The Cold War did end in the victory of one side and in the defeat of the other. This reality cannot be denied, despite the understandable sensitivities that such a conclusion provokes among the tenderhearted in the West and some of the former leaders of the defeated side.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Bipartisanship helps to avoid extremes and imbalances. It causes compromises and accommodations. So let's cooperate.

Pakistan's political instability is its greatest vulnerability, and a decline in U.S. power would reduce America's ability to aid Pakistan's consolidation and development.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Power Men Great

The legitimacy of the leadership depends on what that country thinks of its leaders.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Leadership UN Try

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

War Power Great

Eurasia is the world's axial supercontinent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world's three most economically productive regions: Western Europe and East Asia.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Power Would World

What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?

Zbigniew Brzezinski

War History World

I don't approve of the notion that we should be announcing who should step down from the position of a head of a state unless we are seriously prepared to remove that person. But if we are not, if we are being prudent and careful, then let's also be careful with how we talk.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Car Wit Who

Commitment and credibility go hand in hand.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Men T Red

Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions, and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Fear Want Ten

The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

War Age Without

We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

War Vietnam War Vietnam

Human affairs require some combination of moral commitment with disciplined political action. And that is what keeps me intrigued and challenged and wanting to influence events.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Men Wit Wanting

Moderation and bipartisan consensus go hand in hand.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Art Us Tis

The future is inherently full of discontinuities, and lessons of the past must be applied with enormous caution.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Future Wit Us

Basically, I see Iran as an authentic nation-state. And that authentic identity gives it cohesion, which most of the Middle East lacks.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Which Then T

It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Power Leadership Fear

Americans must place greater emphasis on the more subtle dimensions of national power, such as innovation, education, the balance of force and diplomacy, and the quality of political leadership.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Power Men Leadership

I'm all in favour of grand important speeches, but the president then has to link his sermons to a strategy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Then Tan T

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.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Religion World Without

Anniversaries are like birthdays: occasions to celebrate and to think ahead, usually among friends with whom one shares not only the past but also the future.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Future Birthday Wit

The worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

The Sino-American competition involves two significant realities that distinguish it from the Cold War: neither party is excessively ideological in its orientation; and both parties recognize that they really need mutual accommodation.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

War triggers unforeseeable military dynamics and sets off massive political shocks, creating new problems as well as new opportunities.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

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

America's victory in the Cold War was not without painful social costs.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

The Cold War did end in the victory of one side and in the defeat of the other. This reality cannot be denied, despite the understandable sensitivities that such a conclusion provokes among the tenderhearted in the West and some of the former leaders of the defeated side.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

AIPAC has consistently opposed a two-state solution, and a lot of members of Congress have been intimidated, and I don't think that's healthy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

The financial catastrophe of 2008 nearly precipitated a calamitous economic depression, jolting America and much of the West into a sudden recognition of their systemic vulnerability to unregulated greed.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Japan needs the American market and it also needs American security protection. Japan also needs America as the necessary stabilizer of an orderly world system with economies truly open to international trade.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Americans don't learn about the world; they don't study world history, other than American history in a very one-sided fashion, and they don't study geography.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena - the loss of U.S. international credibility, the growing U.S. international isolation.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

If we can deter the Soviet Union, if we can deter North Korea, why on earth can't we deter Iran?

Zbigniew Brzezinski

I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, not as Democrats attacking the administration, but as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety?

Zbigniew Brzezinski

You go to Paris, or you go to Portugal, you go to Poland, and you ask, 'Who are you people?' They'll tell you, we're Portuguese, we're Spanish, we're Polish. Who are the people that are really European? The people in Brussels, in the E.U. bureaucracy. Europe has not been able to move to the level of patriotic identification with the concept.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

You know who's messianic? Netanyahu, because he talks that way. And that's a very risky position.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Yes, ISIS is a threat. It's more than a nuisance. It's also in many respects criminal violence. But it isn't, in my view, a central strategic issue facing humanity.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Because America is a democracy, public support for presidential foreign-policy decisions is essential.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

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

Zbigniew Brzezinski

If the United States and China can accommodate each other on a broad range of issues, the prospects for stability in Asia will be greatly increased.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

I think we have to pay attention to the Arab masses not just in the Gulf States, but also in the hinterlands.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

We all have the right to comment about each other.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

We defended our allies in Europe for 40 years during the worst days of the Cold War - very threatening days of the Cold War - and nothing happened. So deterrence does work.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

The external Soviet empire lasted 45 years. It is shattered, beyond redemption or repair.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

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.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

We can't have an intelligent foreign policy unless we have an intelligent public, because we're a democracy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

One-sided national economic triumphs cannot be achieved in the increasingly interwoven global economy without precipitating calamitous consequences for everyone.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Only a dynamic and strategically-minded America, together with a unifying Europe, can jointly promote a larger and more vital West, one capable of acting as a responsible partner to the rising and increasingly assertive East.

Zbigniew Brzezinski