Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski (born March 28, 1928 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish American political scientist and geostrategist who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.

The New York Times referred to Brzezinski as "nominally a Democrat, with views that led him to speak out, for example, against the 'greed,' as he put it, of an American system that compounded inequality."

Appeasing Communists

In the 1960s Brzezinski proved himself as a master of accommodation and appeasement with communists. Basic to his alleged expertise is a United States policy of recognizing the status quo for Europe - meaning that Soviet aggression and Soviet captivity of nations receive an American seal of approval and acquiescence. Brzezinski advocated that the United States promote a massive all-Europe Marshall Plan, under which countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain would join in an economic development - which, of course, would solidify the Soviet Union's hold on its satellites. Brzezinski further proposed that the United States "consider ways of minimizing Soviet fears of "Germany" - meaning that American pressure be applied to force Germany into appeasement.

In March 1965, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned that "few things would give the Communist Party USA more comfort than a widespread underestimation of the menace which it presents to the internal security of the Nation." Three months later, Brzezinski provided such comfort when he said: "The Communist Party of the United States is a weak, faction-riddled group of political and social outcasts".

In 1967, while the United States was at war against the communists of North Vietnam, whose military efforts were made possible by the communists of Red China and the Soviet Union and its satellites, Brzezinski proclaimed that "Communism, the principal and until recently the most militant revolutionary ideology of our day, is dead".

Brzezinski was, in the early 1970s, a non-resident member of the Council on Foreign Relations ("the informal supra-State Department in the United States") and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the "fountainhead of Negro agitation for the past fifty-eight years". In 1964, Brzezinski was a member of the honorary steering committee of Young Citizens for Johnson - credentials which probably were as good as any to make Brzezinski - as Newsweek put it - "one of the fastest-rising stars in the Johnson Administration" and "one of the architects of U.S. foreign policy."

After eighteen months in the State Department, Brzezinski resigned his post in December, 1967 and was reported to be resuming his professorship of government and directorship of the research Institute on Communist Affairs at Columbia University. Simultaneously with his resignation, an article by Brzezinski was published in Foreign Affairs, the quarterly publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. In what had all the earmarks of a State Department trial balloon, Brzezinski called for a diplomatic accommodation between NATO (which supposedly has been the military defensive posture against Communist military threats in Europe) and the Warsaw Pact nations (the Communist bloc's reaction to the establishment of NATO). Brzezinski's proposal made "as much sense as a veterinarian urging cats and dogs to be friends".

Trilateral Commission

Brzezinski was director of the Trilateral Commission from 1973 to 1976.

Council on Foreign Relations

In 2004, Brzezinski was co-chairman of a Council on Foreign Relations task force that issued the report "Iran: Time for a New Approach".

Committee of 100

The Committee of 100 convened its 22nd Annual Common Ground Conference April 24-25 2013 in Washington, D.C. The Conference Co-Chairs were Howard Li, Theodore Wang, and Benjamin Wu. The Platinum Sponsors for the Conference included J.T. Tai & Co. Foundation, represented by Ming Hsu, and Wells Fargo, represented by Nancy Wong.

The conference events began with the Opening Reception, held at the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office Building. Congress woman Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Representative of the 8th District of Illinois, welcomed C-100 participants to the historic space and discussed the contributions of C-100 to strengthening U.S.-China relations.

On April 25, the Annual Conference and Gala took place at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. The conference addressed four issues central to U.S.-China relations: building strategic trust in the bilateral relationship; economic cooperation and competition; Chinese investment in the United States; and media portrayals of China in U.S. political campaigns. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor (1977-1981), and Gao Xiqing, Vice Chairman and President of the China Investment Corporation, presented keynote addresses. The Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai.

Quotes

"Marxism represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man's universal vision. Marxism is simultaneously a victory of the external, active man over the inner, passive man and a victory of reason over belief: it stresses man's capacity to shape his material destiny---finite and defined as man's only reality---and it postulates the absolute capacity of man to truly understand his reality as a point of departure for his active endeavors to shape it. To a greater extent than any previous mode of political thinking, Marxism puts a premium on the systematic and rigorous examination of material reality and on guides to action derived from that examination."

- Between the Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1970

"The precondition for eventual and genuine globalization is progressive regionalization because by that we move towards larger, more stable, more cooperative units."

- Zbigniew Brzezinski, speaking at the Gorbachev Conference, September, 1995