Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes - Page 3

It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.

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.

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.

In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.

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.

There is an element of delusional obsession in the French political elite's preoccupation with the notion that France is still a global power.

Foreign policy should not be justified through making oneself feel good, but through results that have tangible consequences.

The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border of Afghanistan, I wrote to President Jimmy Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

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.

The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age.

That [American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.

The notion that somehow or another they'll (Iran) put it in a picnic basket and hand it to some terrorist group is merely an argument that may be convincing to some people who don't know anything about nuclear weapons. I don't find that argument very credible, I'm not sure that people who make it even believe in it. But it's a good argument to make if you have no other argument to make. The fact of the matter is, Iran has been around for 3000 years, and that is not a symptom of a suicidal instinct.

The key point to bear in mind is that Russia cannot be in Europe without Ukraine also being in Europe, whereas Ukraine can be in Europe without Russia being in Europe.

Russia's only real geostrategic option - the option that would give Russia a realistic international role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself - is Europe.

To resolve conflicts, excessive ambitions and one's own fears and aspirationis must be sacrificed.

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.

We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure, perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States.

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.

One has to define very clearly what one's objectives are, determine in advance how much one is prepared to pay to achieve that objective and then act accordingly.

Hegemony is as old as mankind.

Though Stalinism may have been a needless tragedy for both the Russian people and communism as an ideal, there is the intellectually tantalizing possibility that for the world at large it was, as we shall see, a blessing in disguise.

The Eastern Europeans invested too many of their hopes in the notion that somehow or other the missile shield, even if directed at Iran, would reinforce their security links with the U.S. vis-à-vis Russia.

I don't feel I was "born American," but my homeland was denied to me after the end of World War II and I craved something I could identify with.

The language of the internet is English, and an overwhelming proportion of the global computer chatter also originates from America, influencing the content of global conversation.

But if Russia is to be part of this larger zone of peace it cannot bring into it its imperial baggage. It cannot bring into it a policy of genocide against the Chechens, and cannot kill journalists, and it cannot repress the mass media.