migrated to the United States with their parents in 1938 from a Europe on the brink of war, burnished their academic credentials at Harvard (and in Brzezinski’s case also at Columbia) and advised senior politicians before rising to international prominence as national security advisor, Kissinger to president Richard Nixon and Brzezinski to president Jimmy Carter. However, while books on Kissinger abound, an authoritative biography of Brzezinski has been a long time coming.

Brzezinski died in 2017, by which time Luce, as a journalist, had had frequent chances to meet him. Once Luce started to write the book, with his wide network of contacts he managed to interview more than 100 of Brzezinski’s contemporaries, including the aging Carter and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. The result is a biography that is at once meticulously researched and eminently readable.

Starting with Brzezinski’s early years in interwar Warsaw and his student years in Montreal, Luce walks us through his time at Harvard and Columbia, and as an advisor to David Rockefeller and other politicians to his appointment as national security advisor. Throughout Carter’s term as president, from 1977 to 1981, Brzezinski was one of his closest confidantes.

Facilitating political change in Poland was one of Brzezinski’s key achievements. In 1980, with domestic tensions rising and Soviet power beginning to wane, Brzezinski was acutely aware of the role that a peaceful political transition in Poland would play for security throughout Europe. He was instrumental in putting in place measures in 1980 to discourage the Soviet Union from invading Poland, and in helping Poland move towards elections and a change of government in 1989. Significantly, this ended the Soviet monopoly on power in Eastern Europe.

Carter’s and Brzezinski’s darkest hour was the Iran hostage crisis and a failed attempt to free the Americans being held hostage in Tehran. The crisis scuttled Carter’s chances of re-election. Luce also sheds light on allegations that Ronald Reagan’s campaign used the crisis to deal with Tehran behind the scenes and delay the release of the hostages.

Two themes run through Luce’s biography, the constant tension between Brzezinski and secretary of state Cyrus Vance, and Brzezinski’s remarkable relationship with Kissinger. Throughout his tenure as security advisor, the opinionated and frequently brash Brzezinski worked hard to maintain the upper hand over the State Department, led by the gentlemanly Vance. As Luce describes it, Brzezinski set the strategy and wrote Carter’s instructions to key negotiators, while Vance, who lost most major arguments, was the practitioner.

Brzezinski’s relationship with Kissinger, again, was a combination of intense rivalry and professional give-and-take. Their occasional antagonistic outbursts masked a deep mutual respect, and the two regularly dined together. Asked by Luce how he would rank Brzezinski among the US’s national security advisors, Kissinger replied that he was in ‘the top two in terms of strategic thinking’, the other presumably being Kissinger himself.

What lessons can be drawn from Brzezinski’s life? Luce’s principal takeaway is the importance of knowing one’s adversary. Brzezinski was a Sovietologist through and through, with a deep understanding of Russia and Eastern Europe, fluent in both Russian and Polish, who started most mornings by reading Pravda, the Soviet daily.

And Carter recognised the importance of robust debate. The independent-minded Brzezinski was not afraid to contradict or argue with Carter, which the latter welcomed. Luce leaves us with a timely reminder: ‘a yes man can’t be a strategist’.

Robert Wihtol is an adjunct faculty member at the Asian Institute of Management and former Asian Development Bank country director for China and director general for East Asia.

This article appeared originally at The Strategist (ASPI).