Zbigniew Brzeziński – American Statesman with Polish Origins

Abstract

The main thesis of this article is an analysis of the scholar and political activity of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Zbigniew Brzezinski was born the son of a Polish diplomat, in Warsaw on March 28, 1928. He spent part of his youth in France and Germany before his father was posted to Canada in 1938. Brzezinski taught at Harvard until he was denied tenure, then moved on to Columbia University in 1959 to become the head of the new Institute on Communist Affairs. Early in his post-scholastic years, Brzezinski traveled to Munich to meet with the Polish contingent of Radio Free Europe and later with Carl Friedrich, with whom he would collaborate to advance the theory of totalitarianism as it applied to the Soviet Union. When President Carter declared his candidacy for the White House in 1974, Brzezinski, a critic of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy style, became Carter’s advisor on foreign affairs. Later, Carter named Brzezinski his National Security Advisor. Brzezinski was as much to the left as Kissinger was to the right, and wanted to replace Kissinger’s „stuntman acrobatics” with a foreign policy „architecture”. He emphasized further development of the U.S.-Sino rapprochement, supported a new arms control agreement with the Soviets. Since his tenure in government service, Brzezinski has been in and out of the public eye, teaching, writing, speechifying, and meeting occasionally with government leaders.