Z big niew Brz ez inski: Th e Political and Acad em ic Life of a Cold

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Th e Po litical and Acad em ic Life

of a Cold War Visionary

Patr ick G. Vaughan

Disser ta tion subm itted to th e

Colleg e of Ar ts and Sciences

at W est Virginia University in partial fulfillm ent of th e requirem ents

for th e d eg r ee of D octor of Ph ilosop h y

in H istor y

Robert E. Blo b aum, Ph.D., Chair

Eliz abeth Fones-W olf, Ph .D .

Jo e H a g a n , Ph .D .

Ja son Pa r ke r , Ph .D .

Steven Z d atny , Ph .D.

Departm ent of H istor y

Morgantown, West Virginia

2003

UMI Number: 3142989

Vaughan, Patrick G.

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UMI Microform 3142989

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ABSTRACT

Zbigniew Brzezinski: T h e Po litical and Acad em ic Life

of a Cold War Visionary

Patr ick G. Vaughan

Th is w or k exam ines th e p olitical and academ ic career of Z big niew Brz ez inski.

Born in W arsaw in 19 28 Brz ez inski w a s a p e r so n ific a tio n o f th e tr ia ls o f in ter w a r Po la n d

th at w ould culm inate in th e com bined N az i-Soviet invasion th at w ould trig g er W orld W ar

II. Th e so n o f a Po lish d ip lo m a t th e y o un g Br z e z in ski w itn e sse d th e w a r fr o m a

dip lom atic outpost in Montreal w h ere h e d evelop ed an acad em ic interest in th e affairs of

th e Soviet Union. In 19 50 Brz ez inski m oved on to H arvard w h ere h e g ained an acad em ic

rep utation exam ining th e ph enom enon of “totalitarianism ” and th e frag m enting nuances

of th e Soviet em p ire in Eastern Europ e. Brz ez inski la ter b e c a m e in str um e n ta l in

advocating a “peaceful eng ag em ent” tow ard Eastern Europ e th at h e believed offered

m o r e h o p e th a n th e la r g ely r h eto r ic a l “lib e r a tio n ” p o lic y b ein g a d v o c a te d b y th e

Eisenh ow er Ad m inistration. M oving into th e 19 60s Brz ez inski becam e th e m ost

prom inent advocate of w eaning th e Soviet bloc nations tow ard a m ore “w estern” social-

dem ocratic ord er. Th oug h tem p orarily derailed w ith th e Soviet invasion of

Cz ech oslovakia in 19 68 , Brz ez inski c o n tin ued to a d v o c a te “p e a c e ful e n g a g em e n t”

to w a r d Ea ster n Eur o p e a s a n a lte r n a tiv e to w h a t h e d e sc r ib e d a s th e “b e n ig n n e g le c t” a n d

“m oral ind ifference” being form ulated by Rich ard N ixon and H enry Kissing er.

Brzezinski’ s ke y r o le a s Pr e sid e n t C a r te r ’ s n a tio n a l sec ur ity a d v iser in tr o d uc e d th e

c o n c e p t o f “h um a n r ig h ts” th a t g r e a tly in sp ir e d th e n a sc e n t o p p o sitio n g r o up s in th e

r e g io n th a t w o uld c ulm in a te in th e m o r e d r a m a tic r e v o lutio n s th a t sw e p t th e r e g io n in

1989. In th e 19 9 0s Brz ez inski becam e p erh ap s th e m ost p rom inent ad vocate of exp and ing

NATO in an effort to kee p th e r ec e n tly lib e r a te d n a tio n s o f Ea st- C e n tr a l Eur o p e fr o m

fa llin g b a c k in to th e R ussia n o r b it o r b ec o m in g p o litic a lly d e sta b iliz ed a s a r e sult o f th e

massive political and structural deficiencies imposed by four decades of Soviet-style

communism.

iii

To My Mother and Father

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I became interested in Zbigniew Brzezinski in a rather ironic way. Brzezinski has long

been a polarizing figure on both the extreme left and extreme right in American politics. Indeed,

an undergraduate professor of mine, somewhat obsessed by David Rockefeller and the Trilateral

Commission, was adept at pinning Brzezinski for just about every foreign policy misstep one

could ever conceive of. It was amazing to me how he could fit him in nearly almost every lecture.

After a more thorough academic investigation of U.S. diplomatic and Central European history

(coupled with the dramatic events of 1989-91) I was struck by how many things Zbigniew

Brzezinski got right in his long career as an academic and strategist. I have attempted to present

this argument in the following text.

This work was largely inspired by the events of 1989 that, for all intents and purposes,

ended the four-decade struggle known as the Cold War. That year I had read time and again

from American conservatives how President Reagan’s expenditures on more sophisticated

armaments in the 1980s had single-handedly won the Cold War. On the other hand, liberals

dismissed Reagan’s role entirely, preferring to credit the enlightened reforms of Mikhail

Gorbachev for the events of 1989.

While these reasons were certainly part of the equation, there seemed to me more to it

than that--foremost, the courage of the dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and

the socio-economic decay of the communist system itself. I also believed that the ideas of human

rights, fostered largely by Brzezinski during the Carter Administration, had gone far to inspire a

generation to break out of the post-totalitarian torpor that marked Eastern Europe in the wake of

the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

My thanks and sincere appreciation must first go to Dr. Robert Blobaum, of West

Virginia University, who showed me, by word and example, what it means to be a true

gentleman and a scholar, while still being able to educate me about the heroics of I.M. Hipp and

Jarvis Redwine, and other notables that starred in the Nebraska Cornhusker backfield in the

1970s.

I also wish to thank Dr. Brzezinski himself, who was kind enough to provide me with

generous access to his personal files, as well as a good deal of his personal time. For that I simply

can’t say enough. This process was facilitated through his long-time assistant Trudy Werner

without whom my research, simply put, would not have been possible. She will be retiring at the

end of 2003 and I will miss her a great deal. I also wish to thank the Polish Institute of Arts and

Sciences (PIASA), a New York based organization that was kind enough to publish my first

article. This led shortly thereafter to kind public words from Jan Nowak-Jezioranski at PIASA’s

annual conference, and a generous grant to Poland from the William J. Fulbright Commission.

Both experiences I will never forget.

On a more personal note, I credit the support provided by Jessica Kelley of St. Albans,

West Virginia, who was there when the project started and has since kept me inspired with her

kind words and indomitable spirit. She said (more than once) “one day it will be finished” and I

believed her. I thank Tom Brasher who introduced me to the charms of intellectual discourse

during a number of late night Cold War symposia at “Hey Juans.” Although my contributions

may have been non-sense at the time—one has to start somewhere. Idalia Pawlak assisted as my

translator for a number of Polish interviews even though she is, to the say the very least,

painfully annoyed by politicians. I also thank Agnieszka Ignaszewska, whose encouragement

and, albeit partial, willingness to translate a 36-page interview with General Jaruzeslski went

above and beyond the call of duty. And, above all, I thank my father Gerald, my brother Joe, and

two sisters, Bonnie and Cynthia—who always wondered what I was doing with my time, but

were far too polite to say that I was wasting it. To them I will always be grateful—doubtless more

than they know.

TABLE OF CON TEN TS

INTRODUCTION page 1

CH APTER ONE: COLD W AR ACADEMIC page 17

CH APTER TW O: TH E TURBULENT 1960s pag e 55

CHAPTER THREE: 1968 page 103

CH APTER FOUR: ENTER NIXON AND KISSINGER page 138

CH APTER FIVE: JIMMY CARTER AND H UMAN RIG H TS pag e 18 4

CH APTER SIX: CAMPAIGN ’76 page 237

CH APTER SEVEN: 1977; TH E ROOTS OF A REVOLUTION pag e 272

CH APTER EIG H T: SOLIDARITY page 310

CONCLUSION page 333

BIBLIOGRAPHY page 357

INTRODUCTION

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall commentators in the United States sought to

explain the dramatic revolutions of 1989. Conservative supporters of Ronald Reagan attributed

the events to the United States military build up of the 1980s. More liberal commentators gave

credit the enlightened policies of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This work will argue that the

revolutions of 1989 were largely a product of the gradual decay of a social and political system

that never took root in Eastern Europe.

At the same time there was one Western strategist that correctly analyzing the events of

1989. As a Harvard professor in the 1950s, Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that the Soviet system

was so ossified that it was incapable of reform. As a consequence Brzezinski insisted that the

Soviet Union’s primitive emphasis on industrial output and the multinational character would

eventually result in the collapse of the Soviet empire. As President Carter’s national security

adviser Brzezinski combined a firm military presence against the Soviet Union with the “soft

power” of human rights that was successful in drawing the Eastern Europe states peacefully

away from the Soviet orbit.

As the son of a Polish diplomat, Brzezinski’s world-view was rooted in the experiences of

Central Europe in the 1930s. Brzezinski was born in Warsaw in 1928. At that time Poland was

enjoying its first independence since being partitioned in the late 19

century by the Russian,

Austrian and Prussian empires. It was also the time when Europe was rife with nationalism and

totalitarian ideologies that promised universal answers to the socio-economic dislocations of the

industrial revolution.

The rise of a laboring industrial class in the 19

century created a fertile ground for the

revolutionary theories put forth by Karl Marx. According to Marx all history was a struggle

between a ruling group and an opposing group. In the end, Marx argued, the capitalist system

would bring forth an industrialized society that would eventually give way to a “dictatorship of

the proletariat.”

By the early 20

century the more radical West European revolutionary movements were

gradually co-opted by reforms initiated from within the electoral system. This had the effect of

easing social tensions while bringing the labor movement into the electoral process. But in

autocratic Russia a more radical movement was gathering strength under the leadership of

Vladimir Lenin. As a dogmatic Marxist, Lenin rejected the evolutionary approach as “revisionist”

heresy and insisted that a small cadre of revolutionaries—the “vanguard of the proletariat”—

must seize power on behalf of the working class.

Lenin saw his chance when the political unrest unleashed by World War I led to the

abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917. A provisional government, under the leadership of

Alexander Kerensky, was installed in an attempt to introduce liberal reforms along the lines of

the West European governments. Yet Lenin did not believe in “liberal reforms.” On the night of

November 6, 1917 Lenin’s Bolshevik faction seized control of the Winter Palace and proclaimed a

new government in the name of the Soviet Union.

Though it would occur more than a decade before his birth, the Russian Revolution

would greatly impact the life of Zbigniew Brzezinski. While some Western intellectuals insisted

that Lenin’s seizure of power represented an authentic worker revolution, Brzezinski viewed it as

a ruthless coup d’etat that introduced a one-party totalitarian government that would impede

democratic reforms in Russia for the next seventy years. In later years academics would engage

in heated debates about exactly what went “wrong” with Lenin’s revolution. Brzezinski argued

that it was simply “wrong” from the beginning. Brzezinski noted it was Lenin, not Stalin, who

first deceived the peasants about their land, deceived the workers about self-management, turned

the trade unions into organs of oppression, created the concentration camps and sent troops out

to the border areas to crush any national movements, and created the secret police force which

established organized terror as the central feature of the Soviet system.

Lenin regarded Poland as “the red bridge” to link Russia with the more advanced

industrial economies of Europe. By January 1919, the commander of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky

proclaimed “It is no longer the specter of communism that is haunting Europe…. communism is

flesh and blood and is now stalking the continent.”

Poland’s new military leader Josef Pilsudski

took advantage of the Russian civil war by launching an invasion into the Ukraine in the spring

of 1920. A sustained Soviet counterattack drove the Poles back to the gates of Warsaw. By the

summer of 1920 Trotsky’s army was driving toward the gates of Warsaw. As the international

community braced for a Soviet victory Polish volunteers dug trenches and strung barbed wire in

the fields east of Warsaw.

Pilsudski’s army, in what became known as the “miracle on the Vistula,” cut off the

advancing Soviet columns outside Warsaw. Yet Poland’s victory proved a mixed blessing. The

fact that Pilsudski launched his Russian campaign alienated the Western power who viewed it as

a romantic act blind to the geo-political realities of the day. The political left in Europe would

hold the “reactionary” Poles in contempt for launching a war against the purportedly

“progressive” forces of Soviet socialism. Most importantly, the Treaty of Riga of March 1921 left a

significant Byelorussian and Ukrainian population inside Poland that would create the threat of

Soviet irredentism throughout the interwar years.

Brzezinski’s father, Tadeusz, fought the Soviet army at Lvov and in the final campaign of

Warsaw in 1920, and would join the Polish Foreign Service in the early 1920. Zbigniew Brzezinski

Issac Duestcher, The Prophet Armed, 1879-1921 (New York, 1954), p. 450.

Norman Davies, White Eagle Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919-20 (New York, 1972). Adam

Michnik, a key intellectual advisor to the Polish Solidarity Movement of the 1980s, described the

importance of the Polish victory over the Red Army in 1920. “We owe to the 1920 victory over the

Bolsheviks twenty years of independent Polish thought which inspired and still inspires

generations. Yes, contemporary resistance to Sovietism is to a large extent possible thanks to the

cultural reserves created by the interwar Republic. If the Red Army had won the Battle of

Warsaw, if a Provisional Revolutionary Committee had started governing Poland, then perhaps I

would be living today in Kolyma or Birobidzhan; who knows whether I’d speak Polish, whether

a generation of Polish intelligentisa would not have been turned into fodder for polar bears, if

Polish culture could have avoided the disaster that befell Russian culture under Stalinist rule.”

Adam Michnik, quoted in Jacques Rupnik, The Other Europe: The Rise and Fall of Communism in

East-Central Europe (New York, 1989), p. 28.

grew up in a comfortable household in which international relations were a frequent topic of

debate. This was especially relevant since Poland’s survival in the 1930s was under constant

threat from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the two totalitarian regimes that bitterly

objected to the revival of the Polish state in the wake of World War I.

Tadeusz Brzezinski was assigned to a diplomatic post in the Soviet Ukraine at the apex of

Stalin’s Great Terror. In the early 1930s Stalin had embarked on rapid forced industrialization

that terrorized the state’s peasant society. Those who sought to resist were shot or deported to a

vast system of labor camps where they were likely to perish through exposure or starvation. The

relatively wealthy “kulaks’ were a particular target of Stalin’s campaign leading to the

extermination of some ten million. Stalin’s intent was to destroy through fear not just organized

political opposition---but the very idea of dissent. Indeed by the 1930s Stalin’s terror extended to

almost every aspect of Soviet life--millions of ordinary peasants and workers were denounced as

“enemies of the people.”

Brzezinski’s first impressions of the Soviet Union thus came not from left-wing

periodicals, but from stories his father recounted to his son. Yet less informed Western

intellectuals insisted that Stalin’s program appeared “scientific” and “rational’ compared to the

injustices of the capitalist system then wallowing in the midst of the Great Depression. This was

effectively symbolized in Soviet propaganda by heroic images of smoke belching steel factories

and young peasant women heroically gathering wheat for the collective good of the glorious

socialist state.

Yet the threat from the east was only part of Poland’s problems in the 1930s. At a four-

power conference at Munich in late September 1938 the French and British ceded the Czech

Sudetenland to Germany in return for Hitler’s hollow promise to expand no further. Britain’s

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s could dismiss the crisis as a “quarrel in a far away country

between people about whom we know nothing.” Zbigniew Brzezinski would come to learn that

this was not the first or last time that the concerns of an Eastern Europe state were dismissed by

Western diplomats.

A month after the Munich agreement Tadeusz Brzezinski was assigned a diplomatic post

in Canada. It was soon clear that Zbigniew Brzezinski would not be returning to Poland anytime

soon. In the early morning hours of September 1, 1939 the German blitzkrieg broke through the

Polish borders and raced toward Warsaw. Poland, despite declarations of war by France and

Britain, were left to fight the Nazi onslaught on their own. Poland’s fate was sealed two weeks

later, when six Soviet armies attacked Poland from the east in an invasion scarcely less brutal

than the Nazis. Thus marked the beginning of almost six years of unimaginable horror for the

Poles.

The war changed dramatically in 1941. In June of that year Hitler launched a massive

invasion of the Soviet Union. In December the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the

United States into the war in an awkward alliance with the Soviet Union. President Roosevelt

portrayed Stalin as an avuncular ally in the fight against Hitler. As the German advance stalled at

Stalingrad, Stalin’s armies began a relentless drive to the West. By late summer 1944 the Red

Army was approaching Poland and had already organized the “Lublin Committee” composed of

Polish communists that had spent the war years in Moscow. When the Allied leaders met at Yalta

in February 1945, Stalin agreed to a vague compromise to hold “free and unfettered elections” in

Poland at some point in the future. As Winston Churchill declared in 1946, “an Iron Curtain has

descended across the continent.”

When the Cold War heated up in the late 1940s, the Republicans used “Yalta” as code

word for Roosevelt’s “betrayal” of Eastern Europe. Brzezinski saw it as more of a lack of strategic

planning and Western naiveté in dealing with Stalin. “We do not know whether the Soviets

would have yielded” Brzezinski would later note, “but we do know that they were not tested.

The West showed neither foresight nor courage, and this is why Yalta is not only a symbol of

subsequent division of Europe but a major historical blot on the record of Anglo-American

leadership.”

In 1950 Brzezinski entered the PhD program at Harvard in 1950 where he would

establish himself as a leading authority on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Though

Brzezinski supported President Truman’s firm approach to the Soviet Union, he noted that

“containment” did little for the Eastern European states that at the time were undergoing a

ruthless process of Stalinization. Indeed “containment” was a middle ground between a return to

isolationism or a preventive war against the Soviet Union. The major instruments of policy were

political and economic, not military. The primary threat perceived by American decision makers

was, not a direct attack by Soviet troops, but the continued economic disintegration of West

European nations after the war.

Brzezinski was thus especially critical of the political excesses of the McCarthy era that

witnessed politicians rhetorically demonizing the Soviet Union while taking no active measures

to transform the status quo in Eastern Europe. This was seen most readily in 1952 when Secretary

of State John Foster Dulles pledged the U.S. intent to “liberate” Eastern Europe from Soviet

hegemony. This policy of “rolling back” Soviet power from Eastern Europe was exposed as

empty rhetorical bluster in 1956 when the U.S. watched helplessly as the Soviet Union crushed a

Hungarian revolt partially inspired by Dulles’ liberation rhetoric.

Brzezinski, then an associate professor at Harvard, was among the most vocal critics of

Eisenhower’s liberation pledge. Following the Soviet invasion of Hungary Brzezinski insisted

that the United States must move away from the empty bluster of “liberation” and move toward

a policy that would encourage “evolution” in Eastern Europe rather than “revolution.” In

essence Brzezinski saw Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” metaphor as more akin to a “semi-permeable

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Future of Yalta,” Foreign Affairs vol. 63, no. 2 (Winter, 1984-1985), pp.

279.

membrane” where a more positive Western approach would gradually draw the Soviet bloc

states toward a more Western social-democratic system.

Brzezinski, unlike more vocal émigré groups, argued the United States must be flexible

enough to differentiate between communist regimes in the Soviet bloc as a means to exploit the

growing fissures that had risen in the Communist world in the wake of Stalin’s death in 1953.

“My views gained strategic coherence between 1955 and 1960” Brzezinski recalls. “1955 was the

rejection of any illusions about a head on collision and the pursuit of liberation by Eisenhower

and Dulles and then through the Hungarian revolution, through the rise of Khrushchev and the

appearance of Kennedy, the more systematic formulation of the policy of peaceful engagement,

as an offensive strategy, and not as a defensive posture, an offensive strategy based on historical

optimism and not détente, based on Spenglarian pessimism.”

In 1960 Brzezinski’s views achieved a wider audience when he served as an adviser on

the campaign of John F. Kennedy. That same year Brzezinski produced his classic work Soviet

Bloc: Unity and Conflict that articulated the view that the Eastern European states were becoming

increasingly subject to national and ideological fragmentation. In the spring of 1961 Brzezinski

and William Griffith published a seminal article in Foreign Affairs arguing that the United States

should move to transform the Soviet dominated “bloc” into a more “neutral belt of states which,

like the Finnish, would enjoy genuine popular freedom of choice in internal policy while not

being hostile to the Soviet Union and not belonging to Western military alliances.“

This policy,

the authors reasoned, was largely dependent on the willingness of West Germany to accept its

postwar border with Poland and Czechoslovakia, since Bonn’s refusal to do so was strengthening

the claim that the Soviet Union was the only protection for these states against a potentially

revanchist Germany.

Interview, Washington, DC ( June 28, 2001).

Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Griffith, “Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe,” Foreign

Affairs vol. 39, no. 4 (Spring, 1961), p. 647.

Brzezinski feared that after the Cuban missile crisis the United States and Soviet Union

were moving toward a de facto condominium agreement that would free the status quo of a

divided Europe. Brzezinski thought this was an especially dangerous situation since it would at

once alienate the United States West European allies while leaving the increasingly chauvinistic

Eastern European regimes to rot in nationalist isolation. In the early 1960s Brzezinski would write

a number of articles insisting that the United States must take the lead in presenting an active

program to actively engage in attenuating what he regarded as the artificial division of the

continent.

Brzezinski’s concept of “peaceful engagement” was expanded in his 1965 work

Alternative to Partition that recommended the United States take the lead in a significant

multinational campaign, similar to the Marshall Plan, designed to bridge the political and

economic divisions that still divided Europe. Brzezinski work led to an appointment to the State

Department during which he wrote President Johnson’s famous “bridge building” speech which

represented the most ambitious U.S. approach toward Eastern Europe in the Cold War era.

Yet providing “economic assistance” to communist regimes of Eastern Europe remained

extremely controversial at a time when the United States was fighting a communist regime in

Vietnam. Indeed, the more ambitious aspects of Brzezinski’s “peaceful engagement” were

rejected in U.S. Congress for allegedly being “soft on communism.”

By the late 1960s it became fashionable among the intellectual elite to refer to the United

States as a “reactionary” nation. Brzezinski countered that the United States was leading a

technological revolution that was changing the world much as the transition to the industrial era

had in the 19

century. At the same time Brzezinski argued that the Soviet Union had entered the

state of terminal decline due to its reliance on an anachronistic economic structure and a the

increasing restlessness among its conquered nationalities.

Brzezinski argued that the United States, Western Europe and Japan, must form a

“community of developed nations.” This “trilateral” idea was designed to wean the more

advanced Soviet bloc nations toward the social-democratic model of the West. Brzezinski’s most

optimistic scenario held that the Soviet Union would eventually follow suit, shedding its Leninist

roots and move toward a more humane form of socialism. The greatest hope for Brzezinski’s

“peaceful engagement” occurred in 1968, when Alexander Dubcek embarked on a determined

effort to bring “socialism with a human face” to Czechoslovakia. Dubcek’s reforms challenged

two of Lenin’s most fundamental tenets; that the Communist Party must monopolize all political

power, and that this power must eliminate all forms of political dissent.

Brzezinski was thus especially dismayed by the ambivalence displayed by the United

States toward Dubcek’s reforms. By the summer of 1968 a debate began in the Kremlin over how

to deal with the situation in Czechoslovakia. Brzezinski believed that Johnson Administration’s

obsequious approach to Moscow in the summer of 1968 assured the Kremlin leadership that a

military solution would be relatively cost free. In the late hours of August 20-21, a combined force

of 175,000 troops from the Soviet Union and four other Warsaw Pact nations stormed into

Czechoslovakia and ended Dubcek’s reformist government.

Brzezinski saw the invasion as evidence of the success of peaceful engagement. Yet

President Nixon and his chief foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger moved toward a classic

balance of power politics that would treat the Soviet Union as traditional “great power” with its

own legitimate interests to protect. The result would be a focus on state-to-state diplomacy

negotiated between the great powers with the end goal of preserving geo-political stability in the

world.

Kissinger, as a student of the 19

century conservative statesmen, argued that the United

States had to abandon its crusading habit of attempting to “democratize” its ideological

adversaries. American power, Kissinger would argue, was simply too limited to attempt to

transform another nation’s domestic structure and that linking negotiations to domestic

liberalization would jeopardize negotiations on issues greater importance—particularly arms

control.

Brzezinski would become one of most persistent critics of the Nixon-Kissinger version of

détente. Brzezinski saw the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy as offering the ideal form of détente

from Moscow’s perspective--one that implicitly recognized the Soviet sphere of influence in

Eastern Europe, without questioning the coercive tyranny that had been inherent in the Leninist

system. Brzezinski argued that the Soviet Union had very little interest in becoming coerced into

a “status quo” nation. Instead it accepted Western aid and technology while contributing to

global anarchy by reflexively backing “national liberation” causes in the developing world and

sponsoring terrorist groups that sought to disrupt the global economy---a path that Brzezinski

believed the Soviets had had chosen in the 1960s when it became clear that they could not

compete with the more dynamic societies of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.

Brzezinski also argued that the Nixon-Kissinger form of détente was anything but stable

if all it did was to prop up the ossified status quo in Europe. According to Brzezinski, it was

essential that the regimes in Eastern Europe embark of political and economic reform before their

populations exploded into popular unrest. Indeed, in December of 1970 the Polish government

announced a substantial increase in the price of food and fuels. The move was a desperate

attempt to correct the hidden inflationary impact of mass subsidies required to keep the

centralized economy afloat. The workers in Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard responded with a massive

work stoppage that was summarily crushed by Polish security forces.

Brzezinski argued that the Polish turmoil underscored a problem prevailing throughout

the Soviet bloc. One solution, long implicit in Brzezinski’s strategy of peaceful engagement, was

to decentralize their economic systems and open their societies to a freer flow of information,

people, and ideas. A far less painful solution was to borrow capital and technology from the

West to prop up their stagnating regimes. In the early 1970s Western governments and private

banks poured hard currency credits into Eastern Europe. Supporters of such investment argued

that the loans would provide the Eastern European states with higher technology, which would

allow them to manufacture of more sophisticated products, which could then be exported to help

pay off the debts incurred. At the same time Nixon-Kissinger insisted that warmer U.S.-Soviet

relations would eventually trickle down to have a “moderating” impact on the Soviet bloc

nations.

Brzezinski argued that this reliance on change “from above” ignored the events of 1968.

Brzezinski noted the emergence of Dubcek’s “Prague Spring” had convinced the Soviet leaders of

the need to launch an ideological crackdown and a “prophylactic” campaign in Eastern Europe to

stem any ideological “contamination” that might accompany any interaction with the West.

Brzezinski argued that the United States must move to engage Eastern Europe with a European

wide conference as a means to settle the outstanding issues of the World War II.

Brzezinski’s proposal for a European conference would put him in unusual company.

The Soviet leaders had begun calling for an all-European conference on security and cooperation

as early as 1954 in an attempt to consecrate the postwar borders and forestall the West German

entrance into the NATO alliance. The Soviets continued their push for a conference if only to

sanctify the idea of the “inviolability ” of the postwar frontiers.

The United States was far more reluctant to enter a conference that would formally

accede to the Soviet conquest over Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. Brzezinski took a more

long-term view, noting that the postwar borders had been conceded de facto for years, and the

refusal to formally do so permitted the Soviets to portray themselves as Eastern Europe’s sole

protector. Brzezinski thus viewed a European security conference not as the recognition of the

European status quo (even if the Soviets would attempt to portray it as such) but as a way to

pierce the hermetic seal that Moscow had imposed on Eastern Europe following the invasion of

Czechoslovakia.

Brzezinski grew frustrated with the Nixon administration’s reluctance to participate in a

European-wide summit. “We should think of it as a process, the purpose of which is to explore

Brzezinski, “Meeting Moscow’s Limited Co-existence,” The New Leader, vol. 51 no. 24

(December 16, 1968), pp. 11-13.

and only eventually resolve the various outstanding legacies of World War II,” Brzezinski noted

in 1970. “But we will not be able to do so if the West—and particularly the United States—keeps

shrinking away from the challenge on the jejune argument that we can’t enter a conference unless

we know in advance what its outcome will be.”

By 1972 the U.S. opposition to the European conference had softened after Moscow

acceded to NATO’s demand for parallel talks on the reduction of conventional military forces

(MBFR) in Central Europe. Deliberations on CSCE began in Helsinki on November 22, 1972.

Throughout the early stages of the Helsinki process it was the West European nations that

stressed the aspects of human rights. The United States delegation, clearly reflecting the views of

Kissinger, stressed the need for greater “realism” and sought to “reign in” the Western

Europeans from raising such delicate issues such as human rights that might complicate détente

with Moscow.

President Ford signed the Helsinki Final Act in August 1975. Moscow immediately

emphasized the sections that endorsed the postwar status quo and the permanence of the Soviet

dominion over Eastern Europe. This impression created a political firestorm from anti-détente

forces in the United States who berated Helsinki as a Yalta-like sell-out of Eastern Europe.

Brzezinski, in contrast, argued the Helsinki Accords had codified two of the most

essential aspects of his policy of “peaceful engagement.” First, the Helsinki Final Act finally

acknowledged the territorial status quo in Europe, finally depriving the Moscow’s claim that the

Soviet Union was the sole protection against the threat of a remilitarized West Germany. More

importantly, Brzezinski argued, the Basket III clause of Helsinki had legitimized Western

insistence that human rights be respected within the Soviet Union and Eastern European states.

Zbigniew Brzezinski assumed command of the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter’s

campaign in late 1975. Carter’s stump speeches, taken directly from Brzezinski’s academic

Brzezinski, “Détente in the ‘70s,” The New Republic, (January 3, 1970), p. 18.

Flora Lewis, “European Parley: End Is in Sight,” The New York Times (July 1, 1975).

writings, attacked Kissinger’s “obsession with power blocs and spheres of influence,” for

allowing the Soviets to get the best of détente, for being inattentive to the rising turmoil in the

developing world, for alienating the traditional allies in Western Europe and Japan, and for

neglecting the issue of human rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Brzezinski realized that dissidents in Eastern Europe had begun to focus on living as

much as possible outside the official structures. A key to this “anti-politics” movement asked the

communist regimes only to abide by their own constitutions--and the agreements they had

signed at Helsinki. In June of 1976, two weeks before Carter accepted the Democratic nomination,

workers in Poland rioted after the government imposed another round of price hikes. The Polish

intellectual community organized a vigorous defense of the workers. In September 1976 the

group was formalized as the Worker’s Defense Committee (KOR). By the fall of 1976 the Polish

opposition had been united like never before—an ominous sign for a government already

burdened with a severe economic crisis.

Ford and Kissinger had taken few efforts to emphasize the human rights aspects

contained in Basket III. Indeed on August 1, the one-year anniversary of the Helsinki Accords,

Moscow was still portraying Helsinki as a ringing triumph for Soviet diplomacy. At the same,

most conservative voices in the United States, including Ronald Reagan, continued to berate the

Final Act as a Yalta-like sell out.

Brzezinski thought that the wholesale repudiation of the Final Act was as misguided as

the Ford-Kissinger penchant for ignoring it. By late summer Brzezinski advised Carter to distance

himself from the outright denunciation of the Helsinki Accords, and begin to stress the fact that

the Warsaw Pact nations were not abiding by the still little publicized "Basket Three" aspects they

had signed onto at Helsinki.

See “Taking the Measure of Helsinki,” Time (August 9, 1976). See also “A Year After Helsinki:

Despite Moscow’s Promises, No Greater Freedom for East Europe,” U.S. News and World Report

(August 9, 1976).

In November 1976 Carter defeated Ford in one of the closest elections in U.S. history.

Carter’s victory was greatly assisted by Ford’s incredulous debate claim that Eastern Europe was

not under Soviet domination. Yet Brzezinski’s emphasis on Basket III of the Helsinki Final Act

would have a greater long-term impact on Eastern Europe. Brzezinski, as President Carter's

National Security Adviser, was instrumental in devising a strategy toward Eastern Europe that

would link economic assistance to the respect for human rights. This strategy was coupled with a

sustained covert assistance to opposition groups and a sizable increase into the power and scope

of Radio Free Europe.

The Polish opposition had been inspired by the Helsinki Accords and the presence of

Zbigniew Brzezinski in the White House.

As Adam Michnik, a prominent member of the KOR

opposition group, would later note: “Kissinger had a vision like Metternich-- ‘we divide the

world into spheres of influence and we talk with governments’—and Ford continued this policy.

But Brzezinski and Carter said ‘there were not only governments but societies,’ who very often

think different than the government, but they are gagged. And Brzezinski understood what

hardly anybody could understand at that time in America; that an ideological confrontation with

the Soviet bloc had to be undertaken and the American slogan should be human rights.”

On January 1, 1977, 243 Czech individuals signed a 3,000-word petition protesting the

repressive nature of the government. Known as Charter 77, the signatories insisted that they were

not seeking to overthrow the communist regime, but were only asking that the regime adhered to

its own constitution—and what it had signed on to at Helsinki. Although Charter 77 did not refer

to the events of 1968, it was a reminder of the hope and aspirations cut short by the Soviet

invasion of 1968.

In early 1977 Brzezinski prepared a classified Presidential Directive that outlined the

formal U.S. policy toward Eastern Europe. The directive stated 1) the U.S. should cultivate a

Adam Bromke, “The Opposition in Poland,” Problems of Communism (September-October

1978), p. 47.

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (March 30, 2001).

closer relationship with Eastern Europe for its own sake rather than as a by-product of détente

with the Soviet Union; 2) the criteria for deciding which countries to concentrate on its domestic

policies as well as foreign policy independence from the USSR; 3) the administration should

maintain regular contacts with representatives of the “loyal opposition” in Eastern Europe; i.e.

liberal intellectuals, artists and church leaders, as well as with government officials.

The summer of 1977 would witness the most tangible success of Brzezinski’s strategy of

peaceful engagement. The Helsinki Final Act, for all its symbolic importance, lacked punitive

provisions to ensure that the Communist governments were to be held accountable for the

human rights provisions found in Basket Three. In June of 1977 the Helsinki Final Act was to be

subjected to a full-fledged international review in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Polish leader Edward

Gierek, eager to retain access to Western credits, unexpectedly announced amnesty for members

of Poland’s growing political opposition. This would solidify the links between KOR, the

workers, and the Catholic Church.

The combination of a protracted economic crisis, an increasingly hesitant regime, and the

election of a Polish Pope, created a fertile atmosphere for Poland's growing opposition

movement. Despite the continuation of Western loans, Poland was on the verge of economic

collapse by 1980. Rather than risk the political dangers of systemic reform the government

resorted to an increase food prices. The gesture was met with a massive nationwide labor strike

that came to be known as Solidarity. Led by an unemployed electrician named Lech Walesa, and

encouraged by the support of intellectuals and the Catholic church, the strikers presented a list of

demands that challenged the fundamental institutions of communist authority, and by extension,

Soviet rule over Poland.

The emergence of a sizable and organized opposition in Poland was particularly

troubling for Moscow. The conditions that sparked the Polish workers existed throughout the

entire region. By December of 1980 a Soviet invasion appeared imminent. Brzezinski was

determined that the Carter Administration made it clear that a Soviet invasion would not be cost

free. While Soviet troop remained poised on the Polish borders, Brzezinski made it known that a

Soviet invasion would produce a rupture in the political détente in Europe, disrupt East-West

economic cooperation, generate increased NATO budgets, produce severe strains between

Western European Communist parties and the Soviet Union, alienate the Non-Aligned

Movement from the Soviet Union, likely precipitate turmoil elsewhere in the Soviet bloc, and

lead to more American-Chinese military cooperation.

On January 20, 1981 the Polish crisis would be taken up by the incoming Reagan

administration. As the Carter administration served out its final days in office, a more subtle

transition of power was taking place in the Kremlin. The image of an anemic Leonid Brezhnev

struggling with five elderly pallbearers to support the casket of Kosygin provided a macabre

symbol of the rise and fall of the Soviet empire. As the youthful beneficiaries of Stalin's purges,

this generation of leaders had ruled over the longest period of stability in Soviet history. Yet as

the world moved into the 1980s it was apparent that this stability had been achieved at the price

of domestic tyranny, an overly militarized society, and an antiquated economic system. Such

problems were compounded for the satrapies in Eastern Europe whose dependence on an

occupying power in decline put them in a most unfavorable position. By the time the Carter

administration left office in 1981 the Communist system throughout Eastern Europe had entered

an irreversible state of disintegration that would culminate in the revolutions of 1989.

As Charles Gati would note: “People have written so many books about Kissinger and

yet I think that time has proven Brzezinski to be more right than Kissinger. Brzezinski may have

been born in Warsaw and maybe have been brought up by Polish parents in Canada, but he is the

one who reflects the best in America—the dynamism, enthusiasm—and yes, idealism—without

losing sight of what was possible. He kept hope alive. No other American was able to do what

Brzezinski did. This is why every one of these post-Communist governments—outside of Russia

itself—just give him the Red Carpet. He’s their hero—not Kissinger—they may respect

Kissinger—for this or that—but Zbig is the hero—because he kept hope alive.”

CHAPTER ONE: COLD WAR ACADEMIC

In the autumn of 1950 a twenty-two year old Zbigniew Brzezinski entered the graduate

program in Government at Harvard University. Brzezinski would join the collection of young

scholars in Cambridge who would later distinguish themselves in the field of Cold War

academia. These would include Stanley Hoffman, James Schlesinger, Samuel Huntington, Adam

Ulam, and, of course Henry Kissinger, whose name would be linked with Brzezinski’s for the

remainder of their long public and academic careers.

By 1950 America’s leading universities had been transformed into intellectual arsenals in

the broader Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union. In a global war based as much on ideas

as armaments, young scholars were being recruited in an attempt to explain and counteract the

strategies coming forth from the Kremlin. At the same time there seemed little hope at that time

that the ideological struggle dividing the world would be resolved peacefully. 1950 had

witnessed Mao Zedong travel to Moscow to sign a treaty with Josef Stalin seemingly uniting the

world’s two communist giants in a monolithic alliance against the United States. Within months

Soviet backed forces of North Korea invaded South Korea. America, only five years removed

from World War II, found itself at war again with a mysterious enemy that appeared relentless in

its ideological goal of bringing forth world revolution.

As he entered Harvard in 1950 Zbigniew Brzezinski was aware that this enemy was not

as relentless and unified as it might appear. He was born to Tadeusz and Ilona Brzezinski in

Warsaw, Poland on March 28, 1928. That same year Josef Stalin assumed power in the Soviet

Union. 1928 was also the year that fourteen nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a widely

hailed international agreement that pledged to “outlaw” war as an instrument of national policy.

Though this document contained no formal means of enforcement, the United States’ Secretary of

State assured that the “moral force” of world opinion would enforce its strictures.

As a young Pole coming of age in the 1930s Zbigniew Brzezinski could be excused for

taking a jaded view of the “moral force” of world opinion. As the son of a Polish diplomat

Brzezinski witnessed Poland’s attempt to survive between the two greatest tyrannies of the 20

century.

In 1931 Brzezinski accompanied his father to a diplomatic posting to Liepzig, Germany.

Within two years the Weimar Republic would fall to Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich. The

posting was a delicate one for the Brzezinski family since Hitler’s grand designs entailed the

creating of German ”living” space” to the east, obliteration of the Polish nation and the allegedly

“sub-human” Slavs that lived there.

At the age of five Brzezinski was old enough to sense the foreboding of the torch light

parades and mass rallies celebrating the precepts of Aryan racial supremacy. Indeed, one of

Brzezinski’s earliest memories was walking the streets of a Polish city with his father when an

anti-Semitic student demonstration broke out. Some university students walking with a sign

stating “Warszawa i Krakow sa tylko dla Polakow—Wszystkie Zydzi I Swinie Mieszkaja w Palestynie!”

(Warsaw and Krakow are only for Poles—All Jews and Swine live in Palestine) Brzezinski recalls

his father being so outraged that he charged the group with his cane.

After serving four years in

Germany Brzezinski’s father was relieved of his post after it was discovered he had engaged in a

covert program to permit Polish Jews to escape Nazi Germany.

After returning the family to Warsaw Tadeusz Brzezinski accepted a diplomatic posting

in the Soviet republic of Ukraine. The lingering border disputes between Poland and the Soviet

Union stemming from the 1920-21 Russo-Polish War made the posting an especially sensitive one

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

Years later Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would officially thank Zbigniew Brzezinski

for his father’s actions in World War II. Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

for a Polish diplomat. For safety considerations Zbigniew Brzezinski would remain at home with

his mother in Warsaw.

Indeed Brzezinski’s father would arrive in the Soviet Union at the peak of Stalin’s Terror.

In the early 1930s Stalin had embarked on rapid forced industrialization coupled with a massive

campaign of state coercion. To satisfy the need for increased food supplies the peasantry was

organized into collective units. The relatively wealthy “kulaks” were a particular target of Stalin’s

campaign leading to the extermination of some ten million.

By means of torture, threats to family, and false promises of mercy Stalin’s secret police

persuaded party leaders to “confess” to crimes they had not committed. The public trials and

purges settled old scores among Bolshevik comrades. Stalin was particularly oppressive of elites

of non-Russian nationalities within the Soviet Union who were labeled as “bourgeois

nationalists.” Foreign communists living in the Soviet Union were executed or simply

disappeared. During the late 1930s the elite of most East European communist parties had

perished in the Stalin’s purges. By the 1930s Stalin’s terror extended throughout the countryside

as millions of ordinary peasants and workers were denounced as “enemies of the people.”

At the same time many Western academics clung to the idealistic view that Stalin was a

committed anti-fascist intent on leveling the inequalities of industrial capitalism. If Stalin’s

Interview, Washington DC, (June 28, 2001). The life of Tadeusz Brzezinski was an example of

the geographical tug of wars that had been so common in the history of Central Europe. He was

born in 1896 in Zloczow a town in what was then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (In 1945 it

would be ceded to the Soviet Union and in 1991 it became known as Zolochev in an independent

Ukraine). He received his university education in Lemberg (now the Ukraininian city of Lviv)

and attended law school in Vienna. Following World War I Tadeusz Brzezinski volunteered in

the newly formed army of Josef Pilsudski where he saw action at battles in eastern Galicia and in

the final campaign of Warsaw in 1920 that repelled an invasion from the Soviet Red Army.

See Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New

York, 1986). Also Robert M. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990).

A Polish communist party was founded in 1918. Its leadership was largely Jewish and

internationalist in orientation, placing its loyalty to Moscow rather than the Polish nation. It

made little difference to Stalin who held a particular distrust for Polish communists, whom he

accused of “Trotskyism” and “Luxemburgism.” In 1938 the historic leaders of Polish communism

had been either executed or perished in Soviet prisons. Vladimir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics:

Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York, 1993), p. 12.

brutality was criticized, it was tempered with the metaphorical justification that one had to

“break eggs to make an omelet.”

The young Zbigniew Brzezinski saw the more grisly side of

the story when his father would discuss with his son the massive carnage then taking place

behind the shroud of Stalin’s rule. “There’s no doubt his stories about disappearances, people he

would deal with, descriptions of how he would have some elite in the Ukraine to dinner, and he

would learn within weeks that they were arrested and then shot--had an enormous impression

on me.”

But it was Poland’s historical misfortune that the threat from Russia was only part of the

problem. In late 1938 Hitler had rebuilt the German Army and was threatening war unless

Czechoslovakia agreed to cede the Sudetenland to Germany. The Western governments,

seemingly willing to pay any price to settle the crisis peacefully, met at Munich where they

agreed to grant the Sudetenland to Germany in exchange for Hitler’s promise to expand no

further. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had previously dismissed the situation

as a “quarrel in a far away country between people about whom we know nothing,”

returned

home to a hero’s welcome with the claim that he had saved “peace in our time.”

In the weeks following the Munich crisis Tadeusz Brzezinski took his family to Montreal

after being assigned as the Polish consul general in Canada. The move to Montreal was a difficult

one for ten-year old Zbigniew. For the first year in Canada he was too busy being homesick for

Stalin’s most notable defender in the United States was the New York Times correspondent

Walter Duranty, who would win a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his favorable reports about the

development of socialism in the Soviet Union. Duranty, like American ambassador Joseph E.

Davies, insisted that Stalin’s purge victims were in fact guilty of conspiracy. See Jonathan

Sanders, “Starry-Eyed in Moscow,” The Washington Post (June 3, 1990). Perhaps the most famous

of academic apologists for Stalin in the West were Sydney and Beatrice Webb, who would justify

Stalin’s liquidation of the kulaks with the argument that the Soviet government “could hardly

have acted otherwise.”

The Webb’s first work on Stalin was originally titled Soviet Communism: A

New Civilization? They removed the question mark in the second edition that was published in

1937 when Stalin’s terror was at its height.

Robert Conquest, “Academe and the Soviet Myth,”

The National Interest, no. 31 (Spring 1993), p. 92.

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

Chamberlain’s comment came in a broadcast to the British nation on September 27, 1938.

Poland to focus much on looming war on the horizon. “As a kid, no I didn’t think things were

going to blow up, I can’t tell you that,” Brzezinski recalled. “I really just wanted to go back to

Poland as soon as possible. I remember bugging my father about whether we were going to go

back to Poland the next year or not for the holidays, which we didn’t. And after that there was no

more opportunity.”

In late August of 1939 Hitler and Stalin shocked the world by signing a non-aggression

pact. The international community scarcely had time to react when on September 1, 1939 sixty

German blitzkrieg divisions broke through the Polish borders and raced toward Warsaw.

Though the British and French governments quickly declared war on Germany, they would take

no offensive measures. Poland was left to face the Nazi onslaught alone.

Millions of Poles were

deported for forced labor in Germany while the educated classes were specifically targeted for

extermination. Meanwhile Polish Jews were rounded up and sent to ghettos in Polish cities

where they awaited their fate in the notorious death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and

Majdanek.

The German invasion, for all its horrors, was only half the nightmare that awaited

Poland. On September 17 six Soviet armies attacked Poland from the east. By 1940, hundreds of

thousands of Poles were forcibly deported in the freight trucks to Kazakhstan, the Artic north, or

beyond the Ural Mountains. In 1939 the Soviet army captured 15,000 Polish reserve officers who

had been called up with the outbreak of hostilities. These prisoners were then transported to the

Katyn Forest near Smolensk where there hands were bound and shot execution style in the back

of the head before being thrown into mass graves.

By the time the war broke out Brzezinski was demonstrating an early interest in foreign

affairs. He began to study elementary Russian from a local farmer and would discuss the war

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

Anna M. Cienciala, Poland and the Western Powers: 1938-1939 (London, 1968).

P. Allen, Katyn: The Untold Story (New York, 1991). See also S.W. Slowes, The Road to Katyn

(Cambridge, MA, 1992).

with his father on a regular basis. He would also keep a diary that would deal almost entirely

with the daily events of the war. Brzezinski found a particular fascination with the Polish boy

scouts his age who had escaped into the anti-German underground.

Winston Churchill, who in 1940 had replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of

Great Britain, was quite aware of the grisly motives driving the Nazi drive to the east. “Monday

Hitler shoots Dutchmen,” declared Churchill, “Tuesday—Norwegians; Wednesday—French or

Belgians stand against the wall; Thursday it is the Czechs who must suffer. But always, all the

days…there are the Poles.”

On the morning of June 22, 1941 180 German divisions drove east in a massive invasion

of the Soviet Union. The German blitzkrieg drove relentlessly through the Soviet Ukraine in the

early months of the campaign. But Moscow was spared when Hitler redirected troops to the

south in hopes of capturing the summer harvest of the Ukraine and the oil fields of the Caucasus.

The ensuing delay meant that Nazi forces would not reach the Soviet capital until late

November—when the frigid Russian winter had begun to take its toll on the German advance.

The first week in December marked the turning point in the war. On December 6, the

Soviets had recovered to launch a counterattack to relieve the pressure on Moscow—marking the

first battle in what would turn into a long and relentless counterdrive toward Berlin. The next

day the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor bringing the United States, the

world’s most powerful industrial nation, into the war on the side of the Soviet Union. The grand

alliance against Hitler, The Big Three, as they were known, included Roosevelt, Churchill, and

Stalin.

It would be an awkward alliance from the beginning. The changing alliances meant that

Stalin had to reconsider his relationship with Poland—a nation that he had ruthlessly invaded

less than two years before. On July 30, 1941 Stalin reestablished diplomatic relations with the

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

Timothy Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (London, 1999),

p. 122.

non-communist Polish government-in-exile based in London. But this change of tactics raised

some uncomfortable questions—especially regarding the fate of the 15,000 Polish officers

executed on Stalin’s orders in 1940. It didn’t take long for the issue to be raised.

In 1942 the retreating German army uncovered the mass grave at Katyn. All evidence

pointed to Soviet complicity. Experts from various countries concluded that the killings had

taken place no later than mid-1940, when Katyn was still under Soviet control. Stalin would

ironically twist the grisly discovery at Katyn to take the first steps reestablish Soviet control over

the future of government in Poland. Stalin’s used the London Poles request for inquiry as an

excuse to severe ties with the Polish government-in-exile. At the same time Stalin was already

forming the nucleus of the Polish communist party that would be installed in the wake of the

war. As early as November 1941 a small group of Polish Communists was parachuted into

German-occupied Poland, where they contacted a few members of the old KPP (dissolved in

March 1938). In January 1942 the Communist Party of Poland was revived in Warsaw under the

name Polish Workers Party.

While the young Zbigniew Brzezinski clearly hoped for an Allied victory, he would be

become disturbed by what he regarded as President Franklin Roosevelt’s obsequious approach to

Stalin. He found Roosevelt’s affectionate public references to “Uncle Joe” to be particularly

troubling. This was especially true after the German army discovered the massacre of the Polish

officers in the Katyn Forest in 1943. As Brzezinski recalled “Precisely because I knew of the

Soviets from my father, there was not the slightest doubt in my mind that the Soviets did it,

although the Nazis were quite capable of doing it, and did many things rather similar. But in that

particular case I had no doubt whatsoever that that the Soviets did it.”

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001). In the spring of 1943 the German Army announced

that they had discovered some 4,000 Polish corpses in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. The

overwhelming suspicion that the Soviet Union was responsible led the Polish-government-in-

exile in London to ask for a further investigation. Stalin used the incident to break relations with

the London Poles, accusing them of spreading “German propaganda.” Once the Red Army

recaptured Smolensk it dispatched Stalin’s personal doctor, Nikolai Bourdenko, to Kaytn with a

In November 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill traveled to Tehran, for their first face-to-face

meeting with Stalin. With the end of the war in sight, Stalin insisted the Polish frontiers be shifted

200 to 300 kilometers west roughly along the “Curzon Line.” Both Roosevelt and Churchill urged

the Polish government-in-exile to accept the arrangement—compensating the Poles with part of

eastern Germany. Indeed, Roosevelt seemed more intent on winning Stalin over as a friend rather

than engaging in serious diplomacy.

This was seen in Roosevelt’s insistence on being housed at

the Soviet Embassy and his mild taunts at Churchill designed to forge an informal “anti-

imperial” alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Immediately after Tehran,

Roosevelt sought to assure the public that he got along “fine” with Stalin whom he referred to as

“truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia.” “I believe that we are going to get along

very well with him and the Russian people—very well indeed,” insisted the American president,

“I would call him something like me….a realist.”

By the close of the Tehran Conference the Brzezinski family would become increasingly

worried about the postwar fate of Poland. “As a young kid I wasn’t quite as sophisticated,”

Brzezinski recalls, “though I could sense growing alarm in our family over what was happening

after Tehran—echoes of conversations that I would overhear about the growing indications that

team of forensic experts. They dug up the corpses and pronounced the Poles to have died in

April 1941. Both the United States and Great Britain wished to avoid trouble with their wartime

ally and let the Soviet claim stand undisputed. Thus, for the next four decades, the Polish

Communist government held to Moscow’s line that it was the Germans who had committed the

atrocity. Only in February 1989 did Poland’s Communists admit that the NKVD perpetuated the

atrocity. This came more than a year after creation of a bilateral Soviet-Polish commission to

investigate what Mikhail Gorbachev rather awkwardly referred to as the “blank spots” in Soviet-

Polish relations. In April of 1990 the Soviets finally acknowledged Soviet responsibility for the

crime. Under Gorbachev the Soviets released documents that detailed the NKVD’s planning and

execution of the Katyn operation. In 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s special envoy

delivered copies of the documents to the then Polish president Lech Walesa. The documents were

dated March 5, 1940—complete with Stalin’s signature ordering the execution of 14,700 Polish

officers. The documents also included orders to execute 11,000 Poles then held in Soviet prison

camps. See “Polish Massacre: Stalin Signed Orders for Executions,” The Hamilton Spectator

(October 15, 1992). See Thomas S. Szayna, “Addressing the ‘Blank Spots’ in Polish-Soviet

Relations,” Problems of Communism, vol. XXXVII, (November-December 1988), pp. 37-61.

William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (Oxford, 1986), p. 41

maybe some sort of division of Europe into spheres of influence was in the process of being

accepted by the West.”

As the Allied forces landed at Normandy in June 1944, the Red Army was advancing

toward Nazi-occupied Warsaw.

On August 1, the non-communist Polish Home Army (AK)

began an uprising in a desperate attempt to liberate the city before the arrival of Soviet forces.

Stalin, despite encouraging the uprising on Radio Moscow, kept the Soviet army east of the

Vistula River as the Nazis obliterated Warsaw and with it much of the Polish non-communist

resistance. As Warsaw lay in rubble the Soviet forces entered the city in January 1945 and handed

power to a group of Polish communists loyal to the dictates of Stalin.

In February of 1945 the Big Three met at Yalta. With the end of the war in sight Roosevelt

and Churchill accepted Stalin’s vague assurances to hold “free and unfettered elections” in

Poland at some point in the future.

By the time the Red Army finally entered Berlin in May of

1945 the Soviet Union controlled of all of Europe east of the Elbe River. As the war came to close

in the summer of 1945 it was clear that the Brzezinski family would not be returning to Poland

any time soon.

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

See Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943-1948, trans. John

Micgiel and Michael H. Bernhart (Berkeley, 1991).

For Brzezinski’s later interpretation on what transpired at Yalta, see Zbigniew Brzezinski,

“The Future of Yalta,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 63 no. 2 (Winter 1984/85), pp. 279-302.

The Red Army would engage in looting and rape that became fully known only after the Cold

War. It has been estimated that Russian troops raped as many as two million German women in

1945 and 1946. As the historian Norman Naimark would note, “Women in the Eastern zone---

both refugees from further east and inhabitants of the towns, villages, and cities of the Soviet

zone---shared an experience for the most part unknown in the West, the ubiquitous threat and

the reality of rape, over a prolonged period of time.” Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany:

A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge, MA, 1992), p. 107. As the Cold

War historian John Lewis Gaddis noted after the Cold War “It has long been known that the Red

Army behaved brutally toward German civilians in those parts of the country it occupied, and

that this treatment contrasted strikingly with that accorded the Germans in the American, British,

and French zones. What we had not known, until recently, is how pervasive the problem of rape

was: Red Army soldiers may have assaulted as many as two million German women in 1945-6.

There were few efforts for many months to stop this behavior, or to discipline those who

indulged in it. To this day, some Soviet officers recall the experience much as Stalin saw it at the

In 1945 Brzezinski entered Montreal’s McGill University. Brzezinski’s M.A. thesis

examined the Soviet nationalities policy under Bolshevik rule. While many academics insisted on

viewing the Soviet Union as a “voluntary” association of fifteen republics, Brzezinski viewed it as

a cauldron of resentful nationalities that had been violently restored under Lenin’s centralized

rule in the wake of the Russian civil war. Brzezinski would note that this process of

“Russification” was accelerated even more ruthlessly under Stalin’s “Great Patriotic War” when

more than 50 nationalities and 3.5 million people—including the Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and

Volga Germans--were forcibly deported to remote parts of the Soviet Union.

Brzezinski thus

argued that Russia’s much ballyhooed historic sense of “insecurity” was in reality a product of its

own historical impositions on its neighbors—a process that by the close of World War II

amounted to one of the most sustained and uninterrupted imperial drives in world history.

Brzezinski’s thesis at McGill would not be his most mature academic work yet it would

certainly stimulate goals slightly more grandiose than those of the average graduate student. As

Brzezinski would later recall: “Quite early on I reached the conviction that the weakness of the

time: troops that had risked their lives and survived “deserved a little fun.”…..The incidence of

rape and other forms of brutality was so much greater on the Soviet than on the western side that

it played a major role in determining which way Germans would tilt in the Cold War that was to

come. It ensured a pro-western orientation from the very beginning of that conflict, which surely

helps to account for why the West German regime was able to establish itself as a legitimate

government while its East German counterpart never did.’ John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know:

Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997), pp. 286-287. For additional insight on the scale of

rapes during the occupation see Atina Grossmann, “A Question of Silence: The Rape of German

Women by Occupation Soldiers,” October 72 (Spring 1995), pp. 43-63. Milovan Djilas,

Conversations with Stalin, translated Michael B. Petrovich (New York, 1962), pp. 87-97, 110-11.

Lenin moved immediately after the Russian civil war to centralize control over separatist areas

in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. By 1925 a number of Central Asian and Muslim regions of

Uzbekistan, Turkestan, and Kazakstan were centralized under Moscow’s control. Zbigniew

Brzezinski, M.A. Thesis, Russo-Soviet Nationalism (Montreal: McGill University, 1950). This view

would be later seen in Brzezinski’s efforts in the 1990s to establish a newly independent Ukraine

as a viable post-Soviet counterweight between Germany and Russia and his support for the

Chechen independence movement in the 1990s. See Zbigniew Brzezinski. “The Premature

Partnership,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, no. 2 (March-April 1994), pp. 67-82. Also Zbigniew

Brzezinski, “Why the West Should Care about Chechnya,” Wall Street Journal (November 10,

1999).

For a later elaboration on this point see Zbigniew Brzezinski, Game Plan: A Geostrategic

Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest (New York, 1986), pp. 4-42.

Soviet Union, its Achilles heel, was its multinational character. Once I grasped that, and the

beginnings of that conclusion were formulated in my M.A. thesis at McGill, I began to work

increasingly on formulating a strategy, which in a piecemeal fashion would expose the

weaknesses of the Soviet system, detach the countries of the Soviet bloc from the Soviet Union,

after detaching them transform them—or maybe combine the two processes—and then

eventually accomplish the dismantling of the Soviet Union itself.”

In 1950 Brzezinski would take this world-view to Harvard where he would study under

some of the great luminaries in the early field of Soviet studies. Brzezinski’s academic career at

Harvard would be most influenced by Professor Merle Fainsod who quickly became something

of an intellectual and professional mentor for Brzezinski. In 1953 Fainsod produced How Russia is

Ruled, a work that would shape the academic thinking about the Soviet Union for an entire

generation of American scholars.

Fainsod’s work represented one of the opening salvos in one the great academic debates

of the 20

century. Brzezinski, like Fainsod, viewed Lenin’s October Revolution not as a

legitimate “worker revolution” but a coup d’etat engineered by a ruthless minority that

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled (Cambridge, MA, 1953). In 1997 Foreign Affairs magazine

would list Fainsod’s work as among the “most significant” works of the past 75 years. As the

reviewer noted, “Choosing a few books from the thousands produced over seven and a half

decades is not easy, with one exception: Merle Fainsod’s preeminent study of Soviet politics. For

three decades after its 1953 publication and revised ten years later, this book defined the field of

Soviet studies. Over the years a host of texts appeared attempting more or less comprehensive

descriptions of the Soviet system, many of them challenging the totalitarian model that

underpinned Fainsod’s analysis, but none ever rose to the magisterial height of his study. The

core of the book focused on the Leninist party as the essence of the system and then, in immense

but accessible detail, traced the means by which it radiated its control over the state bureaucracy,

the broader economic order, and society itself. Every agency of power—from the Komsomol to

the political organs within the military—received meticulous attention. What gave the book its

great weight, however, was the infusion of Russian and Soviet history. In the end it was as much

a rich history of the Soviet political order and its roots in the past as it was a political scientist’s

explanation of how it all worked.” Robert Legvold, “Significant Books of the Last 75 Years,”

Foreign Affairs (September-October 1997), p. 229.

institutionalized the totalitarian system inherited by Stalin.

In the 1930s many observers, Leon

Trotsky foremost among them, would insist that Stalin had “betrayed” Lenin’s authentic worker-

led revolution. Fainsod in contrast saw Stalin as a direct continuation of Lenin’s authoritarian

nature. Brzezinski, like other advocates of this “continuity theory,” would note that it was Lenin,

not Stalin, who unleashed the all-encompassing power of the secret police, made organized

violence the central means of political control, turned the trade unions into organs of oppression,

and sent the Red Army to the border areas to reestablish the Russia empire.

Brzezinski earned his PhD under Fainsod in 1953 with a doctoral dissertation examining

the phenomenon of the political “purge” which he viewed as a prerequisite for a totalitarian

dictatorship to retain its revolutionary fervor and avoid ideological and political stagnation.

later years Brzezinski would credit Fainsod for providing him with the intellectual tools to

understand the true nature of the Soviet Union. “What I learned at Harvard was that to deal with

the Soviet Union you had to understand the Soviet Union—and to understand the Soviet Union

you had to be objective and detached, analytical, because only then would you know its strengths

and its weaknesses---Merle Fainsod taught me how to analyze the Soviet system objectively from

a systematic, comprehensive, fashion—he was very systematic and also very detached.”

This detachment became a part of Brzezinski’s teaching style at Harvard. On a number of

occasions he would assume the role of a communist official and defend the theory from that

point of view. In 1952 Samuel Huntington and Brzezinski were teaching the basic undergraduate

Martin Malia, “The Hunt for True October,” Commentary (October, 1991), pp. 21-34.

This debate, and the role of Fainsod and Brzezinski in shaping it, is discussed at length by a

number of scholars in Robert C. Tucker, ed. Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, (New

York: 1977).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism (Cambridge, Mass:

1956).

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001). Brzezinski would also assist Fainsod on in his

path-breaking study of the Smolensk archives. This extraordinary primary source was removed

from the Soviet Union in the course of World War II and subsequently taken to the United States.

The archives provided one of the first true looks into the vast scope of the terror employed in the

Soviet Union in Fainsod’s How Russia is Ruled: Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Harvard, Mass: 1953).

course in Government and Political Theory. Huntington recalled “On the section on Marxism

each of us was teaching a section with twenty students or so, and Brzezinski showed up for his

section one day dressed up like Stalin, and he challenged the students to attack Communist

theory. He said ‘well you’ve read criticisms of it. Now I will defend it.’ And he defended it for the

entire section.”

Brzezinski’s work with Fainsod would dovetail with his academic work examining the

political concept of “totalitarianism.”

The term “totalitarianism” would become the subject of

intense political debate over the years. It had become popular in the 1930s to describe the

similarities between the European dictatorships that had emerged in the wake of World War I. In

the 1940s Both George Orwell and Arthur Koestler captured the concept in the literary genre with

their dystopian novels of the late 1940s and in 1951 Hannah Arendt offered a sociological

explanation in her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism that rooted the phenomenon in the rise of

mass politics that destroyed the liberal ideas which had flourished in the wake of the French

Revolution.

Yet “totalitarianism” still lacked a precise “model” demanded by the academic field of

political science. The most recognized authority on the concept was Harvard Professor Carl. J.

Friedrich. As a German émigré Friedrich was more familiar with the Nazi experience, so in 1954

he invited Zbigniew Brzezinski to team-teach his class to include the Soviet experience. In 1956

Friedrich and Brzezinski published their conclusions in Totalitarianism Dictatorship and Autocracy.

The primary thesis of the work held that the rise of the Nazi Germany and Soviet Union in the

1930s represented a completely new phenomenon that surpassed in scope and intensity all

Telephone Interview, (September 10, 2002).

Abbot Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (Oxford, 1995), pp. 123-125.

American progressives used it in the early 1920, and not yet as a pejorative, to describe

Mussolini’s fascist system as an attractive experiment in rational state- planning. John P. Diggins,

“Flirtation with Fascism: American Pragmatic Liberals and Mussolini’s Italy,” American Historical

Review, LXXI (January 1966), p. 499.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951).

previous forms of authoritarian rule. The end result in both cases was the consolidation of an all-

powerful “socialist” state that used political terror to exact social obedience from a pacified

society.

But the most polemical point of the Friedrich-Brzezinski thesis—especially to academics

on the political left---was the contention that Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union had far

more similarities than differences. In later years the model came under a sustained attack from

academics, mostly on the political left, who viewed the term “totalitarianism” as more of a

political weapon than a serious scholarly tool. On the other hand, Jan Prokop, a professor of

literature who lived in Poland under Stalinist rule, argued that Brzezinski had far greater

objectivity than most of his academic critics:

Brzezinski had no illusions about communism like there were among so many Western

intellectuals. He had information from the pre-war Poland because Poles were well informed

about what was happening outside their eastern borders. Brzezinski could talk with many Poles

who had just survived the Russian concentration camps. The whole Polish army under

(Wladyslaw) Anders was composed of those who had escaped the Soviet gulag. So he could hear

of these experiences directly. He was also one of the rare Western academics that read both Polish

and Russian. So he had direct access to the sources and he could read newspapers from both

countries. In this respect he was probably better prepared than even Hannah Arendt whose

experience was with Germany mainly and whose communist experience was indirect--the same

with Orwell who was a genius but did not have the direct experience with the Russian realities.

Charles Gati, a prominent scholar on Eastern Europe, concurred: “I think history has

shown two things. One is that essentially the description of totalitarianism, as he [Brzezinski] saw

it, was more or less accurate. And it was very important to have that label attached to it in order

to mobilize Western public opinion. Where I think the theory did not work out was the view that

Brzezinski and Freidrich assigned six features to the totalitarian state: the promulgation of an

official state ideology, the ubiquitous element of the ruling party, the ever-presence of terror as a

method of political control, the existence of a command economy, the party’s monopoly of the

media and all means of mass- communications, and the control of the armed forces and the police

by the ruling political and ideological authorities.

Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski,

Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (New York, 1956). See also Zbigniew Brzezinski

“Totalitarianism and Rationality,” American Political Science Review, vol. L, no. 3 (September 1956),

p. 752.

Interview, Krakow, Poland (July 3, 2003). Anders was the commander of Polish troops in

World War II and later became a prominent voice of the exiled Polish community in London.

the totalitarian regimes were gradually getting worse and worse--and they would have to get

tighter and tighter. Just the opposite happened. They loosened up under tremendous pressure. I

think he came to understand that part, and that doesn’t take much away from his original

insights.”

Brzezinski’s work with Friedrich would make him a rising star in Harvard academic

circles. His success was rivaled only by that of another European émigré, whose family had come

to America just before the outbreak of World War II. Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in

Germany in 1923 to an assimilated Jewish family. In 1938 Kissinger’s family escaped Nazi

Germany and settled in the United States. After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II

Kissinger entered Harvard where he would become something of a legend.

As Zbigniew Brzezinski entered Harvard in 1950 Henry Kissinger had completed his

massive undergraduate thesis that attempted to explain nothing less than the “Meaning of

History.” Perhaps as significant Kissinger was known for his networking abilities that moved

gracefully between the world of academia and international politics. In 1952 Kissinger became

the editor of Confluence: An International Forum, a quarterly journal that published articles by

guest speakers and other prominent foreign policy thinkers at Harvard’s seminars. Kissinger was

appointed to the Harvard government faculty and later became associated with The Council on

Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. Both organizations would link

Kissinger to power centers within the Republican Party, including Nelson Rockefeller, who

would become the most noteworthy patron in his political career.

Throughout their long careers Brzezinski and Kissinger would engage in a number of

policy debates. Their occasional public disagreements would spawn later rumors that the rivalry

was rooted in their years together at Harvard. Both Brzezinski and Kissinger would claim that

journalists exaggerated this point by looking at their collegiate careers in hindsight. “That is not

Interview, Washington, DC (September 13, 2001).

Walter Issacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York, 1992), pp. 70-74.

true for him and it’s not true for me,” Brzezinski recalled, “It just was never so. We were both

very conscious of each other’s existence but there was no direct competition. We were in different

departments and even somewhat different years.”

Kissinger recalled his relationship with

Brzezinski at Harvard as being both cordial and academic. “We had different points of emphasis

but we met around the campus and met socially occasionally. He was not a close friend but we

were very friendly.”

But Brzezinski and Kissinger did look at the world of the 1950s through different lenses.

While Brzezinski’s graduate work examined the origins and oppressive nature of the Soviet

political system, Kissinger’s focus was on intellectual and diplomatic history and the importance

of preserving global stability by arranging the proper balances of power. This view was best

reflected in Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation that examined the revolutionary unrest of the

Napoleonic Wars and the efforts of conservative statesmen, Metternich and Castlereagh, to

restore order following the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

Indeed Kissinger would show little

hesitation when asked if he would prefer to deal with a “legitimate” state that sought unjust ends

or a ”revolutionary” state that had justice on its side. “If I had to choose between justice and

order,” Kissinger noted, “I would always choose the latter.”

Brzezinski, as might be expected for a native Pole, had a somewhat different view on the

utility of “balances of power” diplomacy. At the same time Brzezinski would take a much greater

academic interest than Kissinger in the political dynamics of postwar Eastern Europe. Indeed

Brzezinski at the time was one of the few scholars to take interest in a region that most American

still viewed as little more than a colorless and monolithic extension of the Soviet empire.

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

Telephone Interview (June 3, 2002).

Henry Kissinger, A World Restored (New York, 1957).

John Stoessinger, Henry Kissinger: The Anguish of Power (New York, 1976), p. 14.

The writer Ian Shoales recalled his memories from the early years of the Cold War. “When

headlines showed up on the fridge, or when Huntley and Brinkley talked about the Iron Curtain,

In the 1950s Brzezinski began to contribute scholarly articles to journals examining the

fragmenting nuances of the Soviet bloc. Brzezinski, unlike many of the more politically active

East European émigrés, was not a reactionary seeking an immediate restoration of the prewar

order. He realized that the communist system had brought forth an initial sense of optimism

among intellectuals and a long delayed sense of social mobility.

Yet he believed Eastern

Europe’s future would be better served within the more pluralist social-democratic system then

being constructed in the West. In doing so he helped refute the Soviet claim that the “people’s

democracies” were marching in ideological lockstep toward the same historically determined

destiny. He attempted to break the myth of a “bloc” by noting that some states in “Eastern

Europe”--Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in particular had strong historical and cultural

ties with the West.

In the summer of 1953 Brzezinski traveled to Munich where he met with Jan Nowak-

Jezioranski, the World War II hero of the Polish resistance, and first director of the Polish desk of

Radio Free Europe.

Nowak-Jezioranski, despite initial misgivings about interrupting his busy

I always pictured a small overstuffed and overheated parlor, divided in half (East and West) by a

small iron curtain. It had the same consistency as steel wool, with a faded-pink floral pattern. On

their side fat men swapped guttural secrets in a foreign tongue. On our side a handsome

American agent knelt (either Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., or Jack Kelly), trying desperately to decipher

what the fat men were saying. And that flimsy iron curtain was all that kept Boris from waddling

in America’s back door and taking away the Motorola, the hi-fi, all that kept godless Soviets from

drawing thick black censor’s lines through the messages on the fridge.” Ian Shoales, I Gotta Go

(Iowa City, 1985).

There was also the widespread view in the East that the Soviet-style centralized economies

would out-perform the capitalist economies while maintaining a standard of “social rights”---

universal equal provision of employment, housing, health care, education—superior to those

achieved in capitalist states. As one writer observed, communism meant that “a whole generation

of workers and particularly peasant children found themselves, for the first time, in a modern

apartment with running water and inside lavatory, or even in a lace-curtained office, with a

potted plant and a plastic Lenin.” Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity, p. 231

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

Nowak-Jezioranzski was in the early stages of an academic career when he was called to

military duty in 1939 after the Germans invaded Poland. Under the alias of “Jan Nowak” he

would become a key operative in the Polish underground resistance-- making five wartime trips,

between Warsaw, Stockholm, and London, traveling in disguise through Germany, meeting with

Winston Churchill, and the Polish government-in-exile. He took to London the first evidence of

schedule, took Brzezinski out to lunch where they began a conversation about the current

situation in Eastern Europe. As the conversation wore on Brzezinski shocked Nowak-Jezioranski

with his encyclopedic knowledge of the Polish resistance movement in World War II. “This was a

man that was born in Poland but had left as a child. I was therefore amazed that he would be not

only interested but that he would know so much. I spent two hours with him and concluded after

our first meeting that this is a man who will play a considerable role in the future in the United

States government and in the problems of East Central Europe.”

But Brzezinski was not completely satisfied with the life of pure academia. Brzezinski’s

philosophical leanings in the early 1950s were toward the international wing of the Democratic

Party. This involved the support of the liberal domestic principles of Franklin Roosevelt’s New

Deal with Harry Truman’s hard line containment policy toward the Soviet Union. At the same

time Brzezinski believed more could be done to assist the populations in Eastern Europe that

were then struggling under the height of Stalinist rule.

Indeed while President Truman’s “containment” policy had stabilized Western Europe,

Stalin had brought Eastern Europe firmly under Soviet control. By the early 1950s Eastern Europe

the Nazi death camps, and was the first emissary to arrive after the Warsaw ghetto uprising that

had begun in April 1943. He left Poland as a courier to London during the Warsaw Uprising of

1944 carrying the archives of the Polish Resistance in bandages on an arm that had been broken

during a parachute drop. See Jan Nowak, Courier from Warsaw, (Detroit, 1982).

Interview, Annendale, Virginia (August 16, 1999).

George Kennan, the author of containment, saw great dangers in intervening too directly in

Eastern Europe. He cautioned that the region was one of the few issues that Moscow would go to

war over. “The fact of the matter,“ Kennan suggested in 1946, “is that we do not have power in

Eastern Europe really to do anything but talk.” Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace-The Origins of the

Cold War (New York: 1977), p. 255. Kennan did however postulate that over time Eastern Europe

would become a burden to the Soviet empire that would lead to greater liberalization in the

region. As Stalin continued to consolidate his power over Eastern Europe, and event occurred

that would influence U.S. policy toward Eastern Europe for the next forty-five years. Tito’s

dramatic break with Moscow provided new hope that Soviet control over Eastern Europe could

be fragmented. As a result of Tito’s actions, Kennan recommended the U.S. move cautiously to

encourage similar heretical drifts, although he warned that such a move must be undertaken with

extreme discretion, in that proposed operations directed at the satellites “must be measured

against the kind and degree of retaliation which they are likely to provoke from the Kremlin.

They must not exceed in provocation effect what is calculated suitable in the given situation.”

John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National

Security Policy (Oxford, 1982), p. 46.

was gripped by the same Stalinist frenzy seen in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. This involved the

hyper-centralization of industry, police state rule, show trials, and the elimination of all other

political parties. In 1948 Yugoslavia’s Jozef Tito became the only East European leader to defy

Stalin’s centralization process. Though Tito would survive, Stalin proceeded to take ruthless

measures to purge any “national communists” who might choose to take Tito’s path of “national

deviation.”

The view that the United States was losing the Cold War to a more dynamic and ruthless

opponent sent shock waves through the American political system. The “loss” of China in 1949

allowed Republicans to exploit the obvious shortcomings of Truman’s policy of containment,

which appeared, if only by definition, to be content with the status quo. Thus as the 1952

presidential campaign approached, the merits of merely “containing” communism became a

primary issue for a Republican Party that had not won a national election since 1928.

The Republicans probably ensured their victory when they selected Dwight Eisenhower,

over the more isolationist Robert Taft, as their candidate. As the avuncular hero of World War II

Eisenhower’s political appeal was indisputable and he had been actively recruited by both major

parties since he retired from the military. Though Eisenhower avoided the rhetorical excesses

against Truman’s foreign policy, his running mate Richard Nixon took delight in belittling “Dean

Acheson’s Cowardly College of Containment.”

George H. Hodos, Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe, 1948-1954 (New York, 1987).

Truman’s foreign policy was hardly as “soft” as the Republicans liked to claim. In 1950

President Truman initiated a then-secret document entitled NSC-68 that militarized and

provided a global scope for the containment policy. The document suggested the United States

must undertake a massive rearmament program to prepare the country for any kind of war that

might develop, conventional or nuclear, and the expense of such an effort could not be a prime

consideration—as much as 20 percent of the GNP should be devoted to it, if necessary, and the

increase would be achieved through deficit spending. The outbreak of the Korean War in June

1950 ensured the adoption of NSC-68 by the Truman administration and its support in Congress.

See “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, 14 April 1950, ” in Thomas H.

Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis, eds., Containment: Documents on American Foreign Policy and

Strategy, 1945-1950 (New York, 1978), p. 411.

But it was John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s future secretary of state, who would become

the most blusterous critic of containment on the campaign trial. In the spring of 1952 Dulles

submitted to Eisenhower a policy proposal that promised to “liberate” Eastern Europe from the

Soviet Union while deterring further Soviet expansion with the threat of a massive nuclear

deterrent.

Dulles outlined the logic of his proposals many times on the campaign trail. “At a

time when 800 million people are subject to ruthless, terroristic despotism and being whipped, by

fanatics, into a force for aggression, we talk of ‘containment’ and ‘stalemate’ as satisfactory

goals.”

In the heated political environment of 1952 Dulles’ pledge proved an effective political

juxtaposition to the defensive policy of containment.

Yet in the end “liberation” proved more

of a political calculation than a serious policy proposal. As one observer would later muse, the

“New Policy on Reds is Urged by Dulles,” The New York Times (May 16, 1952). Dulles was

among the most “internationalist” of Republican foreign policy specialists. After the war Dulles

served the Truman administration as a senior adviser at the San Francisco conference for the

United Nations and would assist in negotiating a peace treaty with Japan. He had a long and

distinguished career in foreign service. His maternal grandfather was John Watson Foster, who

served as secretary of state under Benjamin Harrison. His uncle by marriage, Robert Lansing, was

secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson. His diplomatic career began at the age of 19 when he

accompanied his grandfather to the second international peace conference at The Hague.

Following World War I Woodrow Wilson appointed Dulles as legal counsel to the Versailles

Peace Conference. See Ronald W. Pruessen, John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power (New York,

1982).

“New Policy on Reds is Urged by Dulles,” New York Times (May 16, 1952). In August 1952

Dulles spoke to the American Political Science Association in Buffalo where he outlined “the

liberation plan of Eisenhower” Its stages were to be 1) President of the U.S. would declare that

this country would never make any deal with the Soviet Union to recognize its conquests and let

it keep its captive peoples 2) Voice of America and other agencies to begin to stir up the

resistance behind the Iron Curtain, letting the Poles, Czechs and others know that they have the

moral backing of the U.S. Government; 3) resistance movements to spring up among patriots

who could be supplied and integrated via airdrops and other communications from private

organizations such as the Committee for a Free Europe. Bennent Kovrig, The Myth of Liberation:

East-Central Europe in U.S. Diplomacy and Politics since 1941 (Baltimore, 1973), p. 113. John Foster

Dulles “A Policy of Boldness,” Life 32 (May 19, 1952), pp. 146-60.

As the New York Times’ C.L. Sulzberger observed at the time “What the Eisenhower

Republicans would like to make very plain is that any such revolt of free peoples in the future

would be supported by this country and Soviet intervention would be warned off with a clear

threat that it would be met with American reprisals.” C.L. Sulzberger, The New York Times (May

16, 1952).

policy of liberation was devised “primarily to roll back the Democrats from the White House, not

the Red Army in Eastern Europe.”

And it would work. In November of 1952 Republican

Dwight Eisenhower buried Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson in an electoral landslide.

The politics of Eastern Europe, however, would be affected far more by a less expected

change of power in Moscow. On March 6, 1953 the news filtered out that Joseph Stalin, the

undisputed ruler over the communist world for nearly three decades, had died. Zbigniew

Brzezinski was at home working on his dissertation when he heard the news late at night on the

radio. Without much thinking he called up his professor Merle Fainsod to inform him of the

breaking news. A rather calm but groggy Fainsod, after inquiring exactly what time it was,

assured his eager graduate student that Stalin would still be dead in the morning. Brzezinski,

though slightly embarrassed, thought quickly and reminded his professor that the press would

be calling early in the morning and he might want to be prepared.

Brzezinski was among the many political observers interested in how Dulles’ pledge to

“roll back” Soviet power from Eastern Europe would advance without the dominating presence

of Stalin to control the region. The first indication that Dulles’ policy was based on rhetoric would

occur in June of 1953 when workers in East Berlin erupted in a full-scale revolt. As Soviet tanks

moved to crush the revolt the Eisenhower Administration would offer little more than moral

support.

James Spanier, American Foreign Policy Since World War II (New York, 1985), p. 73. Spanier

effectively outlines the psychological appeal of Dulles’ rhetoric to the American voter in 1952.

“The country desperately wanted a more vigorous and forthright anti-Communist policy that

promised an end to the cold war. At the same time, it was unprepared to take the risks involved:

That is, a policy that actively sought the liberation of the satellite states would have to accept the

very definite risk of all-out war with the Soviet Union. In these circumstances, the only kind of

dynamism the country could afford was a verbal dynamism. And this was all the people seemed

to want. It allowed them to delude themselves that the United States once again pursued a

vigorous and forthright policy that would defeat its opponent. Liberation was the Republican

Party’s therapy for a public that refused to accept the facts of America’s limited power in the

world and rejected any changes in its traditional approach to foreign policy.” Ibid. p. 73.

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

By 1954 Brzezinski came to believe that if the Eisenhower Administration was serious

about “liberating” Eastern Europe it should reconsider its decision to follow West Germany’s

decision not to recognize the postwar borders in Europe. At the close of World War II it had been

agreed by the Western Allies that Poland would be moved west to compensate for the Soviet

occupation of eastern Poland. The move meant that some 3 million Germans had been expelled

from their homes in order to make room for the incoming Poles. The newly acquired territories

were officially called the “recovered lands” by the Polish government, including the major cities

of Gdansk (Danzig), Wroclaw (Breslau), Szczecin (Stettin) as well as the entire industrial basin of

Silesia.

The new German-Polish frontier on Oder and Niesse Rivers thus became an issue of

intense controversy within West Germany. When West Germany was admitted to NATO in 1955

it had secured from the Western powers, including the United States, the pledge that no Western

power would accept Germany’s eastern borders until a settlement was reached on the

reunification of Germany. This, as Brzezinski would often note, represented a revisionist posture

toward Poland even more demanding than the territorial claims of the Weimar Republic. Though

Brzezinski did not object to the West German entrance into NATO, he thought Bonn’s adamant

refusal to accept the eastern borders was needlessly bolstering the Polish government’s claim that

only the Soviet Union could protect Eastern Europe from the threat of German revanchism. A

similar situation existed in Czechoslovakia, where the Communist regime secured its Stalinist

rule by exploiting Bonn’s refusal to repudiate the 1938 Munich accords upon which Hitler

annexed the Sudetenland and proceeded to dismember the interwar Czechoslovak state.

West German Chancellor Konrad Andenaur’s motives for not recognizing the

controversial border were largely rooted in domestic politics. By the mid-1950s some 20 percent

of the West German population was comprised of Germans that had been, by virtue of the

postwar settlement, expelled from their homes in the east. The expellees represented a strong

Kovrig, The Myth of Liberation, p. 77.

political force and represented the revisionist view that the Germans “to the east,” whether in the

GDR or in the remaining German-speaking territories of Eastern Europe, must never be

“abandoned.” It was thus an article of faith for West German politicians that the Yalta divisions

had no de jure status, and that the “legality” of the of the December 1937 frontiers of Germany

must be retained at all costs.

Brzezinski understood that the remilitarization of West German was cleverly exploited

by Soviet propaganda. But he also realized that it was an issue of grave concern in Poland, a

country that had lost 22 percent of its population in World War II. And, in reality it was not all

that hard to convince the Poles that the Germans harbored revisionist aims in the east. Until the

1960s maps in West German schoolrooms designated the lands east of the Oder and Neisse rivers

as “German territories temporarily under Polish administration” while West German television

viewers saw a daily weather map that showed Germany’s eastern borders as they existed in 1937.

Thus Brzezinski had doubts about the seriousness of the U.S. pledge to “roll back” Soviet

power from Eastern Europe. “Liberation I thought was a non-starter because we weren’t

prepared to do anything. And the German notion that Germany has to be reunited first with

everything open including the Oder-Neisse Line was a non-starter because that had the effect of

consolidating the status quo. My argument early on was that if you want to detach Central

Europe from Russia we have to give the Central Europeans, particularly the Czechs and Poles, an

assurance that Germany was not going to try to recover territories or homes lost in 1945.”

Brzezinski was however encouraged in 1955 when the newly installed Soviet leader

Nikita Khrushchev began to show new flexibility toward Eastern Europe. This was seen most

dramatically in a trip to Yugoslavia designed to heal the split with Tito and even more

dramatically in the voluntary removal of Soviet troops from Austria in exchange for that state’s

pledge of neutrality. These two steps provided an indication to Brzezinski that the Soviets might

Tony Judt, “How the East Was Won,” The New York Review of Books (December 16, 1993), p. 52.

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

come to realize, if only out of self-interest, the advantages of having a neutral but tranquil Eastern

Europe next door rather than an empire that risked turning into a region of perpetual conflict.

In February 1956 Khrushchev made an even more dramatic move when he stunned the

Twentieth Party Congress with a lengthy denunciation of Stalin. After listing the crimes

committed by the late Soviet dictator Khrushchev declared that Communist Party must rid itself

of the “cult of the individual” and return to the true “Leninist” roots of the party.

To Brzezinski

Khrushchev’s speech had unwittingly exposed the crux of the problem facing the Soviet system--

-there were simply were no “Leninist norms” to return to. The Soviet system, according to

Brzezinski, was simply too ossified to enact reforms significant enough to save it.

Indeed Khrushchev’s speech would have a dramatic effect on Eastern Europe for it

immediately raised the question that if Stalin was in fact “fallible” so were the satrapies that had

ruled so despotically under his name. This was particularly the case in Brzezinski’s native

Poland, which from 1948 to 1953 had been ruled by “Muscovite” Poles whose authority had been

based on the personal backing of Stalin.

In June 1956, Brzezinski contributed an article to the New Republic, observing that

Khrushchev’s attempt at de-Stalinization might lead other Eastern European states to assert their

See William Lloyd Stearman, The Soviet Union and the Occupation of Austria (Bonn, 1960), pp.

162-163.

Throughout the 1950s Brzezinski would be involved in academic debates about whether the

Soviet system was in fact capable of reform without the presence of Stalin. Marxist scholar Isaac

Deutscher, who fashioned himself more as a Trotskyite, nevertheless argued that the economic

and industrial progress made during the Stalin era brought a measure of “well being” and would

eventually lead to a “gradual democratic evolution.” Isaac Deutscher, Russia: What Next? (New

York, 1953), p. 227. Brzezinski, in an argument he would adhere to for the remainder of his

academic career, countered that democratic evolution “involves a certain philosophical tradition,

a basic recognition of some sort of higher law, a fundamental attitude of toleration, an absence of

doctrinal fanaticism—all of which are, at most, only indirectly linked to a state of ‘well being’ and

none of which seem to be even remotely present in the existing Soviet scene.” Brzezinski,

“Totalitarianism and Rationality,” p. 758.

national distinctiveness. “For the first time since 1945,” noted Brzezinski, “the situation in Eastern

Europe was becoming fluid and opportunities for meaningful action were being created.”

That very month a labor strike in the Polish industrial city of Poznan erupted into a full-

scale political riot. The Polish army, then under the command of the Soviet appointed Marshal

Konstanin Rokossovsky, moved to crush the uprising. The actions of the Polish army would

leave scores of Polish strikers dead and hundreds more badly wounded. The Polish government

was discredited to the point where it sought to nominate Wladislaw Gomulka, a more national

orientated communist purged in the anti-Tito hysteria of the late 1940s, as Party Secretary in an

effort to regain a semblance of legitimacy.

Khrushchev, shocked by this act of defiance, flew uninvited to Warsaw where he berated

the “treacherous” activity of the Polish leadership. As he met with Gomulka in Warsaw, Soviet

troops had moved towards the Poland’s major cities and units took up positions across from the

Belvedere Palace where the leaders were meeting. An outraged Gomulka then demanded that

Soviet forces be pulled back with the warning that a Soviet invasion would be met with firm

resistance. Khrushchev, realizing the strength of feeling among the Polish people, grudgingly

conceded to Gomulka’s appointment on the condition that he preserve the Party’s “leading role”

in Polish affairs and keep Poland firmly within the recently constituted Warsaw Pact alliance.

See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Shifts in the Satellites,” The New Republic, vol. 134 no. 24 (June 11,

1956), pp. 37-41.

See L.W. Gluchowski, “Poland, 1956: Khrushchev, Gomulka, and the Polish October,” Cold

War International History Project, Bulletin #5 (Spring 1995), pp. 38-49 (hereafter cited as CWIHP)

Brzezinski’s argument regarding the West German failure to accept the eastern borders was

apparent in the Polish October of 1956. As one scholar has noted, “at the height of the Polish

crisis, when Poland seemed within an ace of becoming a Titoist state, Adenauer chose the

moment for a singularly unfortunate intervention. With an eye to the millions of German

refugees, whom he knew would be a key factor in the German election twelve months ahead,

Adenauer truculently announced that the day would come when these expellees would return to

their homes, east of the Oder-Neisse line….Anything more likely to drive the Poles back into the

arms of the Russians would have been difficult to conceive.” Charles Wighton, Adenauer—

Democratic Dictator (London, 1963), p. 244.

The tepid U.S. response to the “Polish October” gave Brzezinski further doubts about the

sincerity of Dulles’ pledge of liberation. At the height of the Polish crisis Dulles went on the radio

and volunteered the pledge that in the event of Soviet military intervention of Poland the United

States would takes no active measures. Though Brzezinski was not advocating direct U.S.

intervention, he noted that Dulles’ advance declaration had eliminated an area of doubt for the

Soviets. Brzezinski argued, as he would when the United States faced a similar situation twelve

years later in Czechoslovakia, that the perception of U.S. indifference had assured the Soviets that

they had a free hand to resort to a military invasion.

Gomulka’s triumph nonetheless proved contagious in the region. When the Hungarian

authorities broke up a popular demonstration in sympathy for Gomulka’s new regime, 200,000

protesters gathered in Budapest. That night Imre Nagy, who like Gomulka represented a more

“national” brand of communist rule, was recalled as the Hungarian premier. Yet Nagy, unlike

Gomulka, was unwilling or perhaps unable to contain the Hungarian revolution. Encouraged by

Dulles’ pledge of liberation and ill-considered support from Radio Free Europe and Voice of

America—the Hungarians rose up against Soviet rule that culminated in the toppling of the giant

statue of Stalin in the city center.

On October 29 the Kremlin issued the stunning announcement that Soviet troops were

being withdrawn from Hungary. The next day Nagy announced that Hungary would abolish the

one-party system and formally remove itself from the Warsaw Pact. But as the world’s attention

turned to the crisis over the Suez Canal the Soviet saw their chance to reconsolidate their

authority. In early November 2,500 Soviet tanks stormed back into Hungary. After two weeks of

bitter fighting thousands of Hungarians were killed and thousands more wounded. Nagy, who

had initially sought amnesty in the Yugoslav embassy, was taken to Moscow and subsequently

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “U.S. Foreign Policy in East Central Europe-A Study in Contradiction,”

Journal of International Affairs (1957), pp. 65-66.

For a look at the role of Radio Free Europe in the Hungarian crisis of 1956 see Arch

Puddington, “Hungary’s Revolution on the Radio,” The Washington Times (November 18, 1996).

executed. Hungary, under the rule of Janos Kadar, would return to the fold as a loyal member of

the Warsaw Pact.

In the weeks following the Soviet invasion Brzezinski wrote an article offering a

trenchant critique of the supposed U.S. policy of liberation. He noted that the idea of “rolling

back” Soviet power in Eastern Europe was a virtual impossibility if the United States declared its

passivity in advance and if Moscow could assume a “liberated” Eastern Europe would be

incorporated into a NATO alliance spearheaded by a rearmed West Germany. Brzezinski

concluded that under such circumstances of “the Soviets would have been foolish not to

intervene.”

Brzezinski also articulated his view that the United States must move away from the

empty bluster of “liberation” toward a policy of “peaceful engagement” that would encourage

political “evolution” rather than “revolution.” While the Cold War was still about military

containment, Brzezinski realized that it was also about the social, cultural, and economic

attraction of the West. He now saw Churchill’s Iron Curtain metaphor as more akin to a “semi-

permeable membrane” where a more active U.S. role could have a moderating effect on a region

increasingly attracted to Western economic, technological and cultural influences. To take

advantage of this the United States must begin to “engage” the communist regimes in order to

more effectively facilitate this process.

This was hardly conventional wisdom among the more vocal émigré groups who

insisted that if the United States could not immediately liberate the region it must at the very

least restrict its dealings with the “illegitimate” Communist regimes of Eastern Europe as much

as possible. Indeed, with the notable exception of Tito’s Yugoslavia, the United States had shown

little inclination to deal with the East European Communist regimes. This was largely based on

the popular perception that any sort of economic interaction with an individual Communist

See Mark Kramer, “Hungary and Poland, 1956: Khrushchev’s CPSU CC Presidium Meeting on

East European Crises, 24 October 1956,” CWIHP Bulletin #5 (Spring 1995), pp. 50-51.

Brzezinski, “U.S. Foreign Policy in East Central Europe,” pp. 65-66.

regime in the Eastern Europe would strengthen what was still widely perceived as a monolithic

Sino-Soviet bloc.

Brzezinski’s idea of a “peaceful” engagement was hardly popular to American

politicians still clinging to Dulles’ more dramatic calls to “roll back” Soviet power from the

region. The prospect of carefully differentiating between the various shades of communism

required some ideological flexibility that was not always present among U.S. policymakers who

had become conditioned to regard communism as a monolithic evil. Indeed few politicians

would be seen pounding podiums demanding “peaceful engagement” toward the Soviet bloc.

Brzezinski countered that engagement would over time have a “Europeanizing” impact

on the communist states that would reduce the more parochial attitudes within the political elites

in the region. Brzezinski even postulated that the emergence of a more democratic Eastern

Europe might eventually serve as a “transmission belt” to pull the Soviet Union into a greater

Europe, thus ending the ideological division of the continent—and by extension—the very root of

the Cold War:

I thought that the Republicans, particularly after the flop of liberation, were blowhards. I

also felt, as I became more mature, that this country was capable of conducting a protracted

strategy of manipulation, but it is not capable of engaging in a head on confrontation if we can

avoid it. And the policy of liberation, as the Republicans formulated it, did require a willingness

to have a head on confrontation. And in the nuclear age it became increasingly unreal. Therefore

the alternative was a process of penetration, dilution, absorption, engagement, etc. Now once that

strategy began to crystallize in my mind I realized that the only way to make it possible was to

make it look attractive to the Russians—or at least palatable---now could they have then turned

the tables on me by embracing it—a little bit maybe like in ’53?---yes, theoretically yes—but that

would require a change in their attitude and in the way they played the game and it would entail

risks so high, that I just don’t think they could’ve done it. Because they would have had to accept

rules of the game for that part of Europe in which the possibility of them losing, or the thing

getting out of hand, for them would loom rather large, particularly after 1956. So in a sense, and I

don’t want to claim that I was brilliantly Machiavellian, but in a sense there was an element of

dissimulation in what I was publicly advocating. Because essentially what I was saying is

peaceful engagement will really affect the Central Europeans, the Russians won’t really get

engaged but perhaps we can entice them to come along far enough so that we can the change the

status quo.

Stephen A. Garrett, Potsdam to Poland (New York, 1986), p. 11.

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000).

Nonetheless Brzezinski’s optimism toward the Western model seemed even more out of

place when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite in 1957. Indeed Sputnik

created fashionable talk in the West that a centralized and dynamic Soviet economy was rapidly

overtaking a complacent America awash in consumer goods. Brzezinski, in an argument he

would make more stridently in later years, noted that the Soviet economy had succeeded only in

developing the more primitive sectors of an industrial economy. In the future the Soviet Union

was likely to compete with a West that combined the advantages of a free market with the social

safety net of the social democratic welfare state.

Though Sputnik may have been impressive, Brzezinski saw another event occurring in

1957 that was likely to be far more important for the future of Eastern Europe. In 1957 the

European Economic Community (EEC) signed the Treaty of Rome that established the first step

toward integrating Western Europe into a single free-trade area and set the precedent of a

supranational authority that maintained powers previously reserved to sovereign states.

Brzezinski suggested that if this policy was good for Western Europe, it could eventually provide

a bridge to the less developed East European economies then under the political dominion of the

Soviet Union.

Ultimately Brzezinski thought the most important message was to stress the concept of

gradual liberalization. In the late 1950s Brzezinski was recruited to write programs for Radio Free

Europe, (RFE) the Munich-based network established in 1950 to broadcast to the countries of the

Eastern bloc in their native languages. When RFE first began broadcasting in the early 1950s it

took eagerly to the message of Dulles’ liberation and was often discredited by its extreme

Brzezinski retained this view after the end of the Cold War. Writing in 1992 he noted;

“communism failed because in practice it did not deliver on the material level while its political

practices compromised—indeed, discredited—its moral claims. It could not provide a viable

socio-economic alternative to the free market system that in the meantime had adapted some

socialist concerns as its own social (even if not economic) policy. In effect, as a practical matter, it

can be said that capitalism defeated communism by depriving it of its monopolistic claim to

morality while simply outperforming it on the material plane. It thus rebutted the grandiose

assertion of communism to be mankind’s highest stage of development.” Zbigniew Brzezinski,

Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21

Century (New York, 1993), p. 58.

language and political slant. This would lead to the charge that RFE had irresponsibly incited the

Hungarians to take up arms against the Soviet Union in 1956.

There was a good deal of opposition to Brzezinski’s plan of “peaceful engagement” but

over time there was a grudging recognition that there was some strategic sense in it. By the early

1960s RFE assumed a more realistic goal of supporting gradual liberalization before liberation.

The broadcasts also began to encourage the end goal of a gradual reintegration of the Soviet bloc

states into the European community. Indeed after 1956 a number of Soviet bloc states, including

Poland, viewed the language of “peaceful engagement” as tranquil enough to halt the expensive

process of jamming the western broadcasts.

It remained to be seen how the region would respond to the dramatic events of 1956. For

a time Brzezinski’s native Poland appeared to offer the best hope for such “evolutionary”

reform. For the first time in the history of any communist party, the pressure of public opinion

had brought about a change of government. Indeed, the early phase of the Gomulka era

Brzezinski’s friend Jan Nowak-Jezioranski had directed Poland’s branch of RFE to take a more

responsible role in the October crisis of 1956. Polish broadcasts warned Poles not to demand

immediate Soviet military withdrawal or free elections and urged them to support Gomulka’s

compromises. This was based on his belief that Moscow was unlikely to tolerate a non-

Communist Poland and that the United States was not prepared to intervene on Poland’s behalf.

On both counts Nowak’s judgment proved sound. So calming was this message to the authorities

that Warsaw suspended the jamming of RFE during the crisis. Nowak-Jezioranski worked closely

with Brzezinski and recalled his views on the role of the radio in a 1997 interview. “Radio Free

Europe was too propagandistic at the beginning. I was against it. I came from the BBC school, I

was trained by the BBC, but the emotion of my staff was so high that it was very difficult to

retrain them. But later we all learned that propaganda is our enemy. The news was from the

beginning exactly like BBC---Our editor on duty had his instructions, news were totally separated

from views. No comments allowed in the news. All important news had to come from two

sources, two press agencies for instance, or from the Polish monitoring of the Polish radio. The

first priority was to get credibility as a condition of influence. That’s why we were guarded in our

news. The aim of RFE was to support popular non-organized and non-violent resistance, which

would bring about not liberation, but liberalization. The idea was that we should not advise

people what they should do, we never did, we never offered tactical advice, but we assumed if

they are fully informed and if they have access to other ideas, they will be in a position to form

their own independent judgment, they will become independent in their own mind and then

some kind of action will follow. That was the idea.”

Interview with Jan Nowak, CNN Cold War

Series, Roll 10127 (February 16, 1997).

Kovrig , The Myth of Liberation, p. 262.

witnessed encouraging signs that Poland was moving toward a more moderate brand of

socialism.

In 1957 Brzezinski returned to Poland for the first time since he had left as a ten-year old

boy shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The city of his youth had been obliterated by the

Nazi occupation and only partially rebuilt in communist-style block housing. The house in which

he was born was destroyed in the war. His grandmother’s house, ironically enough, was partially

incorporated as part of the U.S. embassy. “It was kind of a strange rediscovery of a past which is

no longer a part of you and yet is an indelible part of your past,” Brzezinski recalls. “On

subsequent visits, if anything, I realized how American I had become.”

But Brzezinski also

detected a new political atmosphere that encouraged his belief that “peaceful engagement” was

already having an impact on the region. Brzezinski met with Polish military commanders who

privately expressed their deep sense of regret for firing on the Polish workers during the 1956

Poznan riots.

“My sense increasingly,” Brzezinski recalled, “was that the national communists in these

countries wanted to retain power. But if they could retain power and become gradually more

independent from the Russians and more involved with the West--they would love that formula.

It was a much more difficult target for them to shoot at and many people even in the Eastern Bloc

regimes, especially in Poland, were very friendly to me because they saw me as advocating

something which would help them retain their power, retain their status, even retain their core

beliefs, while at the same time being part of the West which they felt entitled to belong.”

In October 1957 Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki proposed a plan for a nuclear free

zone that would include West and East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and

Holland. It was designed to promote a relaxation of military tensions between the rival blocs, and

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000).

prepare the ground for the German recognition of the Oder-Neisse border. Rapacki argued the

while the unification of Germany (which his plan also proposed) might present a threat, the

continued stalemate between NATO and the Warsaw Pact represented an even greater danger.

In the end Rapacki’s proposal was dismissed outright by the United States as another

Soviet effort to divide the NATO alliance. Brzezinski, on the other hand, was attracted to it. “It

seemed to me that is was consistent with what I was beginning increasingly to formulate as a

comprehensive American strategy. I had already visited Poland and I knew by then that many

so-called Polish ‘reds’ were really ‘white’ on the inside.”

Already by the late 1950s, however, Eastern Europe was no longer at the forefront of

American foreign policy. As the rhetoric of “liberation” and “roll back” was quietly retired, the

United States’ legislators took refuge in more ceremonial bluster. In July 1959 the United States

Congress passed a “Captive Nations Week” that henceforth would be commemorated every July.

It was accompanied by a resolution suggesting the Soviet Bloc posed a “dire threat to the security

of the United States” and that it was vital to keep alive the desire for liberty and independence of

the conquered nations in the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic countries.

Though Brzezinski

might have agreed with the gesture in principle he feared rhetorical outrage was not as effective

as the active engagement of the region. As it was, the most vocal advocates of the “Captive

Piotr Wandycz, The United States and Poland (Cambridge, MA, 1980), pp. 368-369.

The plan of disengagement was supported by Walter Lippman, as well as George Kennan,

who created a stir in early 1958 with a highly publicized interview on BBC in which he suggested

the possibility of a united neutralized Germany in exchange for a removal of Soviet troops from

Eastern Europe. Dean Acheson was brought out of semi-retirement to shoot down Kennan’s

public declarations: “Mr. Kennan has never, in my judgment, grasped the realities of power

relationships, but takes a rather mystical attitude toward them. To Mr. Kennan there is no Soviet

military threat to Europe.” “Acheson vs. Kennan,” Time (January 20, 1958), p. 16.

Kovrig, The Myth of Liberation, p. 230.

Nations Week,” were fierce anti-communists who wanted little to do with anything resembling

“peaceful engagement” toward Eastern Europe.

Even so, the declaration of the Captive Nations Resolution would, at least indirectly,

demonstrate the power of a softer engagement from the West. The Soviets, not attuned to the

domestic factors that drive such alarmist rhetoric, feared this was another call for liberation and

quite possibly war. “This resolution stinks,” Khrushchev shouted at Vice President Nixon while

the two prepared for the famous “Kitchen Debate” in Moscow. But Brzezinski believed the real

power of the United States was seen in Nixon’s route home. In July 1959 Nixon became the

highest U.S. official ever to visit a Soviet bloc nation when arrived in Warsaw. The word of

Nixon’s arrival in Warsaw was spread quickly by Radio Free Europe. This alone would ensure

that Nixon would be met with a rapturous applause, much to the chagrin of his official hosts.

By the late 1950s the real action in the Cold War confrontation had moved away from

Europe to the Third World. Khrushchev was now boasting that the world’s “correlation of

forces,” was swinging toward Moscow. In 1959, the Soviet Union had directed communist

movements around the world to shift attention from direct confrontation with the industrial

powers of the West to “wars of national liberation” in less developed nations. This atmosphere

created the popular image of ideologically assertive communist world engaging in battle against

an idle and defensive America still relying on the increasingly hollow bluff of “massive

retaliation.”

In 1955 Henry Kissinger had offered the most notable intellectual challenge to President

Eisenhower’s policy of “massive retaliation.” It came in a 1955 article appearing in the journal

Foreign Affairs in which Kissinger argued that “massive retaliation” was no longer credible to

As one scholar noted at the time, it seemed “impossible to reconcile the approval by Congress

and the Proclamation by the President of ‘Captive Nations Week’ with the international

obligation of the United States to respect the independence of other states.” Quincy Wright,

“Subversive Intervention,” American Journal of International Law, vol. 54, no. 3 (1960), p. 533.

Bennett Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges: The United States and Eastern Europe (New York: 1991), p.

106.

deter the Soviets from expanding into the disputed “gray areas” of the post-colonial world.

Kissinger suggested that the alternative would be to meet limited aggression with limited

warfare, using whatever weapons were appropriate--including fighting “limited nuclear wars.”

In 1957 Kissinger’s ideas were expanded into a book entitled Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.

Kissinger’s book became a best seller and would turn the untenured Harvard instructor into

something of an unlikely national celebrity. Vice President Richard Nixon was among the many

public officials that were seen carrying a copy of the book.

Brzezinski had also become a critic of Eisenhower’s “all or nothing” foreign policy. At

the same time Brzezinski began to advocate more boldly his belief that the Soviet Union was in

the early stages of an ineluctable process of systemic decay. Brzezinski’s primary concern by 1960

was that the Soviet Union, especially if pressed by the more radical Chinese, could revive its

ideological potency by taking greater risks in the developing world.

Writing in late 1960 Brzezinski noted, “Of the various means the Communist leaders

might employ to slow down or possibly reverse such a gradual process of internal decay, the

most effective would be to score a series of spectacular international successes. For this reason,

only a resolute response to Communism can strengthen those within the Communist movement

who warn against war and against excessive risks. Only by firmness can the United States refute

the Chinese argument of “a paper tiger.”

By 1960 Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy had picked up on this idea that a

reliance on massive retaliation was permitting the communists to take the initiative in places like

Vietnam and Laos. His alternative called for a “flexible response” to Soviet aggression that would

Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York, 1957).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Book the Russians Would Like to Forget,” The Reporter (December 22,

1960), p. 30.

allow the United States to fight guerilla wars in places of its choosing without relying on the

increasingly hollow bluff of threatening to launch an all-out nuclear war.

In 1960 Zbigniew Brzezinski became an active supporter of John F. Kennedy’s run for the

presidency. Like many Americans at the time (Brzezinski became a U.S. citizen in 1958)

Brzezinski saw Kennedy as more than a politician. “I thought he was conveying and

personalizing a kind of youthful and vital America and I thought this was a tremendous asset,

especially after the second Eisenhower term which seemed to be stagnant.”

In November of 1960 Kennedy would defeat Richard Nixon in one of the closet races in

U.S. history. Kennedy’s victory also gave Brzezinski new confidence that it was the United States

that had the upper hand in the Cold War struggle—especially toward Eastern Europe. In the

Kennedy transition Brzezinski wrote papers for the incoming administration on how best to

engage the Soviet bloc states and take advantage of the growing divisions in the communist

world.

Brzezinski’s ideas were immediately apparent in Kennedy’s first State of the Union

address, when the newly inaugurated president announced he was seeking congressional

authority to selectively expand economic relations with the Soviet bloc nations and explore with

the Polish government the possibility of using frozen United States funds in that country as

“projects of peace that will demonstrate our abiding friendship and interest in the people of

Poland.”

For a particularly influential articulation to Kennedy on this point see Maxwell Taylor, The

Uncertain Trumpet (New York, 1959).

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

Felix Belair, Jr. “President Urges U.S. Aid to East European Nations,” The New York Times

(January 31, 1961). Kennedy’s rather bold gesture toward Eastern European nations came as a

surprise to many. But Brzezinski, perhaps more than any U.S. strategist of his time, was aware of

the Soviet weaknesses and sensitivity toward his concept of engaging Eastern Europe. As the

New York Times reported the following day, “Because Soviet Premier Khrushchev has always

reacted violently to any United States expression of sympathy toward the ‘captive nations’ of

Eastern Europe, revival of the aid scheme came as a surprise to those who thought the President

was seeking some accommodation with the Soviet Union to reduce world tensions.” Ibid.

The new Kennedy administration presented itself as one of youth and vitality. Kennedy

surrounded himself with like-minded men—--the “brightest and the best” as they came to be

known. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was a former Rhodes scholar; General Maxwell Taylor, a

“military intellectual,” became Kennedy’s closest military adviser; and Secretary of Defense

Robert McNamara was widely touted as a “whiz kid” who had once taught at the Harvard

Business School.

However it was Kennedy’s “Special Assistant to National Security” McGeorge Bundy

who would have the most dramatic impact the careers of both Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry

Kissinger. Kennedy sought to orchestrate foreign policy from the White House where a few

trusted aides could make quick decisions without the constraints of the cumbersome staffs at the

State Department.

As Kennedy’s resident “intellectual,” Bundy would play the public educational role

designed to enlighten the press and public about the nuances of U.S. foreign policy. Now a direct

participant in policy debate, Bundy was specifically instructed to give his own policy views to the

president rather than simply overseeing the process in the National Security Council whereby

decisions had previously been channeled for presidential resolution.

Until 1960 there had been few setbacks in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s academic career. Since

his appointment as an assistant professor at Harvard in 1956, he had become perhaps the nation’s

leading authority on Eastern Europe and had tasted the highest echelons of power working on

the 1960 campaign of John Kennedy. But in 1960 Brzezinski’s career suffered an apparent setback

when Harvard passed him over in the selection process for a tenured professorship. In later years

apocryphal stories would emerge among journalists that Brzezinski had lost out to Kissinger in a

bitter head-to-head tenure competition.

In reality they were not in the same department. As Kissinger recalled, “There is nothing

you can personally compete for. You get appointed or you don’t get appointed. But there’s

See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “NSC’s Midlife Crisis,” Foreign Policy 69, (Winter 1987-88), pp. 80-99.

nothing you can do to each other that would enhance your chances. Zbig was not my so-called

competitor when my name came up for the tenure appointment. That is to say that I was

appointed and he was rejected the year I was appointed. The man who was my competitor when

I was appointed was Stanley Hoffman—and they solved it by appointing both of us.”

There was nevertheless something of a rivalry developing between the two foreign born

academics. “Obviously these were two extremely able people,” recalls Samuel Huntington, who

attended Harvard with both men. “They had both done well in the academic world. They both

wanted to have an impact on policy, they both were foreign policy experts, and so there was a

natural rivalry. It couldn’t be otherwise.”

In later years Brzezinski would admit that at least some of his later disagreements with

Kissinger were rooted in the unique relationship that would develop between the two rising stars

in the foreign policy field. “I think probably I was more critical than I really was,” recalled

Brzezinski, “in part because it was political and to some extent it was personal. We always

remained, to some extent friends, even when we were rivals, but we were young and we were

competing—and so naturally we shot at each other also.”

By 1960 Brzezinski and Kissinger had emerged as the most prominent of the new

generation of foreign policy experts. In the ensuing decade Brzezinski would gain predominance

advising Democratic politicians while Kissinger learned toward Republicans, becoming

especially close to New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. In this respect they were seen to be at

least as equally important as the President since these were the men the president called upon for

advice in times of crisis. This led to a degree of stardom and public recognition that eluded most

academics. Despite their apparent differences both Brzezinski and Kissinger believed that it was

imperative for the United States to be engaged in the world and to contain the expansion of

Telephone Interview, (June 3, 2002).

Telephone Interview (September 10, 2002).

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

Soviet power.

How best to achieve this latter goal would become the subject of their most intense

foreign policy battles in the 1960s.

Meanwhile Brzezinski believed that engaging Eastern Europe also required the United

States to be assertive around the world. “I traveled to the region (Eastern Europe) and I talked to

the people.” Brzezinski recalled. “And I had a sense of how the mindset of the younger

generation was being reshaped by events--in particular by closer contacts with the West. I was

impressed by the vulnerability of the region to the ideas of the West—and also by the appeal of

the Western lifestyle. And therefore I felt that if we just persist and keep on the one hand a strong

hand on the Soviet Union so it isn’t allowed to expand which would revitalize its ideological

momentum—but on the other hand kind of foster more and more links, what I called “peaceful

engagement,” that the end result would be the dissolution of the system.”

As political journalist David Halberstam noted “At Harvard he (Kissinger) was acutely aware

of and quite resentful of the success of another rising star, Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose talents

and ambition were quite similar to his own. If anything, in those days, Brzezinski—slim,

attractive, and roguish—was perceived as socially more presentable than the somewhat

overweight Kissinger. And Brzezinski had one additional advantage: in those early, overheated

days of the Cold War, he was automatically regarded, by virtue of his genes (he was an émigré

Pole), as a hard-liner. Kissinger, a Jew, inevitably aroused somewhat more suspicion on the right

for possible left-wing sympathies. He had to work harder than Brzezinski to show his bona fides

as an anti-Communist.” David Halberstam, “The Decline and Fall of the Eastern Establishment,”

Vanity Fair vol. 57, no. 10, (October 1994), p. 256

Interview, Washington DC, (March 11, 1999).

CHAPTER TWO: THE TURBULENT 1960s

In the fall of 1960 Brzezinski joined the faculty at Columbia University as an associate

professor of government and public law. At Columbia Brzezinski would found a prominent

research center called Institute on Communist Affairs that was specifically designed to examine

the fragmenting dynamics of the communist world. This reflected Brzezinski’s belief of the

growing importance of the nascent Sino-Soviet split and the rise of “national communism” in

Eastern Europe.

Brzezinski had become something of an academic celebrity and his were among the most

popular classes at Columbia. Brzezinski’s rapid-fire lectures required students to move their pens

with equal rapidity. If students complained that the lectures moved too quickly they were

assured rather abruptly that it was they who were writing too slowly. Steven Goldstein recalled

his experience from Brzezinski’s seminar that he took with a young Madeline Albright in the

1960s. “It was like sitting at the feet of the master. He was terrific. He was not so much virulently

anti-Communist as virulently analytic. He loved to put things in boxes. We would talk about

different ways to power, different types of transformation.”

Brzezinski had also developed a reputation for not suffering fools in the classroom.

Charles Gati, who served as a graduate assistant at Columbia in the 1960s recalled; “He did not

give much time to students except in class, where he taught them how to think. He did not

conform to today’s image of the ‘good professor’ who sits down and has a beer with you. Many

professors might spend more time with you perhaps, and they put their arm around you.

Professor Brzezinski was nothing like that. There was nothing ‘chummy’ about him, nothing cozy

about him. He was very business like, very helpful, but not to boost your ego or help your

psyche. He was there to teach you about the subject matter. But he read their papers carefully,

Michael Dobbs, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey (New York, 1997), p. 197.

and when there was something good he appreciated it. But to get an “A” from him was really

hard. “

Brzezinski’s academic work was also reaching new heights. In 1960 Brzezinski produced

Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, a book that would become the magnum opus of his career and a

true classic in the field of East European studies for a generation.

As the title would indicate,

Unity and Conflict observed a number of centrifugal forces then festering within communist

world.

Brzezinski would later recall the rationale behind his book. “I simply started writing

Unity and Conflict because I was interested in what was happening in this more complex

Communist controlled world that was based no longer just on a single decision maker in the

Kremlin—like Stalin—but now involved units that even if not co-equal and highly subordinate,

still had some degree of autonomy and capacity for action. And it was an important, if I may say

so, historical contribution in the sense that it stood the test of time and was viewed as the

definitive book on the Soviet bloc at that time.”

Brzezinski noted that while the Soviets had survived the twin crises of 1956, the cohesion

of the Soviet bloc was being challenged by a rise in nationalism and the gradual waning of

ideological zeal seen in the immediate postwar era. Brzezinski noted that beyond the familiar

clichés glorifying the ineluctable process of building “socialist internationalism” the Eastern

European regimes had in reality taken to more primitive forms of interwar nationalism. This was

largely an effort to deflect attention from the unpopularity of Moscow’s imperial rule and from

the fact that the region’s economic performance was beginning to fall further behind that of the

West.

Interview, Washington, DC (September 13, 2001).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, (Cambridge, MA, 1960).

Interview, Washington DC, (June 28, 2001).

In 1997 the journal Foreign Affairs celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary. In doing so it listed

Brzezinski’s Soviet Bloc among the “Most Significant Books of the Past 75 Years.” Robert Legvold

Charles Gati recalls the influence of Brzezinski’s work: “That was the masterpiece. Every

course in the United States, and there were more courses on Eastern Europe than there are today,

all learned about the postwar Soviet bloc from that book. I used it for years and years as a teacher

and I think it stands up today. There is just nothing wrong with it. Certainly as an academic I

think it remains his best work.”

Despite a name that few Americans could pronounce--‘just ignore the first z’ he would

try and explain—Brzezinski gained increased public notoriety as the print and electronic media

began to solicit his expertise on the Soviet Union and developments within the Soviet bloc.

Brzezinski’s ability to succinctly yet effectively encapsulate the complexities of the communist

world made him particularly effective on the new medium of television. Lawrence Spivak, the

founder of Meet the Press, was particularly impressed with Brzezinski’s analysis and made him a

frequent quest on the popular weekend news program.

gave the following review: “Only once in the postwar period did someone tie together all

dimensions of the Soviet world. The Soviet Union’s relationship with Eastern Europe, the

domestic sources of change within the Socialist camp, the ongoing struggle with Tito’s

Yugoslavia, and, the most dramatic development of all, the Sino-Soviet conflict. Brzezinski did

this with an intellectual flair and clarity of argument and prose that set his book apart from an

increasingly solid collection of work that by the 1960s was focused on different aspects of Soviet,

East European, and Chinese foreign policy.” “Significant Books of the Last 75 Years,” Foreign

Affairs, vol. 76, no. 5, (September-October 1997), p. 231.

Interview, Washington, DC (September 13, 2001).

In March 1962, Columbia University’s School of International Affairs inaugurated a series of

television lectures on contemporary world problems. Brzezinski provided the first lecture in the

series outlining the reasons behind the growing fissures in the communist world. The following

day Brzezinski’s photo appeared on the front page of the New York Times. The newspaper’s

television columnists noted that Brzezinski’s was “an absorbing study of the fragmentation of the

international Communist movement, the power struggle between the Soviet Union and

Communist China, the role of tiny Albania in defying Moscow and the rise of the multiplicity of

voices in the Communist parties of different lands. The meaning of the international stresses

besetting communism, in terms of both the perils and opportunities for the West, were discussed

by Professor Brzezinski with a lucidity that consistently held the attention.”

In an amusing case

of popular culture intertwining with Cold War politics the analysis of Brzezinski’s lecture would

have to share space with an equally enthusiastic review of a skit performed by Sid Caesar and

Carol Lawrence on the previous nights’ Ed Sullivan Show. Jack Gould, “TV: Preview of

International Affairs,” The New York Times (March 26, 1962).

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

In 1962 Harvard offered Brzezinski a tempting package (full professorship with half time

free for research) in an attempt to regain his services. Samuel Huntington, Brzezinski’s colleague

at Columbia who had also been previously turned down for tenure at Harvard, reflected on the

sequence of events. “In 1962 I got a phone call from the chair of the Harvard Government

Department and he said they had reconsidered and they realized they had made a mistake and

they wanted to invite me back as a full professor. I said ‘Well, I’ll think about it’. And at the end

of our conversation he says ‘Can you transfer me over to Brzezinski’s line, I want to make the

same offer to him,’—which he did.”

Brzezinski had become comfortable in New York. After weeks of deliberation he made

the decision to remain at Columbia. “I was tempted,” Brzezinski recalled, “but I felt that once I

had left Harvard I did not want to retrace my steps, and I also felt that New York City was a

better platform for someone with an activist political orientation.”

Huntington concurs, but recalls there may have been other forces at work. “Zbig and I

were working on our book at that point together,” recalled Huntington, “ and we spent two or

three months trying to decide whether to come back to Harvard or to stay at Columbia. We tried

to do this very scientifically--weighing the advantages of Harvard and Columbia--New York and

Boston and so forth. In the end he decided to stay at Columbia and I decided to come back to

Harvard. There was at least a strong possibility that despite our efforts to be scientific the whole

thing was determined from the beginning because (Brzezinski’s wife) Muska wanted to stay in

New York and my wife wanted to come back to Boston.”

Remaining at Columbia did offer certain advantages, however. In the early 1960s New

York, far more than Washington, was the recognized gateway into the nation’s foreign policy

“establishment.” While in New York Brzezinski was taken under the wing of Hamilton Fish

Telephone Interview (September 10, 2002).

E-mail Interview, (December 23, 2002).

Telephone Interview, (September 10, 2002).

Armstrong who was an influential member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the

legendary editor of its flagship journal Foreign Affairs. Upon arriving in New York Brzezinski

became a frequent guest at the CFR’s headquarters at 68

Street and Park Avenue, a location that

at once served as a debating center and social club for the more influential of the nation’s foreign

policy doyens.

The CFR emerged in the wake of World War I in an effort to counter the predominant

wave of isolationism then prevailing in the United States Congress. When the U.S. Senate

rejected Woodrow Wilson’s proposal of the League of Nations in 1920 Colonel Edward M.

House, a key adviser to Wilson, recruited a group of intellectuals with a more “internationalist”

world-view. The purpose of this “council” was to provide an intellectual counterweight to

isolationist voices and to promote international commerce through increased trade and financial

interaction.

The CFR did not amount to much until 1927 when the Rockefeller family began to fund it

with considerable financial assistance. In 1939, supported by Rockefeller money and encouraged

by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the CFR initiated four planning groups that would provide the

framework for the postwar institutions of, among others, the United Nations, World Bank, and

International Monetary Fund. By the late 1940s the CFR had become the predominant think-tank

in the United States.

The CFR’s elite reputation and internationalist world-view would also make it the bette

noir for conspiracy theorists from across the political spectrum. From the political left the CFR

was viewed as a club of Wall Street bankers, lawyers, and businessmen, meeting covertly to

dictate an elitist foreign policy beyond the watchful eye of the press and elected officials. Even

stronger attacks would come for the fringes of the political right that viewed the CFR as, among

other things, an elitist Rockefeller-led cabal attempting to undermine the sovereign independence

of the United States and establish a one-world socialist government.

Indeed Brzezinski’s entrance

into the CFR and the relationship he established with David Rockefeller in the early 1960s would

soon make him the virtual obsession of right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Brzezinski’s association with the CFR in 1960 would also further his goal of weaving the

concept of “peaceful engagement” toward Eastern Europe more formally into U.S. policy.

Hamilton Fish Armstrong had been editor of Foreign Affairs since 1928. Under his leadership the

journal attained an international reputation that transcended its relatively small circulation. An

article appearing in that journal was likely to be read, and probably discussed, by the luminaries

of the United States foreign policy establishment.

Brzezinski consulted William Griffith, the former chief of Radio Free Europe, to bolster

his chances of publishing an article on “peaceful engagement” in Foreign Affairs. “I wasn’t sure

that they would publish me,” said Brzezinski, “in part because of my very foreign sounding

name, in part because I was still a relatively junior academic. So I proposed to Griffith that we

write this article together especially since our views were similar and I figured that it would have

a better chance of getting in. I suggested the phrase ‘peaceful engagement’ because I had a sense

that giving a policy concept an easy to remember and identifiable label it would generate more

impact for it—and it caught on.”

In the spring of 1961 Brzezinski and Griffith published a seminal article in Foreign Affairs

suggesting that the United States attempt to transform the Soviet dominated “bloc” into a more

“neutral belt of states which, like the Finnish, would enjoy genuine popular freedom of choice in

internal policy while not being hostile to the Soviet Union and not belonging to Western military

alliances.“

The authors argued that the most effective way to achieve this goal was to offer the

See Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men and Foreign Affairs: The History of the Council on Foreign

Relations (New York, 1984).

See “Hamilton Fish Armstrong 1893-1973,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 51, no. 4. (July 1973).

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Griffith, “Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe,” Foreign

Affairs, vol. 39, no. 4 (Spring, 1961), p. 647. Brzezinski also urged the West German government to

reexamine its rigid refusal to enter into diplomatic relations with any country which recognized

incentive of economic assistance to the more moderate regimes in the Soviet bloc, while

convincing the West German government to finally accept its eastern boundaries in order to

undermine Moscow’s claim that the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe was the only assurance

against the rise of German revanchism.

This idea of “peaceful engagement” toward Eastern Europe was largely dependent,

however, on the superpowers coming to some arrangement over Berlin which remained a

vulnerable western outpost located 110 miles inside East Germany—linked to West Germany

only by roads and rail lines surrounded by well armed Soviet divisions. Khrushchev, in his

characteristic earthy candor, liked to refer to the city as the “testicles of the West” which he could

“squeeze” any time he felt like it, something he had attempted as recently in 1958 when he

threatened to turn the divided city over to the administration of East Berlin.

Yet by the summer of 1961 some 2,000 East Germans a day, mostly highly educated

young professionals, were escaping to the West through East Berlin. This ideological sieve

represented a vast “brain drain” of the East German population and a severe embarrassment to

East Germany. The so-called Hallstein doctrine had already been waived with respect to the

Soviet Union. In German eyes this was a proper exception, since the Soviet Union occupied a part

of Germany. Brzezinski recommended that Bonn consider the possibility of distinguishing

between free and captive nations. The West Germans could state that the Hallstein Doctrine must

apply to free nations that could exercise a free choice--but not to captive ones, the Soviet

satellites. This would give Bonn a far greater freedom of action in respect to Eastern Europe.

Brzezinski would continue to note that Western politicians failed to realize the impact in the

east of Germany’s refusal to accept the postwar borders. By 1960 a growing number of Poles

considered the preservation of the western border as nothing less than a matter of national

survival. In this view the postwar boundaries made Poland far more viable politically,

economically, and even strategically than before the war—qualities necessary to withstand any

pressure that might come from the Soviet Union as well. Indeed, many Poles believed that it was

this strength that enabled them to extract a substantial degree of internal autonomy from the

Soviet Union in 1956. By the early 1960s Gomulka had begun to score effective propaganda

points with the official line that only a close relationship with the Soviet Union could keep

Moscow from cutting a Rapallo-like deal with Bonn over the heads of the Poles. Adam Bromke,

“Polish Nationalism and Communism,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 40, no. 4 (July 1962), pp. 639-641. For

a look at the issue of the history of the German-Polish border disputes, see Arthur R. Rachwald,

“Poland Between the Superpowers: Three Decades of Foreign Policy,” Orbis, vol. 20, no. 4

(Winter 1977), pp. 1055-1083.

See Jean Edward Smith, The Defense of Berlin (Baltimore, 1963). Thomas W. Wolfe, Soviet Power

and Europe: 1945-1970 (Baltimore, 1970), pp. 89-93.

Soviet boasts that the world’s “historical forces” were moving their way. In the early hours of

August 12-13, 1961 the East German authorities moved to solve the problem with the

construction of the Berlin Wall. In the days after the initial barbed wire went up, East German

workers began the construction of a more permanent structure that would eventually become a

4.5-meter concrete wall with a 100 meter cleared strip on the Eastern German side guarded by

mines, trip wires, automatic firing devices and 295 watchtowers manned by armed guards with

orders to shoot to kill.

During the first week of construction all eyes turned to the response of President

Kennedy. But Kennedy’s silence sent the clear implication that so long as the access routes to

West Berlin remained open, events in East Berlin would not merit a direct confrontation with the

Soviet Union. West Berlin mayor Wiley Brandt was among many Germans who denounced

America’s passivity, informing a large public rally “Berlin expects more than words. Berlin

expects political action!”

Nevertheless Kennedy had taken the first step in informing Bonn that

German insistence on reunification could no longer prevent a broader détente with the Soviet

Union. “Germany has been divided for sixteen years,” Kennedy would later concede, “and will

continued to stay divided.”

Brzezinski saw this as a potentially dangerous situation for the Western alliance. His

primary concern was that Bonn officials, concluding that German unification was no longer a

Brandt would later link the U.S. policy of inaction over Berlin to the agreements reached at

Yalta. Discussing what the West could have done to avoid the division of Germany and Berlin,

Brandt referred to the March 1952 instance when the United States rejected Stalin’s offer to

reunite Germany. “I wondered then, not for the first or last time,” Brandt wrote “whether the two

superpowers might not, with adamantine consistency, have been pursuing the same principle in

Europe since 1945: that, whatever happened, they would respect the spheres of influence broadly

agreed at Yalta.” This impression was furthered by the construction of the Berlin Wall. “Ulbricht

had been allowed to take a swipe at the Western superpower” noted Brandt in his memoirs, “and

the Untied States merely winced with annoyance. My political deliberations in the years that

followed were substantially influenced by this day’s experience, and it was against this

background that my so-called Ostpolitik—the beginning of détente—took shape.” Timothy

Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York, 1993), p. 60.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, 1965), p.

399. See also James Joffee, “The View from Bonn: The Tacit Alliance” in Lincoln Gordon ed.,

Eroding Empire: Western Relations with Eastern Europe, (Washington DC, 1987) p. 142.

priority for the United States, would move toward a more “neutral” East-West position and seek

their own deal with Moscow. Brzezinski’s solution would involve the United States responding

with a far bolder plan of “peaceful engagement” toward Eastern Europe with the clear end goal

of bringing forth a peaceful reunification of Germany.

Indeed by late 1962 President Kennedy began to speak more forcefully about the need to

“peacefully engage” the more moderate states in Eastern Europe. On October 14, 1962 Kennedy

spoke before a Pulaski Day celebration in Buffalo with a speech that could have been lifted right

out of one of Brzezinski’s academic articles. “We need more flexibility in our economic arsenal,”

Kennedy declared “There are varying shades even within the Communist world. We must be

able to seize the initiative when the opportunity arises in Poland in particular and in other

countries as time goes on behind the Iron Curtain…but we must never—under any statement,

declaration, treaty, or other manner-recognize Soviet domination of Eastern Europe as

permanent.”

By the end of that day, however, Kennedy would have more on his mind than Eastern

Europe. As Kennedy was speaking in Buffalo U-2 reconnaissance planes flying over Cuba took

photos of four launch sites being constructed for the use of medium-range missiles. Kennedy,

after two weeks of intense consultations with his advisers, responded with a naval “quarantine”

of the island. In late October the world watched anxiously as the eighteen Soviet-bloc freighters

bound for Cuba reversed direction in the face of an American naval blockade.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Policy of Peaceful Engagement: How We Can Profit from Communist

Disunity,” The New Republic (March 26, 1962), p. 16. West German disillusionment with “Yalta”

and the United States failure to respond to the construction of the Berlin Wall was seen in a

gruesome public display in August 1962. At that time an eighteen year-old East German was shot

while attempting to climb the wall and escape to the West. For an hour the East German officials

left the young man at the foot of the wall crying in agony and bleeding to death before they

finally dragged him away. On the western side stunned West Berliners responded with angry

denunciations, not just against the East Germans, but against the United States for its apparent

acceptance of the German status quo. Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name, p. 61.

Joseph Lotus, “Kennedy Affirms Links to Poland,” The New York Times (October 15, 1962).

While Kennedy came out of the crisis a hero, behind the scenes he had agreed to the

removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba in exchange for the U.S. removal of its Jupiter missiles in

Turkey and a pledge not to invade Cuba. It was a covert deal that the members of the Kennedy

Administration managed to deny for over two decades.

Nevertheless in 1963 U.S. missiles were

quietly withdrawn from Turkey under cover stories that the missiles were obsolete and had been

scheduled for removal before the crisis in Cuba.

The week after the crisis Brzezinski contributed an article in the Washington Post

suggesting the Kennedy’s show of strength was decisive in resolving the crisis.

In the same article

Brzezinski linked Cuba to a less publicized crisis then troubling the Kennedy Administration. He

cautioned that the United States should not exclude the waging of a “national liberation struggle”

against Castro unless Khrushchev also explicitly disassociated himself from supporting the

communist forces in North Vietnam who were at the time intensifying their guerrilla offensive

against South Vietnam.

Years later Brzezinski would look at the situation rather differently. “Frankly I have to

admit that I did not know we made a covert deal with the Russians, which if analyzed

dispassionately, really transformed the Cuban crisis into more of a Russian success than an

American political success. We gave up any threat to Cuba, and our missiles in Turkey, in return

for the Russians saying they won’t have missiles in Cuba which they no longer needed since we

have already promised that we wouldn’t do anything to Cuba. Politically, publicly it was

perceived as an American success, and at the time I thought it was.”

The Cuban Missile Crisis had nonetheless made it clear to the United States and Soviet

Union that there were advantages in maintaining the global status quo. This nascent U.S-Soviet

Cold War: An Illustrated History, 1945-1991: Companion to the CNN TV Series (New York, 1998),

p. 203.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Surprise a Key to Our Cuba Success,” The Washington Post (November

4, 1962).

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

détente was demonstrated in Kennedy’s June 1963 “strategy of peace” speech at the American

University and the United States and Soviet Union’s signing of a partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

in August of the same year.

The burgeoning détente led Brzezinski to warn that the United States must avoid the

impression that it had entered a purely bilateral arrangement with the Soviet Union over the

heads of a divided Europe. While the benefits of détente were obvious, the perceptions of a

condominium arrangement would likely alienate the Western allies and increase the appeal of

French President Charles De Gaulle’s stated goal of building a Europe stretching from “from the

Atlantic to the Urals.”

Brzezinski cautioned that although France lacked the influence to match

de Gaulle’s grand vision, it could become attractive to West Germans angered by the United

States’ passivity on the issue of German unification.

Brzezinski thus urged the Kennedy Administration not to rest with the status quo but to

use this lull in the Cold War to initiate an even bolder plan to bridge the gap then separating the

European continent. “We must keep open channels of communication with the Communist

countries,” Brzezinski wrote, “and speak directly to the peoples now under Communist rule.

Instead of merely hoping for the political leaders in these countries to bring them into the

Western camp, we must persistently invite them to join a constructive all-European undertaking,

thereby stimulating popular pressure on the Communist leaders.”

“Storm Signals: A Defiant De Gaulle Threatens Western Unity,” Newsweek (November 30,

1964), pp. 40-42. Walter Lippmann “What Preoccupies the Europeans,” Newsweek (December 21,

1964), p. 15.

Soviet efforts in this respect could be seen in the revival of the “Popular Front” tactics Stalin

had pursued in the 1930s. In October 1965 Soviet spokesmen began to urge that Western

Communist parties seek a “broad coalition” of “anti-imperialist, democratic forces,” including

even “right-wing Social Democrats,” in an effort to oppose “American imperialism.” As a

number of Soviet accounts put it, this represented an effort to unite Communist and non-

Communist groups against “American imperialism allied with West German revanchism.”

William McLaughlin, “Return of the Popular Front,” Radio Free Europe (February 10, 1966).

See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “After the Test Ban—The U.S. Must Take the Initiative in Europe,”

The New Republic (August 31, 1963).

Unfortunately tragic and unforeseen circumstances would impede any such plans.

Brzezinski, like most Americans, recalled the precise moment that he heard the news of John F.

Kennedy’s assassination while on a campaign swing through Texas. “I remember vividly,’ he

recalled some four decades later, “I was having lunch at the faculty club at Columbia when one

of the waiters came up to me and said ‘Professor, President Kennedy has been shot.’ I literally

leapt up from my chair--literally just jumped right up. Then I rushed downstairs one floor below

from the dining room where there was a TV set. And I remember Walter Cronkite coming on at

some point, around 1.15 or 1.30, and saying that there was a rumor, I repeat only a rumor, that

the President is dead.”

The rumor was soon verified as fact. “I was stunned coming back to my office,”

Brzezinski continued, “and for the next two or three days I was glued to the television set. I was

very mortified because I was a great admirer of Kennedy at the time. Subsequently I became

much more critical and much more aware of his shortcomings both as a human being and the

president, but at the time I will admit I was engaged in a kind of hero worship. I treated it as

almost a personal loss.”

Yet the nation’s business had to proceed. The moment Kennedy’s death became official

Vice President Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One while Jackie

Kennedy, still wearing her blood stained pink dress, looked on in grief. Upon his return to

Andrews Air Force base in Washington, the newly inaugurated President Johnson quietly

stepped to the microphone. “I will do my best,” he said “that is all I can do. I ask for your help,

and God’s.” Johnson then climbed aboard a military helicopter, accompanied by his national

security assistant McGeorge Bundy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Before they landed

Interview, Washington D.C., (November 4, 1999).

Ibid. Kennedy’s assassination provided a macabre example of the power of Brzezinski’s ideas

of peaceful engagement. The news of the president’s assassination produced an outburst of

sympathy in overwhelmingly Catholic Poland. Some 16,000 Poles signed the condolence books at

the United States’ embassy in honor of the late president. Piotr Wandyz, The United States and

Poland (Cambridge, MA, 1980), p. 377.

on the White House lawn Johnson had informed both men they would be retained in their

current positions. In turn the two men briefed their new President on the especially urgent

situation transpiring in Vietnam.

By 1964 Brzezinski was fully associated with the Democratic Party and would become a

prominent supporter of Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 election. On the other side the Republican

campaign was marked by an intensely bitter ideological struggle that saw Barry Goldwater’s

conservative line triumph over the moderate stance of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.

Goldwater would sweep to victory in the San Francisco convention--evoking thunderous

applause with his declaration that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!” Though

Goldwater’s supporters objected strongly to the “creeping socialism” of Johnson’s Great Society,

they saved their most visceral attacks for Nelson Rockefeller and the moderate Republican forces

he represented.

This rise of the conservative “New Right” would have an impact on the career of

Zbigniew Brzezinski as well. While conservative Republicans may have shared Brzezinski’s hard

line toward the Soviet Union, they were highly suspicious of Brzezinski’s connections with such

disreputable outfits like the Council on Foreign Relations—which was referred to as a virtual

obscenity by the hard right of the GOP. In addition Brzezinski’s penchant for multilateral

solutions and “peaceful engagement” toward the communist regimes of Eastern Europe was

taken as nothing less than fellow traveling by members of the Goldwater wing of the Republican

Party. This view was particularly prevalent among members of the arch-conservative John Birch

Society whose literature would eventually become obsessed with exposing Brzezinski as a closet

Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (New York, 1976), pp. 166-167.

See Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern

Establishment (New York, 1975).

communist and, together with the Rockefeller family, among the most dangerous men in

America.

In the end, the outcome of the 1964 election was never really in doubt. The political

martyrdom of John F. Kennedy, combined with general concerns over Goldwater’s right-wing

extremism, proved an effective combination for the Democratic Party. Goldwater’s campaign

slogan “In your heart you know his right,” was inverted by Democrats to read, “In your heart,

you know he might!”---a not so subtle suggestion that the Arizona Senator was not the politician

to trust with the nuclear trigger. Indeed a mass of defecting moderate “Rockefeller Republicans,”

including Henry Kissinger, contributed its votes to Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory.

The closing weeks of the Johnson-Goldwater campaign coincided with an even more

shocking power transition in Moscow. October 15, 1964 Soviet citizens awoke to hear the

stunning news that First Secretary Khrushchev had “resigned” due to poor health. In reality the

Soviet leader had been ousted in a Kremlin coup d’etat sponsored by a shadowy troika of

apparatchiks named Leonid I. Brezhnev, Aleksei Kosygin, and Nikolai Podgorny.

In October 1964 few people were certain what it all meant. The most widely articulated

view held that these rather ordinary looking men in gray business suits marked another step

away from Stalin’s monstrous rule and toward the “normalization” of Soviet politics. New

publications naturally were left to analyzing the more accessible traits, noting that Brezhnev was

by Soviet standards a “careful dresser” with a fondness for Western suits, Italian neckties and silk

shirts.

See Alan Stang, “Zbig Brother,” American Opinion vol. XXI no. 2, (February 1978), pp. 5-10.

Walter Issacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York, 1992), p. 116.

In the United States the full range of Kremlinologists were called forth to explain what it all

meant. The best guess of who was really in charge was by observing the order of the posters

displaying the personages of the new collective leadership. The poster of Leonid Brezhnev hung

first. Henry Tanner, “Soviet Posters Give Clue to Ranking of New Chiefs,” The New York Times

(October 19, 1964).

“Two For One After K, The Gray-Flannel Men Move In,” Newsweek (October 26, 1964), p. 47.

“Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev,” declared a flattering profile in Newsweek, “the new First

Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party is a ruggedly handsome, seemingly straightforward

man who moves with the gait of an ex-athlete nowadays just a bit out of shape…Yugoslav

officials who have dealt with him dismiss him as a predictable man lacking in mental resources.

But most Western diplomats who know Brezhnev disagree. He is, they say, a man of intelligence

and authority who will make a popular and formidable leader.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, if pressed, would certainly side with the Yugoslavs in that debate.

By 1964 Brzezinski had begun to state more emphatically his view that the Soviet Union was

entering an irreversible state of disintegration.

In the days following Khrushchev’s ouster

Brzezinski contributed a prescient article to the New Republic that would analyze the long-term

significance of this emerging generation of “clerical mediocrities.”

Brzezinski noted that Stalin’s instinct was to liquidate anybody showing the slightest

inclination toward individual initiative and that this incoming generation of “clerks” had risen to

power in the 1930s during Stalin’s massive purges of the Communist Party. The result was that

for the next generation the Soviet leadership would be manned by an elite that had risen to

power on the basis of a perverse form of “reverse natural selection” whereby only the most

unimaginative minds survived to be promoted. The result, argued Brzezinski, was likely to be a

prolonged era of political and economic stagnation in the Soviet Union.

Ibid, p. 47.

On this point see Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics (New York, 1962).

Shortly after the Cold War one commentator would pay specific tribute to Brzezinski’s foresight

in this respect. “One commentator and one volume of essays may be singled out as showing

extraordinary prescience about the Soviet political system. Zbigniew Brzezinski never wavered

from his 1962 analysis of ideology and power as the key categories of Soviet politics, which led

him to conclude that the system was incapable of incremental reform.” Peter Rutland,

“Sovietology: Notes for a Post-Mortem,” The National Interest (Spring, 1993), p. 111.

See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Victory of the Clerks,” The New Republic (November 14, 1964). For a

later view on this point see “Russia’s Bureaucracy: Loaded With Incompetents: Interview With an

Authority on Communism, Zbigniew Brzezinski,” U.S. News and World Report (April 20, 1970), p.

71-72.

“Bureaucratic politics tends to elevate non-entities,” Brzezinski concluded, “and the non-

entities have a stake in making certain that only some like themselves emerges as the primus inter

pares. The weakening of personal dictatorial power hence reflects a trend toward government by

clerical mediocrities, a trend inherent in the gradual fading of the revolutionary generation and

its replacement by a bureaucratic one. Lenin-Stalin-Khrushchev-Brezhnev: the decline in

intellectual and personal qualities seems too unilinear and too marked to be merely

accidental.”

Indeed Leonid Brezhnev’s career had risen steadily in the late 1930s under the

sponsorship of Nikita Khrushchev whom Stalin had sent to the Ukraine with orders purge the

local Communist Party. Khrushchev, like most of Stalin’s officials, carried out the commands

with ruthless efficiency. By 1938 virtually the entire Ukrainian party leadership was either

directly murdered or perished in Siberian labor camps. Brezhnev’s career began its long advance

to the top when Khrushchev was put in charge of filling the mass vacancies provided by the

purge—a process that a young Zbigniew Brzezinski witnessed from the more troubling stories

his father brought back to Warsaw after serving at that time as Poland’s consul general to Soviet

Ukraine.

By 1964 Brzezinski writings continued to focus on the need to “build bridges” to Eastern

Europe.

Yet by the summer of that year events far away from Europe were developing that

Brzezinski, “Victory of the Clerks,” p. 22.

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

President Johnson would continue to adhere to Kennedy’s general policy of “bridge building”

toward Eastern Europe. Speaking at Virginia Military Institute in May 1964 Johnson announced

that the United States would “continue to build bridges across the gulf which has divided us

from Eastern Europe. They will be bridges of increased trade, of ideas, of visitors, and of

humanitarian aid.” Department of State Bulletin (June, 15, 1964), p. 923. Johnson was also a firm

supporter of Radio Free Europe—which was coming under a sustained campaign from Moscow

and Soviet bloc governments to shut down in the name of the budding détente between the

superpowers. Johnson held firm, as seen in a late 1964 meeting with RFE administrators. “When

the peoples of Eastern Europe are again able to enjoy radio broadcasting from their own capitals

which tells them as much as Radio Free Europe does, then Radio Free Europe will have finished

would quietly mark the beginning of what would become the longest and most bitterly contested

war in U.S. history. In August 1964 President Johnson appeared on national television to

announce that the U.S. naval vessels had come under fire from North Vietnamese patrol boats in

the Gulf of Tonkin. Within days the United States Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution,

authorizing Johnson to take “all necessary measures” to defend U.S. or allied forces in Vietnam.

Brzezinski was an early and public supporter of the war in Vietnam. Since 1960 he had

been writing of the importance and the bitterness of the Sino-Soviet split. Brzezinski thus saw

great danger if the South Vietnamese government were perceived to fall so easily to communist

insurgents.

He did not fear the perceived dangers in a communist “domino theory” so much as

the fanatical ideological competition that had developed between the Soviet Union and China.

Brzezinski also feared the rise of perpetual instability in Asia should the more militant

Chinese be proven right in their argument with the Soviet Union that the United States was in

fact little more than a “paper tiger” and that the best way to foment global revolution was to

foment endless battles of “national liberation” in the post-colonial world. Brzezinski believed that

the Soviet Union was a comparatively rational power compared to the intensity that was about to

be unleashed in Mao Zedong’s Great Cultural Revolution which by 1965 would turn into a

the job. Until then, RFE has work ahead of it, day in and day out, year in and year out.”

Department of State Bulletin (December 21, 1964), p. 867.

Brzezinski assessed the situation in Vietnam in an article that appeared a week before

President Kennedy’s assassination. “If North Vietnamese aid to the civil war in the south is of

importance we would then perhaps encourage the South Vietnamese to undertake reciprocal

guerrilla warfare in North Vietnam, through sporadic mobile raids, directed mainly at the

collective farm system hated by the peasantry. The purpose would be to force Ho Chi Minh either

to halt his aid to the civil war in the south or to face the risk of becoming subordinate to the

Chinese by asking them for more help. Given the historical fear of Chinese domination, and Ho

Chi Mihn’s internal agricultural problems, such pressure might encourage him to desist from the

sponsorship of the civil war in the south, thereby containing this local conflict. At the same time,

however, we should gradually extend options to the Chinese for the purpose of inducing them to

moderate their policies. The Soviet trade blockade of China has hurt the Chinese economy.

Blockaded economically by the Soviets, blocked militarily by the U.S., the Chinese, for the sake of

their domestic development, may eventually acquire a stake in international stability, especially if

alternatives become available through Japanese or West European trade. We should encourage

such trade.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Calculations and Suggestions,” Newsweek (November 25,

1963), p. 52.

frenzied campaign directed against anyone accused of accepting Soviet-style “revisionism” or the

heretical belief that the superpowers could somehow “peacefully co-exist.”

In June of 1965, Brzezinski participated in a nationally televised debate on the merits of

the war in Vietnam. Brzezinski and McGeorge Bundy spoke in support of the war against, among

others, the noted political scientist Hans Morganthau who argued that the policy of containment

may have succeeded in Europe, but was bound to fail in Asia. Brzezinski, though a strong

admirer of Morganthau, responded that unless the United States took decisive action in Vietnam,

the Soviet Union would feel added pressure to compete with the Chinese to demonstrate their

true ideological commitment to wars of “national liberation.” Brzezinski concluded that unless a

degree of stability could be achieved in Asia, at least comparable to that reached in Europe, there

might be “no end to wars in the region.”

Brzezinski continued to insist, however, that the engaging of Eastern Europe should

remain the focal point of U.S. foreign policy. Charles Gati recalled that Brzezinski remained

focused on Eastern Europe at a time when the nation’s foreign policy was paralyzed in Vietnam.

Gati noted that Brzezinski believed if the Cold War ended in Europe, additional “Vietnams”

might be unnecessary.

Certainly Eastern Europe was the single most important thing for him. But he

understood that he could push the issue only so far, that there was an audience out there yes, that

the State Department was interested in it, U.S. Presidents were interested in it, but it was not a

central issue for U.S. policy to ease the burden of Soviet domination over Eastern Europe. But he

was committed to keeping Eastern Europe on the agenda. I think he understood that the Cold

War, more than any other single issue, began with the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Red

Army, and that in order to end the Cold War you have to get the Soviets out of Eastern Europe. It

was really deep down as simple as that.

The Cultural Revolution officially began in August 1966, when the Chinese Communist Party

established committees to seek out and terrorize what it considered to be “bourgeois” elements.

Henceforth the “Red Guards,” made up of middle-school students from the families of peasants

and revolutionary cadres, proceeded to carry out mass persecutions against “bourgeois

elements.”

Max Frankel, “Bundy Says U.S. Must Block Reds-Defends Vietnam in Policy Debate with

Professors,” The New York Times (June 22, 1965).

Interview, Washington, DC (September 13, 2001).

By 1965 Brzezinski believed that the rise of “national communism” had created extreme

dangers in the region.

Albania’s successful defiance of the Soviet Union was made possible by

support from the more dogmatic Chinese and a fanatic ideological and cultural revolution that

would strengthen party supremacy under the eccentric dictatorship of Enver Hoxha.

In 1964

Romania followed a similar path when Moscow attempted to turn Romania into the

“breadbasket” of Eastern Europe. Like Albania, Romania’s defiance of Moscow was facilitated by

a skillful use of nationalism and the doctrinal support provided by the Chinese.

Brzezinski had serious concerns about the rise of this blood and soil nationalism that he

believed was more akin to the prewar European fascist parties than to the utopian

internationalism as envisioned by Marx. Brzezinski thus raised the ironic possibility that the

“highest stage” of Communism might well be fascism-- whereby power was wielded by an

intensely chauvinist, first-generation, lower middle-class political elite.

Indeed, by 1965 one could hear Albanian broadcasts supporting a pro-Chinese

underground faction in Poland that objected to rule by “Gomulka and his Zionist gang.”

Hungarians were protesting the treatment of the Magyar minority in Slovakia and used selected

quotations by Marx to prove that the Slovaks had historically been “reactionaries.” The Slovaks

accused Marx and Engels of holding a “pan-German” bias. Hungarians charged the Romanians

with mistreating the Magyar minority in Transylvania. Romanians, in turn challenged Moscow

over the mistreatment of the Romanian minority in Soviet Moldava, formerly the interwar

Romanian territory of Bessarabia.

See Stavro Skendi, “Albania and the Sino-Soviet Conflict,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 40, no. 3, (April

1962).

See J.F. Brown, The New Eastern Europe: The Khrushchev Era and After (New York, 1966), p. 206.

See Uri Ra’anan, “An Empire in Dissolution,” The New Leader, (June 19, 1967), p. 22-23. Unlike

the traditions of Western Europe, Eastern Europe had more difficulty in establishing a system of

functioning nation-states with generally accepted territorial mandates. The frontiers of states thus

rarely coincided with nationality. In fact they almost invariably overlapped with each state

containing a large population of minorities whose national identity linked them to other states

and ethnic groups. In the West, nationalism generally had a distinctly territorial connotation.

Brzezinski feared that this revival of nationalist tensions in the region renewed the

dangerous specter that had played a role in triggering both great wars of the 20

century.

Brzezinski’s solution to this troubling revival of nationalist zeal lay paradoxically in

the continued unification of Western Europe. Brzezinski argued that since World War II

“transnational” forces were combining to create a more centralized international system that

would gradually reduce the significance of the nation-state. He thus envisioned an increasingly

globalized “community of developed nations”--spanning from Japan to Scandinavia—that would

join forces to better handle the growing complexities of the 20

century post-colonial world.

Brzezinski argued that once this “community of developed nations” had been solidified

in the West, it could then develop common policies toward the communist nations of the Soviet

bloc that might draw them into a broader relationship with the Western social democracies. The

most hopeful scenario would have the Soviet Union recognize the folly of its imperial pretensions

in Eastern Europe and embark on a more social-democratic version of socialism rather than its

Thus the terms a “national” and a “citizen” could be used almost synonymously. A person’s

nationality was determined by the place of residence and the authority to which one owed

allegiance. Nationalism could be used as a cohesive force that strengthened the popular roots of

government by reinforcing the sense of separate identity shared by a given country, its

population and its rulers. An entirely different concept prevailed in the East where “nationality”

and “citizenship” were often quite distinct. Language, cultural traits, and religion were more

relevant than arbitrary borders. Only two East European states, Bulgaria and Albania, had

occupied the same borders since World War I. In the early 20

century various right wing

nationalist movements rose to power, often supported by base appeals to the anti-liberal

sentiments so prevalent amongst the “masses” in the region. See Lonnie R. Johnson, Central

Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (Oxford, 1996).

In this respect Brzezinski was particularly concerned with the case of Yugoslavia. Brzezinski

noted that once Tito’s unifying presence was gone, “his successors for power are likely to split on

the issue of relations with the East and the West. The party apparatchiki, likely to be supported

by the Serbs and the more backward regions of Yugoslavia, might press for closer contacts with

the East and for heavier industrial development within Yugoslavia, favoring the more backward

regions. Spokesman for the more developed parts of the country—Slovenia and Croatia—may

insist on maintaining the present, relatively decentralized system, with preferential treatment for

the more developed regions and closer contacts with the West. Conflicting internal tendencies are

likely to be aggravated by persisting nationality differences in the country, made even more

serious by differences in levels of economic development.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alternative to

Partition: For a Broader Conception of America’s Role in Europe (New York, 1965), p. 34.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Toward a Community of Developed Nations,” Department of State

Bulletin (March 13, 1967), pp. 415-416.

stultifying Leninist centralism that was becoming an impediment to Soviet economic

modernization and development.

In 1965 Brzezinski detailed this solution in the work Alternative to Partition: For a Broader

Conception of America’s Role in Europe. Brzezinski’s plan involved an ambitious all-European

economic plan involving a vast array of international institutions that would initiate trade and

common investment projects as a means to narrow the economic disparities between East and

West. To make this vision tangible, Brzezinski suggested “the United States, speaking through its

President, should address a proposal to the European powers, including Russia, to join with

America in formulating a joint, all-European economic development plan. The plan would be

designed to cut across the present European partition, to narrow existing disparities in European

living standards, to reduce the economic and political significance of existing frontiers, and to

promote East-West trade and human contacts by the development of an all-European system of

communications.” “The proposal would be premised,” Brzezinski concluded, “on an implicit

acceptance by the East of the principle that the reconstruction of Europe would involve in time

the reunification of Germany.”

Henry Owen, then Director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, was impressed

with Brzezinski’s views. “I had read something he had written. It struck me as very unusual that

here a fellow who was interested in Eastern Europe and he comes to the conclusion that the best

way of pursuing that interest of promoting change in Eastern Europe was to promote greater

West European integration. So many people whose primary interest was Eastern Europe wrote

that Western European integration was the obverse of that. Zbig had exactly the reverse view. He

Brzezinski, Alternative to Partition, p. 169. There were some notable detractors to Brzezinski’s

grand visions, including his old Harvard classmate, Stanley Hoffman who would become a

frequent critic of Brzezinski’s in the coming decade. Hoffman criticized the ideas put forth in

Brzezinski’s Alternative to Partition as a “seductive, brilliantly argued, superficially persuasive”

policy of “over-involvement that turns out to be less promising than it seems.” Hoffman faulted

Brzezinski for his display of typically American “over-optimism” noting “it is still not clear why

Russia should play its hand in the way Brzezinski so elaborately describes.” Stanley Hoffman,

Gulliver’s Troubles, Council on Foreign Relations (New York, 1968), pp. ?

thought, and he turned out to be right, that West European integration would create an entity

that the Eastern countries would want to join, and which in order to join they would have to

accept change. So I thought I’d better get to know this guy.”

In May of 1966 Owen recruited Brzezinski to join the Policy Planning Staff of the State

Department. Despite a rather low-level position in the formal pecking order Brzezinski was

hardly a typical State Department bureaucrat. As an outside academic with public visibility he

would enjoy an unusual degree of access to President Johnson.

Owen recalled that Brzezinski’s views toward Eastern Europe did not always endear him

to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. “I don’t think Rusk was fascinated by Zbig, and I don’t think

Zbig was fascinated by Rusk. I think they got along well together in a practical sense. But Rusk’s

attitude was sort of if you can’t prove it, it ain’t so. And this general view of the future and

predictions of what was going to happen (in Eastern Europe) without any proof left Rusk not

cold, but it didn’t change him.”

Indeed Brzezinski’s stint in the State Department found him clashing with the mandarins

of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Dean Acheson emerged as a vocal opponent of

Brzezinski’s peaceful engagement and sought to torpedo it by using his considerable influence

from outside the White House. Averell Harriman, a former ambassador to the Soviet Union,

remarked caustically that Brzezinski was “basically a Pole,” who had never accepted the

“American ethos” and was “perfectly willing to get the United States into a confrontation with

Russia for the sake of Poland.”

Charles Bohlen, another member of America’s old foreign

policy establishment, was also skeptical of Brzezinski. “Chip Bohlen was a great critic of Zbig,”

recalled Owen, “and criticized him because he thought his views on foreign policy were

Interview, Washington, DC (June 29, 2001).

See “Columbia’s Brzezinski Joins State Department,” The New York Times (May 12, 1966).

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

Walter Issacson and Evan Thomas, The Wisemen: Six Friends and the World They Made (New

York, 1986), p. 728.

influenced by his being Polish. He made a public criticism of Zbig--which Zbig deeply resented--

that his foreign policy views were based on the fact that he was Polish rather than that he was

intelligent and looking at the facts.”

Brzezinski knew, however, that influence in Washington required getting his ideas

circulated beyond the State Department. “He and Muska were very active in giving dinners with

influential people,” Owen recalled years later. “And I think what he did outside of the

department vis a vis the media, giving dinners and cocktail parties and so forth was just as

important than what he did in the department. I’ve never seen people in the department who

were that good in influencing the media. He spent part of his time at the State Department doing

his work, but part of his time outside the State Department meeting these media people and

talking to them in a way that helped bring their views closer to his, and helped propagate a

sensible view of what was happening in Europe throughout Washington.”

But Brzezinski realized that a policy would go nowhere unless it was formally adopted

by the President himself. After meeting considerable opposition from within the State

Department, Brzezinski would use a “white lie” to encourage Johnson toward a bolder approach

toward Eastern Europe. In the autumn of 1966 Brzezinski informed a Johnson adviser that his

“Kennedy friends” had tipped him off that Robert Kennedy was set to deliver a major speech on

American policy towards Europe. Brzezinski noted that Kennedy’s speech was likely to be critical

Interview, Washington DC, (June 28, 2001). Brzezinski was sensitive to the charge that his

view toward the Soviets was a product of his ethnic heritage. “Well, my views of the Soviet

Union may have been conditioned by my childhood—but there were very similar to millions of

Americans who didn’t have my childhood—and therefore there was something more to it than

my childhood---quite logically. I think it has a lot—much more to do with the kind of systematic

analysis and training I obtained at Harvard, dealing with Soviet affairs, than any particularly

ethnic or religious roots, especially if people of different ethnic or religious origin and I can have

the same views. So even simple logic demonstrates some fundamental fallacy to the argument.”

Richard Burt, “Zbig Makes it Big,” New York Times Magazine (July 30, 1978).

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001). Indeed, in the months after Brzezinski came on to

the State Department reports in the media began to surface suggesting that the United States was

reconsidering its formally rigid stance on the priority of German reunification. Max Frankel,

“U.S. Policy on Europe: Pressure Builds to Give East-West Détente Priority over German Unity,”

The New York Times (June 22, 1966).

of Johnson’s passivity on the subject and that there was a good speech in the State Department

which could steal Kennedy’s thunder on the issue. “Kennedy was already then campaigning for

the presidency,” recalled Brzezinski, “and I knew that this would really activate Johnson. The

guy rushed over to Johnson and I am convinced that this really accelerated or even precipitated

Johnson’s decision to deliver that very speech.”

Indeed Brzezinski “white lie” had its impact. On October 7, 1966, President Johnson went

before the National Conference of Editorial Writers in New York to deliver a major speech,

written by Brzezinski, on the need to initiate a “peaceful engagement” toward Eastern Europe.

Europe has been at peace since 1945 but it is a restless peace that’s shattered by the threat

of violence. Europe is partitioned. An unnatural line runs through the heart of a very great and

very proud nation. History warns us that until this harsh division has been resolved, peace in

Europe will never be secure. Our purpose is not to overturn other governments, but to help the

people of Europe to achieve together a continent in which the peoples of Eastern and Western

Europe work shoulder-to-shoulder together for the common good—a continent in which

alliances do not confront each other in bitter hostility but instead provide a framework in which

West and East can act together in order to secure the security of us all…Hand in hand with these

steps to increase East-West tries must go measures to remove territorial and border disputes as a

source of friction in Europe. The Atlantic nations oppose the use of force to change existing

frontiers and that is the bedrock, too, of our American foreign policy. We respect the integrity of a

nation’s boundary lines--and to this end, I pledge my country’s best efforts—best efforts to

achieve new thrust for the alliance, to support movement toward Western European unity, to

bring about a far-reaching improvement in relations between the East and the West. Our object is

to end the bitter legacy of World War II and let all of those who wish us well, and all others also,

know that our guard will be up but our hand will always be out.

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999). See also “Oral History Interview of Zbigniew

Brzezinski,” National Archives and Records Service, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (Austin, 1971).

This is how Johnson relates the story in his memoirs. “In the summer of 1966 my advisers

recommended that I make a detailed public statement of our European policy. We worked on the

speech through the summer and early fall. Early in October Rusk told me that he had agreed to

address the National Conference of Editorial Writers in New York City on October 7. He thought

the time, the place, and the audience were most appropriate for the statement we had been

preparing. He suggested that I replace him, and the hosts quickly and graciously accepted the

change.” Lyndon Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency 1963-1969 (New York:

1971), p. 474.

“Transcript of President’s Speech on Improving Relations with Eastern Europe,” The New York

Times (October 8, 1966).

The speech was important for it finally indicated that the United States was willing to put

an engagement of Eastern Europe before the priority of German unification.

Indeed West

German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard and the German Christian Democratic Party were especially

concerned that Johnson’s speech toward Eastern Europe made the point that reunification could

only be the end result of, not the precondition for, East-West détente. Indeed by 1966 West

German policymakers had begin to concede that their static policy toward the East left them

without a policy to counteract what appeared to be the growing consolidation of the Communist

regime in East Germany. While it was not yet possible to approach East Berlin directly, West

German overtures to Eastern Europe increased under the so-called “Grand Coalition” of 1966-

1969 that broke with the so-called Hallstein Doctrine to recognize Romania in 1967. Bonn’s

subsequent overtures toward the East, over the head of East Germany, met firm Soviet

opposition. Moscow reacted by forging what became known as the “Northern Triangle” to

ensure that Poland and Czechoslovakia would not follow Romania’s lead. Even bolder West

German moves toward the east would be undertaken under Wiley Brandt’s more activist

Ostpolitik policies in the early 1970s.

Johnson’s speech was also prominent enough to elevate Brzezinski’s national profile.

“When his name appears on a Washington guest list,” noted a flattering profile in Newsweek, “it

looks like a typographical error, and few maitre d’s along M Street have bothered to learn how to

pronounce it. Yet Zbigniew Brzezinski, a brilliant, 38 year-old political-scientist, is one of the

fastest-rising stars in the Johnson Administration. Appointed four months ago as a braintruster

on the State Department Planning Council, he has already become one of the architects of U.S.

foreign policy.” The article went on to note that Brzezinski had established a reputation as “hard-

nosed intellectual” who did not “suffer fools lightly” but “even those whom he sometimes rubs

the wrong way readily admit that Brzezinski is a veritable dynamo of fresh ideas. Says one top

See William Griffith, The Ostpolitik of the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1978), p.

131.

White House aide; ‘I’d rather talk for a half hour with Brzezinski than with anybody else in

Washington.’”

Leonid Brezhnev, as might be expected, was somewhat less impressed with Brzezinski’s

efforts. Indeed the Soviet Union took immediate steps to block any of the “bridges” toward

Eastern Europe that had been articulated in Johnson’s speech. A week after the speech Brezhnev

informed a visiting Polish party-state delegation that reconciliation between the two blocs was

unacceptable. “American officials,” said the Soviet leader, “were laboring under a strange and

persistent delusion if they thought it possible to improve relations with the USSR and Eastern

Europe despite the conflict in Vietnam.”

Brzezinski believed that such palpable hostility from Moscow was evidence that

“peaceful engagement” was hitting its mark. He was thus dismayed when the idea met even

“The Thinker,” Newsweek (November 14, 1966), p. 44. Brzezinski reflected on the impact of

Johnson’s speech in a 1971 interview. “Well, if I may be perfectly frank, I have a double feeling

about it. I think the President basically believed, and still does, and I think rightly, that

ultimately some form of reconciliation with the East is necessary for global stability. In that sense,

he did believe it. I have the suspicion that he wasn’t fully aware of the extent to which his speech

actually involved a reversal of hitherto fundamental tenets of our policy towards Europe, and I

suspect that he was rather surprised by the extent to which some of the more conservative

elements in West Germany, including the Chancellor, were shocked by that speech. I have a

feeling that he wasn’t fully aware of the nuances involved, for example, let’s say, a reversal of the

preconditions for German reunification and all that. This, I don’t think he had a real awareness

of. Within the State Department there were sort of two reactions. The first was to simply say that

the speech said nothing new, namely, to kind of try to co-opt the new elements into the old in the

hope of smothering the new. And the second one was that of shock and dismay. As some fellow

once said: before I came to Washington, the United States had no European policy, but it had

allies, and after I got through with it, we had a European policy, but no more any allies. This was

particularly in reference to the fall of the Erhard regime, which to some extent was connected

with this speech. But there were a number of people in the State Department who really were for

change, and had the Vietnamese War, perhaps, not been so absorbing of our attention and

energies, more would have been done.” Oral History Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski,” General

Services Administration, National Archives and Records Service, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library,

(Austin, 1971), p. 13.

Wolfe, p. 266. This theme of reinforcing the status quo in Europe would be a focal point of

Soviet foreign policy until it was enacted militarily with the establishment of the Brezhnev

Doctrine in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Brezhnev,

speaking at the Twenty-Third Party Congress in March 1966, attacked the United States and West

Germany while strongly emphasizing the need to establish a “European security” based on the

territorial status quo. Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from

Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC, 1994), pp. 123-124.

more determined opposition from anti-communist forces in the United States. Brzezinski noted

that such thinking reflected a lack of flexibility that was required for the United States to take

advantage of the subtle distinctions within the Communist world. As he argued in a 1965 article:

Those in the West who oppose the expansion of trade on the grounds that it helps the

Communist governments overlook the fact that, first of all, such trade will grow in spite of

American objections and that, secondly, to the extent that such trade and credits are badly

needed by the Communists, they could be useful as sources of leverage…helping their economic

development can be justified only if at the same time other consequences follow, resulting in the

erosion of the Communist commitment to domination, in structural reforms in the Communist

economic systems, in the growth of closer contacts, in an increasingly free flow of ideas and

people. These changes will not take place spontaneously, but as a result of steady pressure.

Economic difficulties in the East stimulate intense power conflicts and tend to loosen the

Communist structure.

Yet such arguments were not convincing to much of the right wing in America at that

time. Indeed the political complications of differentiating between different shades of

communism proved the fatal blow to Brzezinski’s more ambitious plans toward Eastern Europe.

Johnson’s attempt at “bridge-building” toward Eastern Europe drew a fierce response from the

John Birch Society which collected more than one and half million signatures on a petition

opposing aid and trade with the Communists. A boycott was also organized by the “Committee

to Warn of the Arrival of Communist Merchandise on the Local Business Scene,” which

published a list of goods in its stated effort “to combat, sidetrack and eventually wreck the

economic efforts of the Communists to bleed and destroy our Nation.”

The tenor of this

campaign could be seen in a prominent newspaper advertisement alerting shoppers in Florida

that they could “buy your Communist merchandise at ‘Super Giant.’”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Peaceful Engagement,” Encounter (April 1965), p. 25.

Kovirg, The Myth of Liberation, p. 257.

Stephen A. Garrett, Potsdam to Poland (New York, 1986), p. 11-12. As part of this campaign

Firestone Rubber Company was pressured into giving up an important contract with Romania

while U.S. cigarette manufacturers attempting to purchase Yugoslav tobacco were subjected to a

vocal campaign by the anti-communist Yugoslav-American lobby. A sustained boycott against

the import of Polish hams hampered the Johnson Administration’s attempts to strengthen

The delicate politics of “aiding” Communist regimes during the Cold War also met

opposition in the U.S. Congress. The fact that the Eastern European states were providing

support to North Vietnam at the time led many U.S. legislators to steadfastly oppose Johnson’s

efforts toward Eastern Europe. In 1966 the United States Congress flatly rejected the East-West

Trade Relations bill, which at the time represented the most significant legislative proposal to

initiate Brzezinski’s concept of peaceful engagement in its proposal to empower the U.S.

President to enter into three-year, renewable commercial agreements with the communist states

and to extend most-favored-nation treatment.

As Johnson’s ambassador to Poland would

observe, the concept of peaceful-engagement simply “ran into deep trouble under the sustained

attack of those to whom peaceful engagement is being ‘soft on communism.’”

Brzezinski continued to believe that his vision of a “community of developed nations”

had more of a future than a static bilateral détente with Moscow that did little more than

perpetuate the status quo. In January 1967 Brzezinski expressed this point in a prominent speech

on behalf of the U.S. State Department:

Someday—and that day will come sooner than many of us yesterday dared to hope,

Europe will embrace an entire continent of reunited peoples. It will be a continent no longer

divided by rusted barbed wire or sterile ideological conflicts. It will be a continent that links the

United States and the Soviet Union—and indeed, even Japan—in a larger community of

developed nations, sharing a common recognition of the moral absolute that in our age

technological advancement and material well being impose a fundamental obligation toward the

rest of mankind.

Most significantly, Brzezinski’s vision toward Eastern Europe would become a victim of

the nation’s preoccupation with the Vietnam War. By 1967 U.S. troop levels in Vietnam were

economic links to Poland. At the same time Congress rejected a $10 million program for the

purchase of U.S. publications and films in Poland. Kovrig, The Myth of Liberation, p. 259.

“Foreign Relations: Nyet to Nicolae,” Time (May 20, 1966), p. 29.

Ambassador John A. Gronouski, “The Intellectual and American Foreign Policy,” Department

of State Bulletin, vol. LVII, no. 1475, (October 2, 1967), p. 434.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Toward a Community of Developed Nations,” Department of State

Bulletin (March 13, 1967), pp. 415-416.

approaching half a million and the death toll had surpassed 20,000. At the same time it had

becoming painfully evident that the Vietcong could not be quickly “uprooted” and destroyed.

Johnson, desperate for a way out of the growing quagmire, turned toward Moscow in the hope of

finding a peaceful solution.

In June 1967 Johnson met Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin at a highly publicized summit

meeting in Glassboro, New Jersey. The cordial encounter was the first step toward the more

widespread bilateral détente enacted by the Nixon Administration. At the same time Brzezinski

was very skeptical that the Soviets were acting as an honest broker in the Vietnam peace

negotiations. Knowing his view was contrary the prevailing view in the State Department,

especially that of Averell Harriman, Brzezinski advised Johnson directly that he should not count

on the Soviets to help extricate the United States from Vietnam. “I wrote a memo to Johnson,”

Brzezinski recalled, “telling him that the Russians are not supporting a peaceful solution in

Vietnam---they find it very convenient that the war was going on, and they’re playing a double

game, and we’re being suckered.” Brzezinski recalled that his memo to Johnson did not exactly

please Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Averill Harriman who both objected to having their

authority questioned by a mere “functionary” in the State Department.

Interview, Washington DC, (June 28, 2001). Brzezinski recalled this incident in detail in a 1971

interview. “I raised the issue with the President as to whether the Secretary of State and Mr.

Harriman were right in arguing that the Soviet Union was really trying to help somehow or other

to resolve the war in Vietnam. My argument was, on the basis of evidence that I saw and on the

basis of my interpretation of that evidence, that the Soviet Union was trying to convince us that it

was trying to help to end the war, but in fact, it was not trying to help to end the war, and that it

had an obvious interest in prolonging the war, given the Soviet preoccupation, one, with the

overall global rivalry with the United States and with its realization that in that rivalry we were

being hurt by the war in Vietnam, and secondly, given the Soviet stake in keeping alive

American-Chinese hostility. Thereby minimizing the possibility of the United States exploiting

the Sino-Soviet conflict to our interests. Now, I could have never gotten that across had I

operated within channels…..the channels would kill it. Secondly, a regular Foreign Service

Officer, knowing that the Secretary of State had strong views on it and knowing that Mr.

Harriman had strong views on it, would feel, one, perhaps a little timid about pushing this point

of view anyway; secondly, he would probably anticipate that even if he pushed it up and

managed to get it past the under secretary, not to speak of the assistant secretary, or the flunkies,

he wouldn’t get it any further than that. Whereas, I was able to go directly to the President. I

remember the Secretary of State was rather surprised and called me in shortly afterwards.

Indeed, a somewhat frustrated Brzezinski would soon return to Columbia. Henry Owen

recalled that Brzezinski found his first stint in Washington somewhat humbling. “I think Zbig

was a little disappointed that the Policy Planning Staff didn’t immediately produce opportunities

to do things. It was a staff that was supposed to give ideas to the secretary (Rusk) and I think he

thought somehow it would be more involved in producing immediate results than it was, and to

some extent he was disappointed, but his interest and attitude remained unchanged. The way to

get change in the east was to promote change in Western Europe.”

In December of 1967 Brzezinski announced his departure from the Johnson State

Department. In doing so he again articulated his view that it was imperative that the United

States move away from its fixation on the Vietnam War and begin to focus its attention on ending

the Cold War division in Europe. To this end, Brzezinski urged the formulation of a European-

wide conference that would involve “open-ended discussions of security in Central Europe.”

Brzezinski concluded that “Alliances in the past were designed to wage war; in recent times they

have helped to deter war; in years to come they must concentrate on promoting peace.”

Fortunately, I deposited a copy of the memo for the President in the Secretary’s office the same

morning, so I could point out to the Secretary that there was a copy of the memo waiting for him.

But this is purely to illustrate the point that an outsider, who had an independent positions to

which he could return and with friends elsewhere, particularly in the White House, could operate

essentially not as a member of the Policy Planning Council, but as an independent, policy-

concerned individual, who was within the government but who was able to short-circuit some of

the limits which otherwise, in fact, were reducing the effectiveness of the Council as an

institution.” Oral History Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Interview, Washington DC, (June 28, 2001).

See Peter Grose, “East-West Talks on Europe Urged-U.S. Ex-Aide Says Blocs Should Confer

Directly,” The New York Times (December 18, 1967). Brzezinski’s parting recommendations were

published shortly thereafter in a prominent article in Foreign Affairs. Brzezinski noted that

burying the Cold War does not, and should not, mean the reviving Yalta. “Growing West

European integration will inevitably act as a magnet for an Eastern Europe increasingly self-

assertive and anxious to participate in the European adventure. This growing East-West

cooperation will not be confined to bilateral agreements; even more important will be the many

new multilateral bonds, with East European states increasingly wishing to become associated

with common all-European institutions and ventures. In effect, a looser all-European economic

community will be taking shape, with Western Europe as its more homogeneous core.” See

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Framework of East-West Reconciliation,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 46, no. 2

(January 1968) pp. 256-75.

Though Brzezinski’s concept of “peaceful engagement” was not enacted to the extent he

would have liked, he would later maintain that it did at least change the argument in

Washington.

I think that probably in the broadest sense my contribution in the ‘60s was to offer a more

systematic conceptualization of an alternative to the narrowly conceived but stand pat

Atlanticism on the one hand, and also to the then much more limited appeal, of essentially the

appeasement notion of accepting forever the division of Europe. I was offering a third way,

namely that without igniting a sharper division, and without accepting the existing division, one

could through peaceful engagement or deliberately manipulated conciliation, in fact change the

status quo, without participating a collapse of the of the existing status quo that would be violent.

So, in some ways what happened in the late 1980s and early 90s, was the fulfillment of that third

scenario.

Those days were still far off. In early 1968 Brzezinski returned to Columbia where he

would find that the Vietnam War had also had a very direct effect on the world of academia. The

war had led many in the intellectual community to see the United States and the Soviet Union as

“moral equivalents.” More extreme elements of this view accused the United States of having a

“sphere of influence” in Western Europe, not essentially different from the Soviet presence in

Eastern Europe. This view, once limited to a leftist fringe, gathered a large degree of credibility

among the “New Left” of the 1960s.

By the late 1960s a new group of “revisionist” U.S. diplomatic historians (though very

few with a firm background on the history of the Soviet Union) charged that the origins of the

Cold War were rooted not in Soviet Union’s occupation of Eastern Europe, but to America’s

insatiable quest for capital and markets, a development that forced an otherwise well-meaning

Stalin to consolidate his rule in Eastern Europe.

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

William Appleman Williams’ work The Tragedy of American Diplomacy was widely considered

to be the opening salvo in an academic debate that would rage for decades. Williams saw the

“tragedy” of American foreign diplomacy rooted in the “Open Door” trade policy of the late 19

century. The closing of the frontier of the 1890s, and Great Depression of the 1930s, led to a policy

designed to resolve capitalism’s “internal contradictions,” i.e.—overproduction and cyclical

depressions—without altering the system itself. First applied to secure equal access in China for

American goods and investments but quickly extended on a global scale, this policy, according to

the standard revisionist view, was based on the belief that American domestic well being was

Brzezinski’s scholarship came under an even more direct attack in the rapidly changing

field of Soviet studies. By the late 1960s many scholars would come to dismiss Brzezinski’s

totalitarian model as political weapon rather than the objective work of a serious scholar.

Brzezinski would also come under attack by a new cohort of Soviet scholars who claimed that

Lenin’s October Revolution was not a putsch carried out by a conspiratorial party but a popular

uprising carried out by the industrial classes. Their methodology sought to move away from

Brzezinski’s “totalitarian” view of an all-pervading state and instead focus on the laboring

“industrial masses” as the prime mover of Soviet history.

dependent on a continuous overseas economic expansion. Under the assumption that such

economic expansion was crucial, America’s postwar leaders came to see efforts by other powers

to obstruct this goal as a threat to the very existence of the American system. Stalin’s goals,

according to Wililams, were limited to three major objectives: friendly governments on Russia’s

western borders, guarantees against a resurgent Germany, and securing the economic

restructuring of the Soviet Union’s war-ravaged economy. On essentially all other matters,

Williams believed Stalin was flexible and generally inclined to cooperate with the United States.

See William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York, 1962). For a

skeptical view on the revisionist school see Adam Ulam, “Re-reading the Cold War,” Interplay

(March 1969), pp. 51-53.

According to one influential article of the time, “The study of communism has become so

pervaded with the values prevalent in the United States that we have not an objective and

accurate knowledge of communism but rather an ideologically distorted image. Not only our

theories, but the concepts we employ—e.g. ‘totalitarianism’—are value-laden.” Frederic Fleron,

“Soviet Area Studies and the Social Sciences: Some Methodological Problems in Communist

Studies,” Soviet Studies (January 1968), p. 339. For more criticisms of “the totalitarian model” see

Frederic J. Fleron, Communist Studies and the Social Sciences (Chicago, 1969). Also A.J. Groth, “The

‘Isms in Totalitarianism,” American Political Science Review, vol. 58, (1964), pp. 888-901; Robert

Tucker, “Towards a Comparative Politics of Movement Regimes,” American Political Science

Review, vol. 55, (1961), pp. 281-289; and Robert Tucker, “The Dictator and Totalitarianism,” in The

Soviet Political Mind, 2

ed., (New York, 1971), pp. 20-46. Les K. Adler and Thomas Paterson,

“Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of

Totalitarianism, 1930s-1950s,” American Historical Review, vol. LXXV (April, 1970), pp. 1046-1064.

For a defense of Brzezinski’s original theory see a later work by Jacques Rupnik, “Totalitarianism

Revisited,” in John Keane ed., Civil Society and the State (New York, 1988), pp. 263-289.

The shifts in Western scholarship coincided with changes in the direction of Soviet

historiography that followed the rise of the Brezhnev politburo. By the mid-1960s Soviet scholars

were instructed to devote more attention to the historic role of the “masses” (particularly

industrial labor) that had been neglected under Stalin who preferred to take full credit for Soviet

successes. The British historian Robert Conquest, the most noted authority on Stalin’s Great

Terror, once mused that for such historians “the best approach to the Soviet Union in the 1930s

was to avoid as far as possible the mass terror and its results, and to concentrate on other matters.

This involved studying everything that was happening to people except for their being starved to

death, executed or sent to camps or having close relatives so treated, and being forcibly

The implicit charge among many in this new generation of Soviet specialists was that

Brzezinski was a “reactionary” Polish émigré who was simply too emotional to be an effective

judge on the true nature of the Soviet Union. The most frequent attack on his “totalitarian model”

held that it might have some relevance to Nazi Germany, but not to a Soviet Union of the 1960s

that had clearly moved away from Stalin’s arbitrary use of terror to become a rather “normal” if

not “pluralist” state. Brzezinski would counter this argument by pointing out that Hitler and

Stalin represented only the most extreme instances of totalitarianism and that more emphasis

should have been placed on the “decay” variant of totalitarianism’s dynamics that would set in

once a totalitarian regime could no longer be run by outright terror.

Few scholars in the 1960s, however, were paying much attention to Brzezinski’s

predictions about the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed the academic focus on the

Soviet Union moved away from the “value laden” totalitarian model to focus on how the Soviet

Union had evolved into something of a “normal” state. The most popular academic theory in this

respect came to be known as “modernization theory.” As the name implied this approach

focused less on high politics and history, and more on the “sociological” and “developmental”

process that led the Soviet Union from rural backwardness to an “urbanized, industrial, educated

society” that was fully capable of evolving into a democratic state.

This idea of modernization

indoctrinated with a single and false account of their own lives.” Robert Conquest, “Reluctant

Converts: How the Revisionists are Slowly Coming Round to the Truth about Stalin,” Time

Literary Supplement (February 11, 1994), p. 7.

William Odom, “The Pluralist Mirage,” The National Interest (Spring 1993), p. 102. See Walter

Laqueur, “Is There Now, or Has There Ever Been, Such a Thing as Totalitarianism?,” Commentary

vol. 80 no. 4, (October 1985), p. 30. Brzezinski would often note that Hitler was a student of the

political practices initiated by Lenin, especially on how to construct a state based system of terror

backed by an elaborate secret police apparatus and the use of collective guilt as the justification

for large-scale social persecution. Brzezinski noted that although Hitler’s historical vision was

shaped by doctrines of race and Lenin’s of class warfare---in the end each strove to shape a

genocidal utopia and to subordinate society to a rigid ideological morality that justified virtually

any action that moved toward their historical missions. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control:

Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21

Century (New York, 1993), p. 30.

The Soviet model came to be viewed, in the words of an influential article, as a move “from

utopia to development,” in which the ideological goals of socialism had resulted in a “special

type of politically forced development.” See Richard Lowenthal, “Development versus Utopia in

was closely related to the idea of “convergence theory” which held that all states having

undergone the process of development—i.e., industrialization, urbanization, mass education---

would eventually “converge” to a point where they would become more or less

indistinguishable.

Brzezinski was among the most vocal critics of what he regarded as the intellectual

fashions of “modernization” and “convergence.” Brzezinski noted that any serious analysis of the

U.S. and Soviet systems must examine both the nature of the political system and the methods by

which the industrialization had been accomplished. In the end he argued that both theories

exaggerated the social importance of “industrialization” while overlooking the enormous

differences in the historical experiences of the United States and the Soviet Union. Brzezinski

concluded that as long as the Soviet Union was run by centralized political monopolies with an

inherent contempt for the rule of law there was little evidence to expect any true “convergence”

between the two systems.

Communist Policy,” in Chalmers Johnson, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Palo Alto, CA,

1970). This idea of the Soviet Union’s ability to “reform” to its original ideals would later spawn a

renewed focus on Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” (NEP) of the 1920s. It also led to the idea that

Stalin had betrayed Lenin’s original goals and that the system could be set “right” again with the

proper leadership. This was seen in a revisionist view of Nikolai Bukharin many scholars began

to view as the true heir to Lenin’s revolution. This was popularized after Princeton scholar

Stephen Cohen published a widely discussed biography of Bukharin with the underlying theme

was that the Soviet Union had greater prospects for evolutionary liberalism and that Bukharin

would have avoided Stalin’s terror and forced industrialization. In 1975 Cohen argued in a

conference paper that historians must separate Bolshevism from the excesses of Stalinism and

that it was the fault of Brzezinski’s totalitarian model that the two had become linked. Stephen F.

Cohen, “Bolshevism and Stalinism,” in Robert C. Tucker ed., Stalinism: Essays in Historical

Interpretation (New York, 1977), pp. 3-29. Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution:

A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (New York, 1974).

For a critical look at “Modernization” theory see Cyril E. Black, “Marxism and

Modernization,” Slavic Review, vol. 29, no. 2 (June 1970): pp. 182-86. Samuel P. Huntington,

“Modernization, Development, and Politics,” vol. 3, no. 3 (April 1971), pp. 283-322. William E.

Griffith, “The Pitfalls of the Theory of Modernization,” Survey vol. 33 no. 2, (June 1974) pp. 246-

258.

Brzezinski’s most thorough critique of convergence theory was outlined in Political Power:

USA/USSR, a book he co-wrote with Samuel Huntington in 1964. The authors noted that while

the Soviet Union may have become “industrialized” the methods to achieve it were constructed

along totalitarian lines which meant its institutions could not be simply “retooled” to serve

pluralist goals. The Soviet Union, according to the authors, had been “modernized” through

In the end Brzezinski’s criticism of “modernization” theory centered on a more simple

premise; that the Soviet system, for all its bravado about moving with the “ineluctable forces of

history,” was simply not modernizing. By the mid-1960s Brzezinski’s writings had moved

beyond the communist world to analyze the global revolution being brought forth by the rise of

computer automation. By the late 1960s it had become common among intellectual circles to

depict the United States as “reactionary” nation falling behind the more progressive forces in the

world. Brzezinski countered that the United States was at the vanguard of a “technetronic”

revolution that made it the only true “revolutionary” nation in the world.

Though few Americans even realized its historical significance, Brzezinski proposed the

world was on the eve of a technological transformation whose significance would dwarf the

importance of either the French or the Bolshevik revolutions. Brzezinski noted that no society had

ever experienced such dramatic socio-economic changes as that which occurred in America after

1945. Brzezinski cited various factors had contributed to this American Revolution. Among them

were the massive influx of ex-GIs into American universities, the social primacy of education, the

nexus of national power and modern science, the harnessing of nuclear energy, the federal

government emerging as a major sponsor of scientific investigation, television, the world’s most

modern highway system, the rapid growth in the aerospace industry, a uniquely effective instant

coercive social mobilization put forth by a highly disciplined and dictatorial political elite. In the

United States this development process was far more spontaneous, with national political

coordination emerging only after social, economic, and political pluralism had already taken root.

These patterns of development had thus resulted in a strikingly different relationship between

society and politics in each country. The American Revolution freed a society from the bonds of

an “irrelevant and restraining aristocratic order” and made possible its largely spontaneous

organic growth in the late 19

century. They noted that while Essen under the Nazis was similar

to Detroit in an economic and technological, as well as cultural, sense, this hardly prevented the

Nazis from imposing a system of mobilization and control that was clearly absent in Detroit.

Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, Political Power USA/USSR (New York: 1964), p.

422. For another critique of convergence theory see Leonard Shapiro, The Communist Party of the

Soviet Union (New York, 1971), pp. 628-29.

transcontinental telephone system—and finally, the appearance of modern computers that had

intermeshed these advanced features into the most modern high-tech society in the world.

Brzezinski saw the Soviet Union moving in a rather different direction. This view was

articulated most starkly in a 1967 article entitled “Communism is Dead” which suggested that

Leninism had become an “obsolete dogma” with little relevance in the “novel psychological and

scientific dilemmas of the post-industrial, technetronic age.”

Brzezinski would frequently note that much of this was simply due to the constraints

imposed by the Soviet system. Indeed Stalin had dictated in the late 1940s that computers were

part of “a capitalist plot for increasing the exploitation of the working class.”

Accompanying

Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956 came the uncomfortable realization that computers

were indeed the key to modern economic development. The result was the inevitable full-scale

campaign, so familiar in Russian history, to mount a breakneck effort to “catch up.” But the

Soviets would find that high technology, unlike the industrialization process, could not be

advanced with the use of “shock workers” and the centralized dictates from Moscow.

All of this led Brzezinski to suggest that the Soviet Union had entered an irreparable state

of system decay. In 1966 the journal Problems of Communism dedicated an entire issue to the future

course of the Soviet Union. So dire was Brzezinski’s scenario that he was asked to elaborate on

his view in a follow up discussion in the same journal:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “America in the Technetronic Age,” Encounter (January, 1968).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Communism is Dead,” The New Leader, vol. L, no. 15 (July 17, 1967), pp.

10-13.

See Woodford McClellan, Russia: The Soviet Period and After (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1998), p.

222.

Ibid., p. 222. At the same time Soviet planners, managers, and military leaders feared that

computers would be effectively used to tighten production oversight. Indeed the use of old-

fashioned adding machines (and in some cases rudimentary abacuses) allowed local managers to

engaged in a degree of “creative accounting” that told the central authorities what they wanted to

hear regarding production quotas handed down from the central authorities. These inflated

statistics were then widely published and used by Western advocates of “modernization” theory

to tout the success of the Soviet Union’s advance to modernity.

It is my estimate that the Soviet Communist Party, having been for some years the source

of social innovation, has now become a brake on social progress with the Soviet Union. The

Soviet society has acquired the wherewithal for further growth, and the bureaucratic and

dogmatic restraints imposed on it by the ruling party have become dysfunctional to that growth.

Thus a gap is opening between the society and the political system, in some ways reminiscent of

the late Tsarist period. This condition is aggravated by a decline in the quality of the Soviet

political elite, and by the growing assertiveness of various other key groups…The political elite,

increasingly bureaucratized, self-centered and aging, is unable to respond effectively either

through terror or reform. The result is stagnation—which, unless corrected by major institutional

reforms, will lead to degeneration.

Brzezinski would proceed to note that this was not the only problem facing the Soviet

Union. He argued, as he had some twenty years before in his M.A. thesis at McGill University,

that academics too often overlooked the basic fact that the Soviet Union was not a single entity

and was almost certain to confront periodic uprisings from its multitude of conquered

nationalities.

“This omission,” noted Brzezinski, “it seems to me, is indicative of the inclination of

many Western scholars of Soviet affairs to minimize what I fear may be potentially a very

explosive issue in the Soviet polity. We still live in an age of nationalism, and my own highly

generalized feeling is that it is going to be exceedingly difficult for the Soviet Union to avoid

having some of its many nationalities go through a phase of assertive nationalism. History

teaches us, be it in Algeria or in Indonesia or in Africa that these demands grow rather than

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Reflections on the Soviet System,” Problems of Communism (May-June

1968), vol. XVII, p. 44. It is interesting to compare the similarity of Brzezinski’s analyses of the

Soviet empire in the late 1960s and accounts that were later received which much greater acclaim.

This is particularly true with Paul Kennedy’s 1987 work The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

Though it was not the fault of the author it should be noted that Kennedy’s work received far

more publicity with his view that the United States and the Soviet Union were in a similar state of

decline. See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, 1987), pp. 488-514.

For additional insights into the Soviet nationalities, see Arthur Rubenstein, Soviet Foreign Policy

Since World War II, (Boston, 1985), pp. 96-97. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “The Dialectics of

Nationalism in the USSR,” Problems of Communism, vol. XXIII, (May-June 1974), pp. 1-22. For a

more succinct account of the neglect of the nationalities in the West, see Edward L. Keenan, “A

Majority of Suppressed Minorities-Soviet Time Bomb,” The New Republic (August 21 and 28,

1976), pp. 17-21.

decline. If they are not met or are suppressed, it is likely that the demands will become sharper

and more self-assertive. If they are satisfied, they will grow with the eating.”

Brzezinski concluded that while everything pointed to a continued growth in Soviet

military power there was a growing possibility that the Soviet political and economic system

would not withstand a protracted rivalry with the United States. To Brzezinski it was the job of

the United States to help convince the Soviet Union that either rebuilding an “anti-imperialist

communist community” or a reliance on military expenditures would not serve the long-term

interests of the Soviet Union. Brzezinski noted it was imperative that the “second major nuclear

power does not remain an increasingly antiquated despotism, a vestigial remnant of 19

century

Brzezinski, “Reflections on the Soviet System,” p. 48. In 1982 the historian John Lewis Gaddis

produced Strategies of Containment, a work that has since become recognized as a classic in the

field of U.S. diplomatic history. In his concluding chapter on the Carter Administration Gaddis

presented a comparison between Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. “Kissinger from the

beginning of his career had articulated a remarkably consistent view of international affairs: one

could read A World Restored (published in 1957) and find in it a generally reliable guide to the

policies Kissinger would seek to implement a decade and half later. Brzezinski’s writings showed

no such depth: there was instead, as one observer has put it, an ‘enduring penchant for

fashionable issues and concepts that are adopted or discarded in the light of changing

circumstances…an unbecoming reliance on the intellectual cliché of the moment.’ Gaddis went

on to note: “’The respected political writer, Elizabeth Drew, has noted pointedly: ‘Of all the many

people I have discussed the subject of Brzezinski with, hardly any have used the word

thoughtful.’” John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, (Oxford, 1982), pp. 349-350. It is thus

interesting to compare Brzezinski’s rather prophetic observations in the 1960s with Gaddis’

observations after the fall of the Soviet Union. Gaddis wrote in 1992 “Given what we now know

about the inadequacies of Marxist systems, one wonders why it took so long for this to happen.

Several reasons suggest themselves: that command economies work reasonably well during the

initial stages of industrialization, and that it was not until the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

began to move beyond those stages that the deficiencies of Marxism-Leninism became apparent;

that the coincidence of de-colonization with the onset of the Cold War gave the Soviet model an

appeal in newly independent Third World countries that it would not otherwise have had, that

the energy crisis in the West during the 1970s may have magnified the weakness of market

economies and conceded—for a time at least—those of command economies; and that neither the

Soviet Union nor its satellites possessed effective mechanisms for replacing aging leaders and the

discredited policies they perpetuated. Only death could do that, and it keeps its own schedule.

As a result, it was not until the 1980s that a consensus as to the superiority of market economics—

and with it a sense of the triumph of democratic politics—began to develop. Underlying tectonic

forces had been pointing in that direction for some time, but it took time for the blinders that had

obscured those processes to drop away. That finally happened in 1989; suddenly it became

obvious to everyone (with the exception of a few isolated holdouts like Fidel Castro and Kim Il-

sung) that economic progress and centralized authority simply do not mesh.” John Lewis Gaddis,

The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (New

York, 1992), pp. 160-161.

ideology and of early industrial bureaucratism, committed to domestic and international goals of

fading relevance to the new realities.”

Though Brzezinski now carried the unfashionable moniker of a dogmatic anti-

communist, he continued to argue that the best path for the Soviet Union was not outright

revolution, but a gradual move toward a more humanist version of socialism. “It is no

exaggeration to say,” noted Brzezinski, “though some anti-Communists may be loathe to admit

this---that the peace of mankind depends in large measure on the Soviet Union’s return to the

occidental Marxist tradition, from which the more oriental Leninism-Stalinism had diverted it;

this need not necessarily involve the outright abandonment of Marxism.”

In any case Brzezinski’s rather optimistic scenario for the United States seemed out of

place as the United States entered that memorable year of 1968. The Vietnam War had ripped the

nation apart and Lyndon Johnson was bound to pay a political price. On January 31, 1968,

Vietcong and North Vietnamese army regulars launched a coordinated attack known as the “Tet

Offensive” on U.S. backed strongholds throughout South Vietnam. Though the offensive was

eventually repelled, it came as a shock to Americans who had been assured by Johnson the

previous month that there was “light at the end of the tunnel” in the war.

Johnson was now confronted with a major decision on how to proceed in Vietnam.

Following Tet an increasing number of “doves” began to advocate an outright withdrawal from

Vietnam while more vocal “hawks” were urging the U.S. to simply end the war with the use of

nuclear weapons. General William Westmoreland, commander of America’s military forces,

argued that the North Vietnamese forces had thrown everything they had into Tet and insisted

that he could finish the job if he was provided an additional 206,000 soldiers.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Peace and Power: Looking Toward the 1970s,” Encounter vol. 31, No. 5,

(November 1968), p. 11.

Ibid, p. 11.

Robert Divine, Since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Recent American History (New York, 1985),

pp. 159-160.

Before considering Westmoreland’s request, Johnson sought the counsel of his new

Defense Secretary Clark Clifford. Most political observers believed Clifford was a “hawk” on the

war and had been selected to replace the wavering Robert McNamara the previous month largely

for this reason. But Clifford was among the many, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had

begun to doubt the utility of carrying on the war in its current state. Before considering General

Westmoreland’s request for more troops Clifford ordered a comprehensive study on the war.

In February 1968 Brzezinski traveled to Vietnam as part of this fact-finding mission. Since

the early 1960s Brzezinski had maintained that the U.S. presence in Vietnam was necessary to

disprove the Chinese thesis that the United States was a “paper tiger.” The trip to Vietnam led

him to conclude that this mission was complete as far as the American public would tolerate it

and he recommended the United States begin a process of disengagement. Brzezinski also began

to articulate this view in the popular media. “If we want to win a complete victory in Vietnam,”

Brzezinski noted in early 1968, “we would have to go in with a million and a half men and make

a massive effort. It would be totally out of proportion to the stakes at issue, and this country

wouldn’t support it.”

“I concluded that the way we were waging the war we could never win,” Brzezinski

recalled years later, “and therefore I felt we ought to disengage. I thought until 1968 that the

United States should be actively engaged and should prevail, even if necessary by invading the

North. By ’68 I concluded that we were over-Americanizing the war. My trip to Vietnam led to

the view that we were doing too much and were giving the South Vietnamese a disincentive to

do what they needed to do---in fact encouraging them to do less and letting us carry the war.”

In February of 1968 Brzezinski sent a confidential memo to Defense Secretary Clifford

recommending the United States begin a substantial disengagement from the war in Vietnam:

Ibid., p. 160.

“U.S. Will Be Involved for Rest of Century,” U.S. News and World Report (February 26, 1968).

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001).

The War in Vietnam: For a Balance between U.S. Goals and U.S. Means. 1.

Why are we in

Vietnam? The U.S. involvement has a two-fold purpose. A. to promote regional stability in

Southeast Asia; B.

to prevent the deliberate, externally sponsored effort to take over South

Vietnam through the so-called “national liberation” Communist strategy. 2.

What have we

accomplished? a. The major regional objective is well underway to being attained. Even a

cursory comparison of conditions prevailing today in Burma, Thailand, Malaya, Singapore and

Indonesia with those prevailing three years ago shows phenomenal progress toward greater self-

assurance and regional cooperation. The local objective, the prevention of communist take-over,

is still being contested. Its steady pursuit can only be assured if

we do not lose sight of the

basically preventative purpose of our initial involvement. This requires being candid and realistic

with the American people, and shaping our military tactics in keeping with our goals. 3.

Public

support for the war. a. It is waning because public expectations of peace or victory were

stimulated by ill-considered statements and subsequently refuted by self-evident events. The fact

is that conditions for a truly peaceful settlement (and not merely a transparent cover for a

fundamental concession by one side to the other) are now roughly as good as those in Spain in

1938! The chances of winning a real military victory with the present level of U.S. manpower

committed to Vietnam are not much higher. To win such a victory, we would need to commit

considerably greater forces and in the process we would also have to change the purpose of our

commitment to Vietnam to that of winning a clear-cut victory through U.S. efforts. It is doubtful

that the public would support this and it is even more doubtful that such a massive effort would

be either worth the price, or, short of a brutal application of U.S. might, any more likely to

succeed than the efforts so far. b. In appealing to the public, the Administration should

emphasize two key points: that our purpose is essentially a negative one, to offset the North’s

aggression so that South Vietnam can win its civil war; and that, in any case, given the kind of

world we live in, we will have to face the fact that occasionally the U.S. will have to be involved

to some degree in some sporadic violence somewhere during the rest of the century.

Brzezinski’s changing views on Vietnam did not make him any more popular with the

student demonstrators who had come to dominate the nation’s campuses in the late 1960s. In the

spring of 1968, campus demonstrations, student violence and building seizures became

increasingly commonplace after which student radicals forced deans and administrative officials

to submit to their “non-negotiable” demands. After serving a year in the Johnson State

Department, Brzezinski was seen as nothing less than a “war criminal” and purveyor of

“genocide” in the eyes of the more militant student demonstrators.

Confidential Memo from Zbigniew Brzezinski to Clark Clifford (February 14, 1968), Personal

Archives of Zbigniew Brzezinski (Washington, DC).

The meaning of the term “totalitarian” became a controversial topic among leftist groups in

the 1960s. The spiritual icon of the New Left was the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse who

insisted that it was not the Soviet, but the American society that was in fact truly “totalitarian.”

At a New York debate in 1963, Tom Hayden, one of the founders of the left-wing Students for a

Brzezinski was one of the few intellectuals at the time to engage in direct intellectual

combat with the New Left. He believed that the New Left was not unlike the totalitarian

movements of the 1930s and he failed to see how its “democratic” rhetoric could be reconciled

with its intolerance and self-righteous denunciation of anybody disagreeing with their views.

He observed that the vast majority of the New Left was a negative force more concerned

with shocking the middle class “bourgeoisie” than working to alleviate the very real crises then

besetting American society. In this respect the Left’s “political” violence was rewarded by

favorable publicity from the middle-aged supporters while little attention was given to those

students taking more productive routes, such as those serving in VISTA programs or the Peace

Corps.

Brzezinski saw support of the New Left from the liberal faculty members as a part of a

reflexive mentality among American intellectuals who feared being “outflanked on the left,” no

matter how radical or extreme the cause.

In his most controversial statement Brzezinski argued that the validity of a “revolution”

must be determined by whether it was “historically relevant.” Some revolutions, Brzezinski

argued, were dynamic and forward looking. This was the case in the French Revolution 1789, the

1848 “Spring of Nations” in Europe, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the American civil

rights movement of the 1960s. In turn Brzezinski argued that some “revolutions” in history were

Democratic Society (SDS), engaged in a angry exchange with Irving Howe, the social-democratic

editor of the journal Dissent. Hayden argued that the Soviet bloc states could not be called

“totalitarian.” Howe, in apparent disbelief, replied “‘What would you call them, Tom?”

According to SDS member Todd Gitlin, Howe’s comment filled Hayden “with rage and

contempt.” The word “totalitarian” that had appeared in the original SDS constitution in a

cautionary context was removed in 1965 as a “relic of a bygone era.” See Todd Giltin, The Sixties:

Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York, 1987), p. 190.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York, 1970),

p. 227. In 1970 Tom Wolfe referred to this phenomenon less politely. Wolfe coined the term

“radical chic” to describe a party given by composer Leonard Bernstein for members of the Black

Panthers. Wolfe’s article exposed the fashionable trend of the late 1960s of the rich and famous to

endorse radical causes while they retained a rather posh lifestyle. Wolfe noted that there were

two rules of “radical chic.“ One rule is that nostalgie de la boure---i.e., the styles of romantic, raw-

vital Low Rent primitives---are good; and middle-class, whether black or white, is bad.” A second

“rule” for “radical chic” was the conviction “that no matter what, one should always maintain a

proper address, a proper scale of interior decoration, and servants.” Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic:

That Party at Lenny’s,” New York (June 8, 1970).

in reality “reactionary spasms” attempting to cling to a bygone era. Brzezinski argued the New

Left, along with China’s Red Guards, should be listed in the latter category.

In 1967 Brzezinski would write a controversial article in The New Republic denouncing the

student “revolution” as a “counter-revolution.” In his view, the “revolutionaries” were more akin

to modern-day Luddites unable or unwilling to adapt to the changes occurring in post-industrial

America. Brzezinski claimed it was the United States—not China or the Soviet Union--that was

the world’s true revolutionary nation--serving as a vanguard into the uncertain age of high

technology and computer automation. In failing to assimilate intellectually to the novelty of the

current American transition, the New Left had made itself an essentially “negative and

obsolescent” force.

“Above all I just didn’t take them very seriously,” Brzezinski recalled years later. “They

saw themselves as Trotsky and Paris Communards, and stuff like that. Anybody who has a

European history and had seen what happened this century knew that there is a great difference

between the real blood and guts of revolution that involves risk and personal sacrifice and this

kind of posturing by rich liberal kids pretending to be something that we didn’t understand.

Well, you know, they’ve all grown up and a lot of them are very sensible civil people, but it terms

of their conduct and their sloganeering, and their mannerisms, I thought they were a bunch of

spoiled brats. And I still feel that way. I labeled them as Luddites in the New Republic article.

Well, they weren’t probably as Luddite as I thought. But they were kind of spoiled brats

basically.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The American Transition,” The New Republic vol. 157, no. 26, (December

23, 1967) pp. 18-21. Brzezinski saw the “alienation” afflicting students in the nation’s better

universities might even act as a social equalizer by opening up career opportunities for those who

had long been denied access to an advanced education. Brzezinski noted that many blue-collar or

minority families were sending their first generation of children to college for the first time. Long

deprived of social advancement, this faction of America was rather eager to partake in the long-

range opportunities held out by the new scientific-technological society. These people, Brzezinski

argued, were simply not convinced by Herbert Marcuse’s postulation that “more opportunity

plus more democracy equals less freedom.” Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, p. 234.

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000).

By contrast the student militants at Columbia in 1968 took Brzezinski very seriously.

Doubtless, the radicals preferred to be critiqued by artists from the world of country-western

music and local law enforcement officials. Brzezinski’s analysis was harder to dismiss. His

suggestion that the student “revolutionaries” were not the center of the earth---but were in fact

“irrelevant”---was not very popular with the more vocal factions of the New Left.

Brzezinski had grown increasingly impatient as his lectures at the School of International

Affairs were frequently interrupted by bomb threats and forced building evacuations. Adam

Ulam, a Soviet specialist at Harvard, recalled his experience as a guest lecturer in one of

Brzezinski’s Columbia seminars. “Sure enough the bomb-warning bell rang,” Ulam recalled,

“and under instructions not to use elevators, we started down the stairs. After three floors Zbig

said ‘to hell with it’ and we went back to complete the class, with few defections among the

students.”

On another occasion protesters marched toward Brzezinski’s office parading a pig by the

snout, chanting “A pig, a pig, for Professor Zbig!” Brzezinski, concerned about the levels of

violence seen in some recent student demonstrations, called the dean’s office in order to disperse

the crowd gathering in front of his office. Brzezinski’s would encounter a small problem in his

request. “The deans were all scared shitless,” he recalled.

100

Brzezinski was thus surprised when two police cars screeched to a halt in front of his

office and ordered the crowd to disperse. “I was looking through the window and then I see

police cars with sirens pulling up and stopping the students, cops jumping out gestulating. I said

to myself the dean had finally mustered some courage to call the cops.”

In reality Brzezinski found out that the police had been summoned by a complaint from a

concerned citizen about the mistreatment of the pig. “It was some little old lady on the street,” he

recalled, “who saw the pig being dragged on a rope and she called the SPCA, and they called the

Adam Ulam, Understanding the Cold War: A Historian’s Personal Reflections (Charlottesville, VA,

2000), p. 125,

100

Dobbs, Madeline Albright, p. 214.

cops. So the cops were there to protect not me, but the pig.” The students returned to Brzezinski’s

office a few days later (without the pig) for another confrontation. Growing weary of the daily

confrontations Brzezinski came downstairs and confronted the crowd. “You have ten minutes in

which to ask me any question you want,” he told them, “and then I have to go back to my office

and plan some more genocide.”

Brzezinski recalled the comment led to divisions within the

ranks of the protesters. “Some kind of laughed sheepishly,” he said, “then someone said ‘don’t

laugh!’ That’s what he does!’ Then they all started arguing with each other.”

101

In April of 1968 Columbia University was taken over by student radicals. Brzezinski

watched with disgust and amusement as the campus was plastered with portraits of Che

Guevara and graffiti that stated “Lenin won, Fidel won, we will win!” For the next week a Red

Flag was seen flying over several university buildings. The President’s office was occupied and

the students rifled through papers and defecated on the desk. The students refused to budge

until they were granted amnesty.

The chief spokesman for the campus seizure was Mark Rudd, a 20-year old self-

proclaimed advocate of “total revolution.” At the outset of protest, Rudd wrote an “open letter”

to Grayson Kirk, the 64-year old president of Columbia. Rudd’s letter claimed that the student

revolution was based on “our meaningless studies, our identity crisis, and our revulsion with

being cogs in your corporate machines. If we win we will take control of your world, your

corporations, your university, and attempt to mold a world in which we and other people can

live like human beings.” Rudd’s letter to Kirk concluded with the Black Panther slogan eagerly

adopted by Columbia’s student radicals: “Up against the wall, mother-fucker, this is a stick

up.”

102

101

Interview, Washington DC, (March 29, 2000). Brzezinski’s “genocide” comment would

become well known and was later often used out of context in negative journalistic profiles.

102

Rudd was presumably among those student radicals that Brzezinski considered a “spoiled

brat.” Rudd came from a middle-class Jewish background and spent his pre-revolutionary career

as a troop leader in the Boy Scouts and goaltender on his high school soccer team. Rudd’s parents

had escaped from Poland shortly before World War II. Rudd’s father (whose surname was

100

After a week the university called in hundreds of New York City police who evicted the

demonstrators. The university shut down for the duration of the semester. In the ensuing weeks

1,500 Columbia students would sign petitions denouncing the “tasteless, inconsiderate and

illegal” protest.

103

Brzezinski remained a popular professor among the less radical students. Among them

was a thirty-year old graduate student named Madeline Albright, who was preparing to defend

her PhD oral exams in the spring of 1968 and became annoyed at the constant demonstrations

that blocked her access to the library. Albright’s dim view of the student radicals was also

attributed to the fact that the United States granted her family asylum after the 1948 communist

coup left her native Czechoslovakia in the grip of a hard line Stalinist regime. In the late 1970s

Brzezinski would appoint Albright to his national security staff in the Carter White House that

shortened from the Polish “Rudnicki”) was a Polish émigré who had settled in New Jersey where

he founded a profitable real estate business. Brzezinski’s administrative assistant, Christine

Dodson, recalled a scene in which Rudd’s mother embarrassed the leader of “total revolution” by

arriving at one demonstration with a plastic bag full of chicken soup. “Mark is used to having his

chicken soup,” she explained. Dobbs, p. 214.

103

“Columbia at Bay,” Newsweek (May 6, 1968), p. 43. Brzezinski responded to the events at

Columbia with another article to the New Republic entitled “Revolution and Counterrevolution

(But Not Necessarily About Columbia!).” This article, even more controversial than the first, was

a scathing indictment of the student radicals whose “violence and revolutionary slogans are

merely—and sadly—the death rattle of the historical irrelevants.” In the end Brzezinski argued

that the authorities were fighting a losing battle in hoping to appease the more radical demands

of the New Left. “The revolutionary leaders by their probes, seek to identify weak spots and

provoke a head-on direct clash. The critical phase occurs when a weak spot has been identified,

appealing issues articulated, and the probe becomes a confrontation. At this stage the purpose of

revolutionary activity is to legitimize violence. If the initial act of violence is suppressed quickly

by established authorities, the chances are that the revolutionary act itself will gain social

opprobrium; society generally tends to be conservative, even in a situation of crisis of values.

Thus a revolutionary act is likely to be condemned by most, provided it is rapidly suppressed. If

the revolutionary act endures, then automatically it gains legitimacy with the passage of time.

Enduring violence thus becomes a symbol of the authorities’ disintegration and collapse, and it

prompts in turn further escalation of support for the revolutionary act.” Zbigniew Brzezinski,

“Revolution and Counterrevolution (But Not Necessarily About Columbia!),” The New Republic

(June 1, 1968), p. 23. Brzezinski’s article generated a storm of controversy, including the

suggestion that he himself was a “Stalinist.” See in particular A. Mendel, “Robots and Rebels,”

The New Republic (January 11, 1969).

101

began her rise to become the United States’ first female Secretary of State under President

Clinton

104

In the end Brzezinski believed the youthful radical movements were a largely transient

fad. Yet he also understood that it had revived the more conservative factions in the United States

that represented a severe threat to the unity of Democratic Party. Brzezinski feared the damage

done by the New Left had discredited traditional American liberalism in the same manner that

Joseph McCarthy had on liberal anti-communism in the 1950s. As Brzezinski noted in 1968:

When old values no longer remain secure and when new values haven’t been defined,

small groups and sects become absolutely obsessive in their motivations. The short-range effect

of violence could be to push the country toward the Right and to produce a far greater

preoccupation with what can be called ‘law and order’ and that in effect can become repression.

It seems to me that anyone who is interested in preserving liberal, democratic order in the United

States ought to be particularly insistent right now on combining social change with orderly

procedure. Unless we combine both we will have initially some change and violence and later on

no change accompanied by repression. It seems to me you cannot be selective about violence.

Violence, in most cases, is socially destructive. There is nothing easier in society than to be a

revolutionary or a reactionary. Both are extremist Manicheans—those who see all of reality

reduced to a confrontation between simple good and simple evil.

105

Indeed, as the Democratic Party was ripped apart by the Vietnam War, the more

conservative voices of Richard Nixon and George Wallace were campaigning in the summer of

1968 on the promise to bring “law and order” back to America. On the brighter side 1968 would

also witness the emergence of a reform movement in Czechoslovakia that would seek to move

away from the Leninist dictates of the Soviet Union and promote a form of socialism with a

“human face.” The emergence of an “evolutionary” rather than a “revolutionary” movement in

Eastern Europe was the ideal scenario outlined in Brzezinski’ original idea of peaceful

engagement. The question would soon become whether the Soviet Union would follow suit and

104

Brzezinski had known Albright’s father, Josef Korbel, from the academic circles. Korbel was a

Czechoslovakian diplomat before the communist takeover in 1948 after which he became a

professor of international relations at the University of Denver. There, he would become a mentor

for Condoleeza Rice who went on to become George W. Bush’s National Security Adviser.

Dobbs, p. 220.

105

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Current, (February 1968), p. 33.

102

become more affiliated with the “community of developed nations”—or seek to stifle the

reformist impulses coming from Prague in the name of Leninist centralism. On this question,

Brzezinski found little cause for optimism.

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CHAPTER THREE: 1968

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s return to Columbia in early 1968 coincided with the outset of one

of the most tumultuous political years in American history. In the summer of 1967 the liberal

activist Allard Lowenstein, began a search for an antiwar candidate to challenge Lyndon Johnson

for the 1968 nomination. The most obvious candidate was Robert Kennedy who had come to

oppose the war and had a long personal feud with Johnson dating back to the early 1960s. Yet

when Kennedy hesitated, the antiwar factions united behind a less glamorous choice. In late

November 1967 Eugene McCarthy, an iconoclastic senator from Minnesota, announced that he

would challenge Johnson for the Democratic nomination.

For the first few months of his candidacy McCarthy was dismissed as little more than a

protest candidate. But the Tet Offensive had dealt a severe political blow to President Johnson. In

mid-March McCarthy shocked the sitting president by polling a remarkable 42 percent in the

New Hampshire primary. Five days later, an already wounded Johnson saw his worst nightmare

come true when Robert Kennedy jumped into the race. Though Kennedy’s entry embittered

many of McCarthy’s youthful supporters, his charisma and antiwar views were thought to

present an even stronger challenge to Lyndon Johnson. On the evening of March 31, Johnson

appeared before the nation and made the shocking announcement that he would not seek

another term in office.

Brzezinski was among many centrist Democrats who threw their support behind Vice

President Hubert Humphrey who was now the de facto incumbent in the race. Brzezinski had

Jules Witcover, The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America (New York, 1997), pp. 139-

144.

104

become acquainted with Humphrey during his tenure in the State Department. The Vice

President would visit the Brzezinskis’ Georgetown home on occasion to socialize and discuss the

broader questions of foreign policy. Indeed in the early 1960s Humphrey had been one of the

more vocal supporters of Brzezinski’s policy of “peaceful engagement” as reflected in a glowing

endorsement from the then Senator Humphrey that appeared on the back cover of Alternative to

Partition.

Yet Humphrey was a damaged political candidate in the increasingly bizarre political

environment that was 1968. In 1948 Humphrey emerged as a liberal of national prominence when

he proposed a civil rights plank be added to the Democratic platform. The move enraged

prominent Southern “Dixiecrats” who broke from the Democratic Party to nominate South

Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond as their candidate for the new “States Rights Party.”

Humphrey had established a reputation as the leading liberal voice in the U.S. Senate before he

was selected as President Johnson’s running mate in 1964.

By 1968, however, Hubert Humphrey’s once saintly image among liberals had been

stained by his association with Lyndon Johnson and his support for the Vietnam War. When

Humphrey officially declared his candidacy in April, McCarthy supporters were quick to

denounce the Vice President as simply part of “the system.” Roving bands of hecklers met

Humphrey at every campaign stop with the chant “Dump the Hump!” as they lifted signs

scrawled with overstated political statements such as “Hitler, Hubert and Hirohito.”

In one of

Humphrey’s first campaign appearances at Kent State University in Ohio several demonstrators

Humphrey’s endorsement read: “Professor Brzezinski’s views and recommendations deserve

the widest circulation. He does not prescribe pat solutions to complex problems; rather, his

recommendations are clearly designed to turn the complexities of interbloc relationships to our

benefit and, consequently, to the benefit of the free world. Mr. Brzezinski’s formula for an active,

dynamic policy of peaceful engagement should be studied and, if possible, should be

implemented by our responsible officials.” Congressional Record—Senate, vol. 108, part 4 (March

28, 1962), p. 5261.

Albert Eisele, Almost to the Presidency (Blue Earth, Minn, 1972).

Witcover, The Year the Dream Died, p. 284.

105

walked out of a rally when Humphrey denounced the violent student takeovers that had recently

taken place at Columbia and other campuses. “This is amazing,” Humphrey declared. “The last

time anybody walked out on me was in 1948 when I pleaded for civil rights at the Democratic

Convention.”

In addition to the challenge from McCarthy, Humphrey’s campaign had even greater

concerns about the magnetic political appeal of Robert F. Kennedy. In 1964 Kennedy had run

successfully for a New York Senate seat from which he used to speak out increasingly against the

war in Vietnam. Kennedy had also developed a passionate following among minority groups

and those hoping that he could reunite the Democratic Party behind the old glamour of Camelot.

Yet it was not to be. In the late night hours of June 6 Kennedy was assassinated in a Los Angeles

hotel shortly after winning the California primary. The tragedy shocked a nation that was still

coming to terms with the shooting of Martin Luther King Jr. in April. A country that seemed so

united behind the liberal consensus of the 1950s was in the midst of its greatest domestic crisis

since the Civil War.

That same June Vice President Humphrey asked Brzezinski to assume direction of his

foreign policy task forces. According to Brzezinski the campaign was hardly united at the time. “I

was invited to be the head of his foreign policy task force in the summer of ’68, during the

presidential campaign itself. I was then asked to come down and take charge of the task force,

working with John Reilly and Ted Van Dyk, who was Humphrey’s principal foreign policy

“HHH—Hope, Hum, Heal,” Newsweek (May 13, 1968), p. 32. Humphrey’s campaign would in

fact take positions that in previous years would have been considered somewhat radical. He

argued that police force, no matter how strongly applied, could not end the violence that had

afflicted the nation. “We can only cut crime,” he declared, “by getting at its causes: slums,

unemployment, run-down schools and houses. This is where crime begins and that is where it

must end.” Although he advocated “vigorous federal support of state and local law

enforcement,” he cautioned that the attack against crime “must not jeopardize hard-won liberties

of our citizens.” To meet the problems of poverty and urban decay, Humphrey called for a

“Marshall Plan for the cities based on self-help, local initiative, coordinated planning, and private

capital.” Ibid., p. 32.

Witcover, The Year the Dream Died, pp. 251-260.

106

adviser. There was some sort of internal rivalry between them, and they invited me to come

down and be the head of the task force from the outside.”

Johnson’s continued hawkish stance on Vietnam continued to bitterly divide the

Democratic Party. Brzezinski had come aboard the campaign in June convinced that Humphrey

had to distance himself from Johnson on Vietnam. On July 25, Brzezinski was present at a

Vietnam task force meeting that attempted to outline a compromise plank for the Democratic

platform. The goal was to give Humphrey some “breathing room” on the issue without offending

President Johnson. But it would not be an easy task. As Brzezinski recalled in a 1971 interview:

We had a special meeting of the task force, and a few outsiders, with the Vice President,

and I participated in it. We drafted a statement, after a great many discussions and long

deliberations, indicating the Vice President would favor a cease-fire, and in any case, a

suspension of the air attacks against the North. And this would have meant a major departure

from the established policy. After the Vice President discussed this issue, I had a session with

him, and we agreed that this was the right thing to do, that this was politically timely,

internationally, and not damaging to American interests, and that he should issue a statement. It

was agreed that he would show it to the President, naturally and quite properly so, but I

remember saying to the Vice President before he went to see the President—I did not go with

him—that he should make it clear to the President that he’s showing him the statement not in his

capacity as a Vice President, but in his capacity as a presidential candidate of the Democratic

Party—that this was a statement that he was issuing in that capacity.

Huntington, who had known Brzezinski since their early days at Harvard, recalled the

difficulty of getting Humphrey to part with Johnson on the war. “We worked on a variety of

papers and drafted a statement for Humphrey in mid-July advocating a suspension of the

bombing. We had a long morning meeting at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington with

Humphrey. He went over each word and he finally said ‘ok, we’ll go with it as it is now.’ He then

said ‘I’m going to the White House the day after tomorrow for a dinner, and after the dinner I’ll

tell the President that I’m going to issue this statement.’ Well, Humphrey chickened out.

Somebody on his staff told Johnson that Humphrey was going to issue this statement and

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

“Oral History Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski,” General Services Administration—National

Archives and Records Service Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (Austin, 1971), p. 23.

107

Johnson took the initiative and accused Humphrey of deserting the Administration’s position

and threatened him, at least implicitly, that he would withdraw his endorsement for him. So

Humphrey did not issue that statement.”

Indeed Johnson was holding firm on Vietnam. Humphrey would later recall what

transpired in his meeting with Johnson. “I showed it to him, went all over it with him. His

reaction was, in substance, ‘Hubert, if you do this, I’ll just have to be opposed to it, and say so.

Secondly, Hubert, you ought not to do this because we have some things under way [in the Paris

negotiations] now that can lead to very important developments. Thirdly, Hubert, I have two

sons-in-law over there, and I consider this proposal to be a direct slap at their safety and at what

they are trying to do.”

Richard Nixon was the most immediate beneficiary of Humphrey’s hesitation on

Vietnam. Nixon’s political career appeared finished after he lost a bitterly contested race for the

California governorship in 1962. Yet the Goldwater debacle in 1964 would ironically permit

Nixon to reposition himself as a “voice of moderation” in Republican politics. Nixon thus entered

1968 as an “elder statesman” with claims to be a more relaxed “new Nixon.”

Nixon’s primary opponent in the Republican race was thought to be New York governor

Nelson Rockefeller. Brzezinski had become socially acquainted with both Nelson and David

Telephone Interview (September 10, 2002). Brzezinski recalled Humphrey’s reluctance to break

with Johnson in a 1971 interview. “Well, I don’t really know what transpired. I think there are

other people who know better than I, like Ted Van Dyk and others, but I gather that the Vice

President did not show the statement to the President that, even though the opportunity was

there, that it took some time to actually show it, and that then he didn’t go through with it for

quite some time because of the President’s very obvious disapproval and disagreement….I think

this was largely a function also of Mr. Humphrey’s sense of loyalty to the President, his personal

sense of loyalty to the President, as well as his institutional sense of loyalty, that made it difficult

for him to act in keeping perhaps even with his own reading of his political interests. The

President obviously had the very obvious political interest, since in effect or at least implicitly,

the statement did mean the severance of close identification on that particular policy issue

between him and the Vice President. So I fully recognize that the President had a very major

policy issue on his hands.” “Oral History Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski,” p. 23

Witcover, The Year the Dream Died, p. 285.

Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962 (New York, 1987).

108

Rockefeller at the Council on Foreign Relations in the early 1960s. Though he was a Democrat

and personally closer to David Rockefeller, Brzezinski was not averse to Nelson Rockefeller’s

internationalist world-view and moderate brand of Republican politics.

In the late 1960s Rockefeller aide Emmet John Hughes had sought to bring Brzezinski

into the Rockefeller camp as a foreign policy adviser. Hughes, who had a somewhat cool

relationship with Kissinger, argued that Brzezinski had a better mind than Kissinger and,

perhaps more importantly, would be easier to work with. Kissinger, as might be expected, was

rather less excited about the prospect of sharing turf with his old Harvard rival.

The journalist David Halberstam would later note that Kissinger was particularly

disturbed when he heard that Hughes had invited Brzezinski to lunch at a place where

Rockefeller’s staffers were commonly offered the more important jobs.

Halberstam would go

on to say that Brzezinski was somewhat torn in the spring of 1968 between working for

Humphrey or Rockefeller. Brzezinski recalled that there was no hesitation in his decision to work

for Humphrey. “I did hear in the latter sixties that Nelson Rockefeller wanted in some fashion to

get me involved on his side. But that never transpired, largely—as I was told—because of

Kissinger. In any case, I was not torn between supporting Rockefeller or Humphrey. The choice

for me at the time was quite clear, and I became Humphrey’s key foreign policy adviser.”

By 1968 Nelson Rockefeller was facing an uncertain political future. As the voice of the

liberal wing of the GOP, Rockefeller was a throwback to the days when “Eisenhower

Republicanism” was the dominant trend in the GOP. But Rockefeller’s bitter ideological

showdown with Barry Goldwater in 1964 had made him an anathema to the conservative wing of

the party.

David Halberstam, “The New Establishment,” Vanity Fair vol. 57 no. 10, (October 1994), p. 256

Ibid., p. 256

E-mail Interview (December 23, 2002)

109

In March of 1968 Rockefeller shocked the political world by pulling out of the race.

Instead he announced he was backing Michigan governor George Romney for the nomination,

going so far as to offer the services of his assistant Henry Kissinger. But the Romney campaign

imploded a few weeks later after his declaration that he had been “brainwashed” on the war in

Vietnam. Republican moderates, dismayed by the prospect of nominating Richard Nixon, urged

Rockefeller to get back into the race.

In April of 1968 Rockefeller gathered his team of advisers in New York to discuss the

feasibility of resurrecting the campaign. Joseph Persico, a Rockefeller speechwriter in attendance

that day, recalls that Henry Kissinger was asked about how much time he would be able to

donate if Rockefeller decided to get back in. “Not as much as Nelson will want,” Kissinger

replied. After hearing this, Persico suggested that perhaps Zbigniew Brzezinski should be

brought in as a foreign policy consultant. “Not at all the required depth,” Kissinger shot back.

Persico took this to mean that Kissinger would be able to make more time than he had previously

thought.

In May of 1968 Nelson Rockefeller announced that he was getting back into the race to

challenge Nixon. But Rockefeller had lost much momentum during his two months away from

the campaign. By May Nixon had garnered the institutional support from much of the GOP rank

and file. “People don’t like the coy approach anymore,” explained Republican House minority

leader Gerald Ford, who like many Republican congressman, had thrown his political support

solidly behind Nixon.

But Rockefeller’s political problems in 1968 would run far deeper than simply being

“coy.” Indeed some Nixon’s staffers could not hide their delight with the prospect of using

Rockefeller as an ideological punching bag to solidify Nixon’s credentials with the more

Walter Issacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York, 1992), p. 124.

Ibid., pp. 124-125.

“Right Down the Middle,” Newsweek (August 19, 1968), p. 18.

110

conservative wing of the GOP. “It creates excitement and interest we didn’t have before,”

beamed Pat Buchanan, Nixon’s brash young press secretary, “it puts us back on page one

again.”

Indeed, in hindsight the 1968 Republican Convention in Miami Beach could be seen as

marking the death knell for the Rockefeller wing of the Party. The only good news for Rockefeller

when he arrived at the convention was that Nixon seemed to be having surprising difficulty

holding off the late-breaking conservative challenge from California governor Ronald Reagan.

But Rockefeller was coming to the uncomfortable realization that Ronald Reagan was the future

of the GOP.

Reagan’s televised speech in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964 had turned the former

film star into an icon of the conservative wing of the party. In this respect the Republican

moderate Nelson Rockefeller was viewed with far more disdain than the most liberal of

Democrats. In 1965 the then actor Ronald Reagan seized the titular leadership of the conservative

wing of the Republican Party. In the wake of Goldwater’s defeat he firmly denounced those

Republicans, especially Nelson Rockefeller, who had challenged Goldwater the previous year for

the nomination. When some Republicans attempted to place anti-Goldwater moderates into

leadership positions in the Republican Party Reagan threw down the emotional gauntlet. “I don’t

think we should turn the high command over to leaders who were traitors during the battle just

ended.”

Perhaps most disturbing to Rockefeller was the fact that Reagan’s late breaking challenge

to Nixon was based on strong grass roots conservative support in the South.

But Nixon had a

“Off and Running—Where?” Newsweek (May 13, 1968), p. 28.

Alan Brinkley, American History: A Survey (New York, 1995), p. 888.

One of Brzezinski’s more pragmatic criticisms of the New Left was that it was bound to

produce a visceral conservative backlash against the Democratic Party. The most visible sign of

this scenario was the 1968 third party campaign of George Wallace. George Wallace first came to

national attention in 1948 as one of the dissenters against Hubert Humphrey’s attempt to add the

civil rights plank in the Democratic Party’s presidential platform. Wallace, after rejoining the

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trump that even Reagan’s ideological purity could not overcome. As Reagan’s momentum

started to roll South Carolina’s Senator Strom Thurmond ended it by using his sizable influence

in the South to rally the forces behind Nixon. Thurmond’s role as the kingmaker in Miami Beach

demonstrated the South’s rising political power in GOP politics. “For months,” complained one

dejected Reagan aide “we sat around worrying among ourselves that too many appearances in

the South would get people to talking about the Reagan Southern strategy. That’s funny, because

the guy with the real Southern strategy was Nixon—using Thurmond.”

Nixon expressed his gratitude by vowing to consult Thurmond before choosing a vice-

presidential running mate. “I won’t ram anyone down the throat of the South,” Nixon assured

the South Carolina Senator. Some more moderate Republicans would grumble that Nixon had

little choice since Thurmond vowed to denounce Nixon’s selection from the convention floor if it

came from the Rockefeller-wing of the Party. In the end Thurmond appeared satisfied with

Nixon’s choice of Maryland governor Ted “Spiro” Agnew whose recent “get tough on agitators”

Democratic Party, would become the most visible symbol of the sustained anti-integrationist

movement that rose in the South in the early 1960s. Wallace joined his fellow Southerner Strom

Thurmond in criticizing the federal government for not cracking down on the ”communist

influences” among the followers of Martin Luther King Jr. In 1963 Wallace—after claiming to

have been “out-segged” in a previous election--was elected governor of Alabama on the slogan

“segregation forever.” The Democratic Party was thus tarnished by the decision of Wallace’s

police chief Bull Connor, to unleash dogs on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham

and the image of Wallace standing in the doorway of the administration building at the

University of Alabama to prevent the admission of two black students. In 1968 Wallace’s overtly

racist messages were placed under the more respectable slgoan of “law and order.” He

denounced the forced busing of students, the proliferation of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society

programs, and the government’s permissive response to the antiwar demonstrations that were

becoming increasingly commonplace. Wallace’s conservative message was amplified by his

selection of retired Air Force General Curtis Le May as his running mate. Le May, who was

caricatured in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Stangelove, came aboard the Wallace campaign claiming that

the American people had “a phobia about nuclear weapons.” Le May assured reporters that

while the land crabs at the Bikini Island nuclear testing site were “a little bit hot,” the rats on the

atoll were “bigger, fatter, and healthier than they ever were before.” Jules Witcover, Marathon:

The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-76 (New York, 1977), p. 283.

“Eyeball to Eyeball with Strom,” Newsweek (August 19, 1968), pp. 26-27.

112

statement and “shoot to kill” orders on urban looters appeared to go over well with Southern

conservatives.

Nixon’s victory at Miami Beach would cloud the political future of Henry Kissinger.

Moments after Rockefeller conceded to Nixon, Presidential historian Theodore White visited the

Rockefeller camp where he found a rather disconsolate Henry Kissinger. “I have never been

greeted so warmly,” White would later recall, “it was as if I were his last friend on earth.”

According to White, Kissinger then proceeded with a prolonged harangue against the new

Republican nominee: “’Teddy, we have to stop his madman Nixon…’, that he was not to be

trusted, that he represented everything dark and dangerous, that he was not worthy of the office

and that America might not survive a Nixon presidency.”

With Rockefeller out the race many observers believed that Henry Kissinger would cross

party lines to support the campaign of Hubert Humphrey. Those predictions would prove at

least partially true. Indeed in the ensuing months Kissinger maneuvered furtively between the

respective camps of Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. The Republicans broke from their

convention united behind Nixon. At the same Zbigniew Brzezinski was attempting to formulate

a campaign strategy within a Democratic Party that showed no signs of uniting behind anything.

In any event Brzezinski contacted Kissinger shortly after the Republican Convention to

inquire if he might be willing to comment on some of the Humphrey foreign policy papers.

Kissinger surprised Brzezinski by informing him that he had been in contact with Humphrey

himself--and that he would do more than comment on papers. According to Brzezinski, Kissinger

“How Nixon Put it Together,” Newsweek (August 19, 1968). p. 25.

David Halberstam, “The Decline and Fall of the Eastern Establishment,” Vanity Fair vol. 57, no.

10, (October 1994), p. 250. Theodore White would later pay a visit to the newly inaugurated

President Nixon in January 1969. During the visit Nixon took White to meet Kissinger whom he

repeatedly referred to as Doctor Henry Kissinger. White recalled that he conversed with an

unusually subdued Kissinger for about an hour. That night, after returning home to New York,

White received a phone call from Kissinger. “Teddy,” he said, “that last conversation we had

together in Miami—it was off-the-record, wasn’t it?” Ibid., p. 250.

113

at that time offered to provide Humphrey with access to the Rockefeller campaign’s extensive

private file on Nixon.

Brzezinski was intrigued. Kissinger went on to explain that the papers were known,

rather crudely, as the Nixon "shit files. ” They included a vast index of Nixon speeches and

newspaper clippings that had been accumulated over the years by the well-financed Rockefeller

staff. Kissinger told Brzezinski that he would offer them to the Humphrey campaign provided it

was kept quiet, and if Humphrey was informed of Kissinger's assistance in the campaign. The

motivation seemed as much personal as political. "Look, I've hated Nixon for years,” Kissinger

reportedly told Brzezinski. The Humphrey campaign, for reasons that would become the source

of some dispute, would never see the “Nixon files.”

Brzezinski’s involvement with the Humphrey campaign coincided with dramatic

developments taking place in Eastern Europe. On January 5, 1968 Alexander Dubcek took over as

First Party Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. The Czech economy, after two

decades of stifling centralized planning, had reached a standstill. The economic crisis that began

in the early 1960s had split the Party between the conservative apparatchiks who had ruled since

1948 and a more progressive wing that believed socialism could only survive if it were practiced

along social democratic lines. Dubcek, though hardly known as a radical, sided with the

reformers. Over the next eight months he would embark on a bold course of reform designed to

bring forth “socialism with a human face.”

In April of 1968 Dubcek’s reforms were codified in the Party’s “Action Program” which

introduced a relaxation in censorship, reduced the powers of the secret police, proposed

economic decentralization and promised guarantees of freedom of opinion and assembly. In the

ensuing weeks intellectuals and students throughout Czechoslovakia tested the limits of what

became known as the Prague Spring. At the same time Dubcek took extra precautions to insist

See Terence Smith, “Kissinger Role in ’68 Race Stirs Conflicting Views,” The New York Times

(June 13, 1983).

114

that Czechoslovakia would remain a loyal member of the Warsaw Pact and that the Communist

Party would retain its “leading role” in the government.

While Dubcek was attempting to initiate a gradualist reform from “above” in

Czechoslovakia, the story was dramatically different in Brzezinski’s native Poland. One the

primary motivations behind Brzezinski’s goal of “engaging” Eastern Europe was to dilute the

more chauvinistic brand of communism that had begun to surface throughout the region. By the

mid-1960s the early promise of the Polish October of 1956 had been supplanted by a staid and

bureaucratic dictatorship laced with a primitive strain of anti-Semitism.

In 1964 two Warsaw University graduate students Karol Modzelewski and Jacek Kuron

were arrested after composing an “Open Letter to the Party” that urged the Polish leadership to

move beyond bureaucratic centralism and return to the idealism that was at the root of

Communist ideology. In the autumn of 1966 Professor Leszek Kolokowski used the tenth

anniversary of the Polish October to criticize Gomulka’s political leadership. Kolokowski’s

speech would lead to his expulsion from the Party. In addition there were severe reprisals against

university students who had attended the lecture--including a young history student named

Adam Michnik.

Michnik personified Brzezinski’s hopes of introducing a more humane brand of socialism

to Eastern Europe. Michnik was born in 1946 and raised by Jewish parents who were dedicated

communists in the interwar period. Yet by the early 1960s Michnik began to question official

dogma after becoming aware of a relative who had been banished to Siberia and with that the

darker aspects of Poland’s historical relationship with Russia. Michnik’s career in the political

opposition at the age of fifteen when he organized a high school political-discussion group called

the “Seekers of Contradictions.” Michnik’s actions had already drawn enough notice that

Gomulka himself denounced the teenager as an “enemy of socialism.” In 1964 Michnik was

See Robin A. Remington, Winter in Prague (Cambridge, MA, 1969).

Vladmir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York, 1993),

p. 108-109.

115

arrested for the first time for distributing the “Open Letter” written by Kuron and Modzelewski.

Michnik had been introduced to Brzezinski in 1964 through Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, still

the head of the Polish desk of Radio Free Europe. Michnik, though somewhat awed at his first

meeting with Brzezinski, also found something of a kindred spirit in the Polish-American

political scientist. “For a long time the Soviet leadership hated Brzezinski,” Michnik noted some

years later. “They thought he had a Polish anti-Russian obsession. But he didn’t have any

obsession. He just knew Russian history very well. What I’ve always liked about Brzezinski very

much is that his way of thinking is completely free of ethnic chauvinism.”

Michnik’s hopes that the Polish government would “reform” communism along the

path of Alexander Dubcek would be dashed by the existence of “ethnic chauvinism.” By 1968 the

Polish government had become sharply divided between forces loyal to Gomulka and the more

nationalist elements led by General Mieczyslaw Moczar whose distaste for liberalism and

democracy coupled with a raw anti-Semitism harkened back to the ultra-nationalist Endecja party

that flourished in Poland’s interwar political environment.

Moczar’s political authority was based on his leadership of the “Partisans,” a group of

Polish communists who spent World War II in Poland and were thus distinct from the

“Muscovite” (and largely Jewish) communists who spent the war in the Soviet Union. Yet

Moczar’s political rise after the war was curtailed in the anti-Titoist purges of the late 1940s. In

1957 the Partisans made a comeback in Polish politics when General Moczar became the Minister

of Interior. Over the next decade he would oversee a secret-police network and a “Workers

Militia” which played a role not unlike that of the Nazi brown shirts. Moczar’s “Jewish

Department” of the secret police ran a propaganda campaign against an alleged “imperialist-

Adam Michnik, Letters From Prison and Other Essays (Berkeley, 1987).

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (March 30, 2001).

For a look at rise and motives behind these political factions in Poland see J.F. Brown, The New

Eastern Europe (New York, 1966), pp. 50-64.

116

Zionist conspiracy” which suggested that West German “revenge-seekers” and “Zionist

aggressors” were seeking simultaneously to unseat socialism in Poland.

Moczar’s power increased dramatically after Israel’s shocking victory over the Arab

states in the Six-Day War in June 1967. Gomulka was infuriated by the reports of Poles

celebrating the Israeli victory over the Arab states that had been supported by the Soviet Union.

The Partisans moved to initiate a mass purge of purported “Zionists” in the Polish government.

This dismissal of “racially unreliable elements” created thousands of vacant posts that were

quickly filled by officials loyal to Moczar. By the spring of 1968 the Partisans had gained control

over the media and most of the ideological and educational institutions.

These developments did not bode well for Adam Michnik’s hopes to encouraging a more

“humane” brand of socialism. In early 1968 Polish students, encouraged by the reforms in

neighboring Czechoslovakia, adopted the rhyming chant “Polska czeka na swego Dubczeka”

(Poland is waiting for its own Dubcek).

The main focus of student dissent centered on the

National Theatre in Warsaw and the nightly production of “Forefather’s Eve” (Dziady), a play by

century writer Adam Mickiewicz. Of particular sensitivity to Polish authorities was the

raucous applause that followed the line “the only things Moscow sends us are jackasses, idiots,

and spies.” On January 30, 1968, Polish authorities ordered the National Theatre to close its

production, sparking a month of protest among Warsaw University students.

In March of 1968 Adam Michnik and another student were expelled from Warsaw

University after their attempt to gather signatures for a letter protesting the government action.

Michnik’s arrest led to further demonstrations in the courtyard of Warsaw University demanding

Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics, p. 107.

Barbara Coudenhove-Kalergi, “The Polish Exodus: Warsaw’s New Anti-Semitism,” The New

Leader vol. LII, no. 4, (March 3, 1969), p. 14.

See Adam Bromke, “The Opposition in Poland,” Problems of Communism, vol. 27 (September-

October, 1978) p. 38. For an analysis of the Polish government’s response to the events in

Czechoslovakia see H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, (Princeton: 1976)

pp. 681-88. Jan de Weydenthal, The Dynamics of Leadership in the Polish United Workers’ Party 1967-

1968: A Case Study, (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Notre Dame University, 1972), pp. 165-84.

117

the resumption of the performances of “Forefather’s Eve.”

On March 8 violent clashes between

the students and the police ensued. On March 11 the police were aided by busloads of Moczar’s

“angry workers” who had been motivated by government assurances that the student

demonstrations were part of a “Zionist plot” designed to deprive them of their “hard-earned

benefits.”

For the next month official propaganda blamed the student riots on the actions of

“Zionist lackeys,” “political degenerates,” anarchists” “revisionists,” “reactionaries,” “saboteurs,”

“subversives,” and “cosmopolitans in nylons.” In early April Gomulka gave a radio and

television speech stating that if Jews chose to emigrate, the government wouldn’t stand in their

way. Of the 30,000 Jews still in Poland, 20,000 would leave Poland the next few months—many of

them former leaders of the Communist Party.

In the weeks following the student unrest the Partisans attempted to gain control of the

Ministry of Defense by circulating the charge that the current Defense Minister Marian

Spychalski was Jewish and that his wife and sister had “fled” to Israel. In April Spychalski, who

had once been the victim of the purges of the Stalinist era, was dismissed from his post. In his

place stepped Wojciech Jaruzelski, a young solider known for his steadfast political reliability.

Jakub Karpinski, Countdown: The Polish Upheavals of 1956, 1968, 1976, 1980 (New York, 1982),

p. 110-111.

Jonathan Randal, “Thousands in Poland Fight Police as Protest Mounts,” The New York Times

(March 12, 1968).

The Polish government did not make the exit process very easy for Jews that left Poland. On

the official exit paper the émigrés “nationality” was listed as “Jew.” The emigrant’s house or

apartment reverted to the ownership of the state. Those who “chose to give up their fatherland”

were forced to pay 5,000 zlotys for an exit visa. The document was good only for Israel, and

represented roughly two months the average wage. Those educated in Poland were forced to pay

back the cost of their education that was usually estimated to be around 45,000 zlotys. The

charges for shipping personal baggage and goods had to be paid in foreign exchange. School

records, diplomats, work documents of every kind were to be left behind leaving the emigrant

with no formal records of education or employment. Coudenhove-Kalergi, “The Polish Exodus,”

p. 4.

Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land (New York, 1995) p. 155.

118

Brzezinski, disturbed by the tenor of the purges in Poland, precipitated a letter of protest

to the New York Times on behalf of the Polish Institute for Arts and Sciences, a New York based

organization of Polish émigrés, hardly known for their affection to the communist regime in

Poland. “There was a big flap on that board,” Brzezinski recalls, “because some people felt that a

lot of the Jews that were being expelled were senior communist officials and that this was not

such a bad thing. But I felt that on the whole this was acquiring the manifestations of really

violent anti-Semitism. I thought it was morally imperative that the Polish-American community

be clearly on record in condemning it.”

Meanwhile Dubcek’s reforms had moved rapidly forward in Czechoslovakia. For

Brzezinski the Prague Spring would represent a crucial test for the future development of the

Communist world. The Hungarian revolt of 1956 was essentially a rebellion against the excesses

of Stalin and could be considered more a protest against Stalinist rule. The Prague Spring was

another matter entirely. Though Dubcek and his supporters were careful not to say so, the

reforms in Prague were challenging two of Lenin’s most fundamental tenets; that the Communist

Party must monopolize all political power, and that this power must be exercised with ruthless

ideological dogmatism to eliminate all political dissent. Thus, by raising this “crisis of Leninism”

Dubcek’s reforms represented the hope of moving away from the Soviet model and undermining

the Kremlin’s grip on the multitude of nationalities centralized under the iron grip of Moscow.

By mid-summer Brzezinski was growing increasingly concerned about the Johnson

Administration’s approach to the events in Prague. The painful memories of the disastrous

Hungarian revolt in 1956 would indeed prevent any overt signs of support for Dubcek. Yet

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

The possibility that Dubcek’s reforms could become contagious in the Soviet Union highlighted

Brzezinski’s long time observations regarding the fragility of the Soviet empire. The Russians,

who at the time constituted 50 percent of the approximately 270 million people in the Soviet

Union, had historically dominated the 50 million Ukrainians that made up the second largest

nationality group in the Soviet Union Yet of all the peoples in Eastern Europe, the Czechs and

Slovaks were closest to the Ukrainians in tradition and culture, creating the possibility that

Dubcek’s liberalization would stimulate demands in the Ukraine for similar reforms.

119

Brzezinski saw danger signs that Moscow would interpret Johnson’s apparent disregard for the

situation as in implicit green light to do as they wished in Eastern Europe.

In June of 1968 Brzezinski accepted an official invitation to speak before the Prague

Institute of International Economics. “The atmosphere was absolutely euphoric,” Brzezinski

recalled years later, “a sense that this was kind of a new dawn for a socialism with a human

face—very naïve and very romantic and not terribly determined. There was widespread

conviction that the Soviets would not intervene—and I was somewhat less convinced that they

would not.”

Brzezinski’s speech noted that Dubcek’s reforms were the best way to gradually move

toward a more humane brand of socialism. He also started rather categorically that “Leninism

has no relevance in an advanced modern society.” “I gave a speech in Prague,” recalled

Brzezinski, “the one that the Soviets had supposedly seized a great deal as justification for the

suppression of the Prague Spring. I said that Eastern Europe was evolving and that, by peaceful

engagement, we could transform the situation. I didn’t explicitly say that communism would be

overthrown, but that in effect, communism would be transformed.”

Dubcek’s attempt to initiate economic reforms required hard-currency loans from the West.

Yet the United States’ Congress had made it clear that Most Favored Nation trade status would

not be extended to any East European state then providing assistance to North Vietnam. Indeed

Czechoslovakia had provided aid to Hanoi since the early days of the war. Any hopes of

receiving aid from the United States ended on June 17, 1968 when a new aid agreement had been

signed by Prague and Hanoi. Jan J. R. Lorenc, “Prague’s Economic Bondage,” The New Leader

(August 26, 1968), p. 10-11.

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia one disillusioned Czech

official took the opportunity to complain of the “the inexplicably cold and hostile attitude” from

Washington. “Not only didn’t they make the slightest move to help us sell more of our goods on

the American market, though they know how desperately we needed a few more dollars, not

only did they make no real move to return to us our gold, kept here since World War II, but for a

long time they even opposed our modest request to open a small trade representative’s office in

New York, absolutely essential to help us to increase contacts with American businessmen. It was

evident in every way possible the American Administration wanted to get to us the message: Do

not count on us in any circumstances.” Phllip Ben, “How the Czechs Got the Brush Off,” The New

Republic (August 31, 1968), p. 8.

Interview, Washington, DC (September 8, 2000).

Interview, Washington DC, (September 8, 2000).

120

Brzezinski also knew, however, that this was the approach from the West that frightened

communist hardliners the most. By June East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht was mounting a

relentless campaign to gather support for a military invasion to put an end to Dubeck’s

experimentation.

Ulbricht, knowing that Gomulka held a particular distaste for Brzezinski,

immediately sent files to Warsaw drawing attention to Brzezinski’s “counterrevolutionary lecture

in support of Dubeck.”

A blistering editorial in the East German Communist Party newspaper lambasted

Brzezinski’s Prague speech as “counter-revolutionary” and “imperialist” as well as an

“interference in the internal affairs” of Czechoslovakia. Brzezinski, speaking from his post on the

Humphrey campaign, took East Germany’s hysterical response as an indication that peaceful

engagement was hitting its mark. “It was typical that the East Germans would single me out for

personal attack,” Brzezinski declared, “rather than those more hard line voices in the West that

opposed any East-West reconciliation. Only dogmatic Communists who desire continued cold

At a time when Brzezinski’s “totalitarian” model was being dismissed by Western academics,

it would be hard to find a more accurate label to describe Walter Ulbricht’s German Democratic

Republic. The State Security Service (Stasi) amounted to 100,000 full time agents and, according

to figures released after the Cold War, some 300,000 “informal informers.” The Stasi archives

contained some six million individual dossiers (one for every second adult). Its headquarters in

Leipzig contained a few hundred numbered glass jars. It was the Stasi “library of suspect smells.”

The file was assembled by the removal of unwashed underwear and socks from the laundry

hampers of GDR citizens. Torn bits and pieces were then placed in jars to preserve “specific body

odors.” With the help of trained dogs, the distinctive smells would serve later to identify

distributors of illegal leaflets.” At the same time the most intimate of relations were often

poisoned by Stasi attempts to “split, isolate, paralyze and disorganize negative enemy elements.”

Amos Elon, “East Germany: Crime and Punishment,” The New York Review of Books (May 14,

1992), p. 8.

Jiri Valenta, Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision (Baltimore, 1979),

p. 54. The East German leader would have a harder time with the more moderate leaders in the

bloc such as Hungary’s Janas Kadar who had turned Hungary into one of the more tolerant

regimes in Eastern Europe. At the height of the Prague Spring Ulbricht ripped into the

Hungarian leader: “If you think, Comrade Kadar, that you are helping the cause of socialism

with your objections and reservations, then you are making a big mistake. And you have no idea

what will happen next. Once the American-West German imperialists have got Czechoslovakia in

their control then you will be the next to go, Comrade Kadar. But this is something you can’t or

won’t understand!” Ibid, p. 54.

121

war and are willing to run the risk of a nuclear confrontation would disagree with my views. It

puts them in the same category as the extreme right wing in this country.”

Brzezinski saw this as a natural, albeit unfortunate, response from East European leaders.

“By 1968 I think the more informed communist leaders basically understood what it was I was

advocating. They weren’t fooled. The people that were fooled tended to be in the United States—

like the liberals who didn’t realize that what I was really doing was pursuing a more anti-Soviet

policy under an accommodationist label, or the hardliners in the United States who didn’t have

the smarts to realize that sometimes you have to be deceptive vis a vis your opponent in order to

obtain your objectives instead of maintaining a rigid ideological line--which is self-paralyzing.”

By July the Soviet leaders were planning the early stages of a military invasion. Moscow

was particularly alarmed by the release in late June of the so-called “Two-Thousand Words”

statement. Issued by Czechoslovak intellectuals, the statement was an indictment of twenty years

of party dictatorship, a demand for accelerated reform, and an urgent plea to Dubcek to avoid

giving in to external pressure.

By July the Soviet Union had stepped up its threats to Czechoslovakia. On July 14-15 the

leaders of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations convened a summit meeting in Warsaw to

discuss the ongoing events in Czechoslovakia. The meeting produced an ominous joint letter

warning that “counterrevolutionary forces” were jeopardizing socialism, and that the events

emanating from Prague were “absolutely unacceptable.”

Indeed the United States seemed to be making it clear that they wanted nothing to do

with the deliberations surrounding the affairs of the Soviet bloc. Moscow had timed its ominous

warnings to Dubcek to coincide with a conspicuous flirtation with the Johnson Administration

over arms control and a possible summit meeting. Since his June 1967 summit with Alexei

“Brzezinski Accused” The New York Times (July 16, 1968).

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000).

Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics, p. 96.

122

Kosygin Johnson seemed eager to arrange a summit meeting in Moscow before he the election in

November.

At the same time KGB agents, posed as Western tourists, were moving to plant

caches of arms on the West German border and distributing inflammatory posters about an anti-

communist coup.

On July 22 Secretary of State Rusk met publicly with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to

refute Soviet charges of American “interference” in Czechoslovakia.

According to East

European sources, Rusk informed Dobrynin that while the United States would strongly

“deplore” the use of Soviet force in the crisis, he left the Soviet ambassador with the impression

that the United States would not intervene militarily to save the reformist Czech regime.

Brzezinski believed Washington officials were failing to utilize the advantages of

diplomatic ambiguity regarding the events in Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile a Wall Street Journal

editorial warned about repeating the “dark days” of 1938 when Czechoslovakia was partitioned

in hopes of appeasing Hitler: “Ironically, U.S. policy makers are fond of contending that not to

defend South Vietnam would be comparable to the infamy at Munich, an analogy disputed by

others. The irony is that right now we have a genuine repeat of Munich, concerning the very

same country, in the making. Surely, to let Czechoslovakia fall back under the iron sway of

After Johnson dropped out of the race in March the rumor surfaced that he hoped to use the

improvement of relations with Moscow as a means to achieve a surprise nomination at the

Democratic Convention. And this was a consideration until the very week of the convention.

Texas Governor John Connally was so angered by the rumor that Humphrey might accept a

compromise “peace plank” on Vietnam that he threatened to deny Humphrey Texas’s votes at

the convention. He also noted that Lyndon Johnson himself might use the convention to change

his mind and announce that he was running for another term after all. This was a scenario that

Humphrey took seriously. Doris Kearns Goodwin recalled that Johnson had expressed this view

as late as the convention itself. “He wanted them to fete his accomplishments and, if the

convention fell apart, crazy as it seems, he would be there, available.” Witcover, The Year the

Dream Died, p. 315.

Valenta and Moravec, “Could the Prague Spring Have Been Saved,” p. 583-584.

See Peter Grose, “Moscow’s Stand is Worrying U.S.-Charges of a Link to Czech Crisis Denied

in Capital Policy is to Stay Aloof,” The New York Times (July 22, 1968). “U.S. Protests Soviets

Charges of a Role in Crisis,” The New York Times (July 23, 1968).

Kovrig, The Myth of Liberation, p. 275

123

orthodox communism and Soviet domination is unpleasantly similar to what happened in 1938.”

In early August President Tito of Yugoslavia arrived in Prague to a rapturous welcome.

Tito, as the symbol of the most successful defiance of the Soviet Union, seemed to indicate that

the Czechoslovaks were by no means alone in their struggle to break free from Moscow. The

tenor of the reception left even Tito astonished. Ignoring a heavy summer rain, thousands of

Czechoslovaks greeted Tito’s plane waving Yugoslav flags. As Tito moved throughout Prague

chants of “Tito-Dubcek” and “Tito yes, Ulbricht no!” could be heard throughout the city.

In early August a debate began in the Kremlin over how to deal with the situation in

Czechoslovakia. The more hard-line elements in the Kremlin argued that the passive stance of the

United States was enough assurance that a military solution would be relatively cost free. In the

late hours of August 20-21, a combined force of 175,000 troops from the Soviet Union and four

other Warsaw Pact nations stormed into Czechoslovakia.

Within a few hours these forces were overrunning the Czechoslovak countryside and

had begun to occupy the country’s leading cities. A small stream of citizens were still emerging

from the nightclubs and cafes around Wenceslaus Square when the first Soviet tanks rumbled

across the Charles Bridge into the center of Prague. In the ensuing hours tens of thousands of

Czechs poured into the streets, jeered at Soviet soldiers and chalked swastikas on the tanks.

But the Prague Spring was over. TASS, the official Soviet news agency, announced the

occupation had been in response to a request for assistance against “counter-revolutionary”

“Silence on Czechoslovakia,” The Wall Street Journal (July 22, 1968).

“Czechoslovakia: Making Up for Lost Time,” Newsweek (August 19, 1968), p. 41-42.

The rigid West German refusal to formally recognize the German-Polish borders in the east

also played a role in mobilizing support for the invasion in Poland. In August Polish Defense

Minister Wojtech Jaruzelski was suddenly recalled from a family vacation in the Crimea. When

Jaruzelski arrived in Warsaw he shown KGB reports that indicated U.S. made weapons had been

“discovered” in Czechoslovakia. Western agents—including pro-Nazi agents—were also said to

be present. The latter point, it was suggested, endangered Poland’s western border on the Oder-

Neisse since there was still no final agreement with Bonn pertaining to exactly where that border

stood. Rosenberg, The Haunted Land, pp. 155-156.

124

forces. The charge rang particularly hollow since the entire Czechoslovak leadership had been

placed under arrest at the outset of the invasion. The Soviets had seized and manacled seven

liberal Czechoslovak leaders, including Dubcek and took them to Moscow. The Soviet Union

accused Dubcek of having led a minority faction that supported counter-revolution and

represented a “treacherous betrayal” of Communist ideals.

The Soviets took immediate measures to reverse the reforms that had been enacted over

the previous eight months. Censorship of the press was rigidly enforced and all non-Communist

political activity was effectively banned. The Kremlin then insisted on the right to station Soviet

troops permanently along the Czech border with West Germany. The Soviet leadership would

soon justify the invasion with the “Brezhnev Doctrine” which claimed the right to “protect and

preserve” socialism in Eastern Europe, by force if necessary.

The supporters of Dubcek were thus forced to resort to a different form of political

resistance. At the height of the invasion Czech playwright Vaclav Havel issued an urgent plea of

support in the name of all Czech and Slovak writers from an underground station in the city

Liberec.

That week was an experience I’ll never forget. I saw Soviet tanks smash down arcades on

the main square and bury several people in the rubble. I saw a tank commander start shooting

wildly into the crowd. I saw and experienced many things, but what affected me most was that

special phenomenon of solidarity and community which was so typical of the time. That week

showed how helpless military power is when confronted by an opponent unlike any that power

has been trained to confront: it showed how hard it is to govern a country in which, though it

may not defend itself militarily, all the civil structures simply turn their backs on the

aggressors.

“Soviet Assails Dubcek by Name as a Leader of Counterrevolution,” The New York Times

(August 22, 1968).

Vincent Buist, “Soviets Flew Dubcek Out in Manacles,” The New York Times (August 29, 1968).

The “Brezhnev Doctrine” was actually articulated by a relatively minor Soviet ideologist in the

pages of Pravda on September 26, 1968. The document is reprinted in Robin A. Remington, Winter

in Prague: Documents on Czechoslovak Communism in Crisis (Cambridge, MA, 1969).

Vaclav Havel, “History of a Public Enemy,” The New York Review of Books (May 31, 1990), p. 36.

125

Brzezinski was at his home in Englewood, New Jersey when he heard the news that the

Soviets had invaded. “There was some event connected with the Humphrey campaign, and I was

spending the night in my home when I heard on the radio that the Soviets had moved into

Prague. My reaction was two-fold; I had a sense of outrage and sympathy for the Czechs on one

hand. But secondly, a conviction that this was the death rattle of communism--that to use force to

maintain communism wasn’t permitting it to reform itself---even though the Soviets had asserted

the more traditional orthodox version of communism in Czechoslovakia. What it really meant

was that it was not reformable, that the Soviet Union would not permit reform, and that

eventually it would have to crash.”

In the days after the Soviet invasion Brzezinski contributed an op-ed piece that appeared

on the front page of the Washington Post.

Basically the suppression of Czechoslovakia means the death of international

communism. The Soviet Union had the choice of either accepting a community of independent

Communist states and thereby acting in the spirit of Communist internationalism or of acting like

a major imperialist power motivated purely by nationalist interests. The Soviet Union chose the

latter course. It did so because in the course of the last few years, the darker forces within the

Soviet political system had been steadily gaining strength. The present Soviet leadership is acting

more like a fascist than a Communist government. It is to be remembered that fascism was a

radical, socialist, nationalist, and imperialistic movement. The invasion of Czechoslovakia will

hasten the process not only of disintegration of international communism but in all probability

also of the internal decay of the Soviet political system. Without a doubt, the more enlightened

segments of Soviet society are as outraged and disgusted as the rest of the world. Before long, the

contagion of freedom which is temporarily being snuffed out in Prague will spread to Kiev and

Moscow.

At the same time Brzezinski insisted that the U.S. not limit a response to rhetorical

outrage. “I would regret it if we were forced by the Soviet invasion to adopt such a simplistically

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999). Brzezinski offered a rejoinder to those in the

academic world who had insisted that the Soviet political system had modernized and should

not be considered “totalitarian.” “This outrageous criminal act makes one think of Hitler. It was

worse than the 1956 crushing of Hungary, where there was a civil war and where the Communist

party had lost control. The Czechoslovaks had acted reasonably and without provocation.” M.S.

Handler, “U.S. Specialist on Soviet Affairs Urges NATO Parely on Invasion,” The New York Times

(August 22, 1968).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Invasion Revives a Stalin Credo,” The Washington Post (August 25,

1968).

126

hostile position---rigid, militant anti-Communism---as to make it easier for the Soviet Union to

reassert its control over Eastern Europe---we must differentiate between our immediate outrage

and our immediate retaliatory response to express this outrage from our long-term policy of

building bridges. It was the success of this policy that forced the Soviet into this criminal act. In

the short term, we should react, but in the long run we shouldn’t flip.”

The President of the United States indeed took a rather subdued attitude toward the

invasion. Johnson would rationalize the U.S. approach to the crisis shortly after the invasion.

“There was little we could do through the use of military force, to assist any of those countries

without automatically engaging in general war with the Soviet Union.”

For Brzezinski

Johnson’s link between backing Dubcek’s reforms and World War III was a false dilemma. As he

had long noted, the strategy of peaceful engagement was designed to provide assistance to East

European reform movements before the issue reached a crisis point.

Indeed, Brzezinski would be even more critical of Johnson’s approach in later years. “I

have to confess that I did not know the extent of his indifference to what the Soviets did until I

read Dobrynin’s memoirs where he describes in detail how totally indifferent Johnson was and

how Johnson went through a routine of just saying a few words of complaint and then resumed

Handler, The New York Times (August 22, 1968).

President Lyndon Johnson, “Encouraging the Rule of Reason in Eastern Europe,” Department

of State Bulletin, vol. LIX, no. 1528, (October 7, 1968), pp. 350-351.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Meeting Moscow’s Limited Co-existence,” The New Leader, vol. 51, no.

24 (December 16, 1968), pp. 11-13. On September 12, 1968, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial

highly critical of the U.S. handling of the Czech crisis. “It is beginning to appear, in fact, that the

U.S. may have handled the Czech situation, during the whole eight months since Alexander

Dubcek came to power, with striking ineptitude. The American policy makers not only were

silent about the repeated Soviet intimidations until after the actual invasion; they seemed to go

out of their way to disassociate themselves from the Czech-Soviet struggle, accepting Moscow’s

propaganda that it was an internal Communist issue. At the same time they ardently pursued

détente with the Soviets, seeking the of agreements on nuclear weapons and other matters.” It

would be a lesson Brzezinski would remember twelve years later. He would show President

Carter this editorial when the United States faced a similar crisis in December of 1980. See Patrick

Vaughan, “Benign Beyond Neglect, Zbigniew Brzezinski and The Polish Crisis, 1980,” The Polish

Review, vol. XLIV, no. 1 (1999), pp. 3-28.

127

pressing for a date for a summit meeting----conveying to Dobrynin the message that he didn’t

give a damn about the occupation of Czechoslovakia---I did not know that at the time.”

Back in the United States Brzezinski was with the Humphrey campaign preparing for the

Democratic Convention in Chicago. The Soviet invasion would indeed have an impact on the

tenor of the campaign. The Soviet act gave Richard Nixon a chance to dust off his anti-communist

credentials. Nixon, who had noticeably softened his rhetoric toward the Soviet Union in the

campaign, noted that it was a “sad commentary on the nature of the Soviet system that simple

assertion of basic liberties brings repression by the troops of five nations.”

Nixon’s political

operatives, on the other hand, didn’t sound quite so aggrieved. “What a break!” shouted Frank

Dobrynin, who had arrived at the White House just as the tanks were rolling into Prague, was

astonished by Johnson’s rather mild reaction. “Much to my surprise he did not react to it at all,

just thanked me for the information and said he would probably discuss the statement with Rusk

and others the next morning and give us a reply, if need be. He proceeded to another subject, on

which he seemed to be much more keen. He said he was awaiting our response to his plans to

announce his visit to the Soviet Union. The announcement was scheduled for 10 o’clock the

following morning. (Moscow had agreed in principle to his visit a couple of days before, but

now, of course, there was slight hope that the visit would take place.) The president added that

he had already invited some friends to breakfast at the White House in order to break the news

about his trip and then make a major announcement about it to the press. Still utterly oblivious to

the impact of what was happening in Prague, Johnson asked us to give him a reply about his visit

to Moscow in time for the next morning’s meetings, or not later than between 8 and 9 a.m. He

looked cheerful and said he attached great importance to his forthcoming meeting with the Soviet

leaders; he hoped to discuss a number of major topics, including Vietnam and the Middle East.

Johnson pointed out that this time he ‘had more freedom of action,’ and that he expected the

meeting to produce certain results. Johnson then reverted to his meeting with Kosygin in

Glassboro, going over the details in his memory and evaluating the whole thing positively. He

offered me a whiskey (I would have agreed to drink anything at that moment!) and began to tell

me various entertaining stories about Texas. He was good at it. While the president was going on

about his forthcoming trip, the Glassboro summit, and other things that pleased him, Rostow, the

only witness to the conversation, sat with lowering face, trying not to interrupt the president. As

we parted, Johnson was very friendly and once again reminded me that he was looking forward

to our response so he could announce his visit to the Soviet Union.” Anatoly Dobrynin, In

Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (New York, 1995), pp. 178-

185.

“Soviet Invasion Scored by Nixon,” The New York Times (August 22, 1968).

128

Shakespeare, a Nixon adviser, “This Czech thing is just perfect. It puts the soft-liners in a hell of a

box!”

Indeed some of the more prominent Democrats preparing to go to Chicago would not

distinguish themselves in response to the Soviet invasion. Eugene McCarthy called a press

conference where he issued the statement that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was “not a

major world crisis” and that President Johnson had acted “out of proportion” by calling for a

special late night meeting of the National Security Council.

Brzezinski was irate with McCarthy’s cavalier dismissal of the events in Czechoslovakia.

He also saw it as a portent of the escapist isolationism that seemed to be gaining control over

much of the Democratic Party. “The process of resolving the legacies of the cold war and

building a viable world order has doubtless been set back by a number of years. What has

Joe McGinnis, “The Selling of the President 1968,” Harper’s Magazine (August 1969), p. 185.

California Governor Ronald Reagan, fresh off his conservative challenge to Nixon for the GOP

nomination, warned that the Soviet invasion was a reminder that “America must not relax its

guard. Here is the answer to those people who have lulled themselves into the belief that Russia

has changed its attitude.” “Reagan Asks Vigilance,” The New York Times (August 22, 1968).

“McCarthy is Critical of Johnson’s Reaction,” The New York Times (August 22, 1968).

McCarthy’s response was indeed rather tepid compared to the majority of the communist parties

around the world who seemed to think the invasion of a fellow socialist country amounted to a

“major crisis.” Yugoslavian President Josef Tito branded the invasion “a significant, historic

point of rupture” that would have “far-reaching and very negative consequences for all

revolutionary forces and movements in the world.” Romanian President Nicolae Ceaucescu,

addressing a cheering crowd in Bucharest, denounced the Soviet invasion as a “great mistake and

a grave danger to peace in Europe (as well as) the fate of socialism in the world.” In East Berlin,

scores of people courageously lined up at the Czechoslovakian Embassy to sign a declaration of

sympathy with the Czechs. The Italian Communist party, the largest in the Western Europe,

expressed its dissent. For the first time in its history the orthodox French communist party openly

broke with the Soviet Union. Henry Tanner, “West Europe Reds Denounce Soviet,” The New York

Times (August 22, 1968). Perhaps more embarrassing for McCarthy’s more radical supporters was

that, aside from regimes that were dependent on Moscow for military support—Egypt, Syria,

Iraq and Nigeria--the only other signs of international support for the invasion came from the

Stalinist North Korea and Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro, the two most revered revolutionary

figures of the New Left. In Cuba Castro informed his nation that to feel sympathy for the

Czechoslovaks was “a romantic and idealistic position.” “A Matter of Necessity?” Newsweek

(September 2, 1968), p. 19. North Vietnam asserted that the goal of the Soviet Union and its four

Eastern European allies was “noble” and justified the invasion with the claim that since January

“counter-revolutionary” forces in Czechoslovakia had “increased their activities against

socialism.” See “North Vietnamese Support Invasion of Czechoslovakia,” The New York Times

(August 22, 1968).

129

happened is therefore both sad and important and one can only regret Senator McCarthy’s idiotic

and cynical dismissal of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as unimportant. Renewed tensions

can contribute to stronger right-wing tendencies both in the West and in the East.”

As the campaign continued, Humphrey, now virtually assured the nomination, sought to

heal the wounds of a divided party as the Democrats approached their convention in Chicago.

But McCarthy’s supporters continued to view Humphrey as every bit the enemy as Richard

Nixon. As the convention approached thousands of young demonstrators announced their intent

to travel to Chicago to protest their distaste for the “old politics” of the Democratic Party. What

ensued was a public relations nightmare for the Humphrey campaign. On August 28, delegates

at the convention had just rejected by a three to two margin an antiwar resolution. As the

delegates debated inside the convention hall, police and protesters clashed outside the

convention hall.

As Humphrey prepared to receive the nomination, television cameras cut between the

convention speeches and the chaos outside where Chicago police were brutally dispersing the

protesters. Humphrey’s more dovish opponents implied he was at least indirectly to blame for

the ruckus. “With George McGovern as President,” shouted Connecticut Senator Abraham

Ribicoff, “we wouldn’t have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.” At this point even the

worst lip readers in America were then treated with the scene where a beet red Mayor Daley

could be seen calling the distinguished Senator a “mother-fucker.”

McCarthy was indeed conspicuously absent on the podium from Humphrey’s post-

speech “show of unity” and after Chicago his supporters were in no mood to join forces with

Humphrey for the greater good of defeating Nixon. “It’s worse than Prague,” replied McCarthy

that night from the fifteenth floor of his Hilton headquarters as he looked down at the riots

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Soviet Invasion Revives Soviet Credo,” The Washington Post (August

24, 1968).

130

below.

Though he left Chicago with nomination, Humphrey was despondent. “Chicago was a

catastrophe,” he would later concede, “My wife and I went home heartbroken, battered, and

beaten.”

The Nixon campaign wasted no time in capitalizing on the public dismay with the

Democratic Convention. A week later Nixon campaigned in Chicago under a very different

atmosphere. Lunch-hour crowds estimated at 400,000 turned out as his motorcade moved along

its nineteen-block route beneath a shower of confetti arranged by his advance men. An

exhilarated Nixon “tanned and rested into fighting trim,” noted Newsweek, “the crowds cheered

each time he stood in the rear of his convertible to thrust his arms up into a victory V.”

For his

part Nixon’s running mate Spiro Agnew spoke for a sizable chunk of former blue-collar

Democrats. “If you tell me the hippies and the yippies are going to be able to do the job of

helping America,” blistered Agnew, “I’ll tell you this: they can’t run a bus, they can’t serve in

government office, they can’t run a lathe in a factory. All they can do is lay down in the park and

sleep and kick policemen.”

“Losers Weepers—or Walkers?” Newsweek (September 9, 1968), p. 41. Robert Conquest, a

British scholar noted for his groundbreaking scholarship on the scope of Stalin’s crimes, believed

that McCarthy’s attitude was rather disturbing. “For the fact that the Russians were again

accepted into polite society with so little fuss must surely have played its part in encouraging

their Czechoslovak adventure. Those Britons and Americans who then relaxed their standards, or

their understandings, are to this extent unwitting accomplices in this year’s crime. Even the bare

possibility that Western policies might ever be influenced again by these suburban sub-Bourbons

is horrible. Part of the blame doubtless lies in the fact that there are now more men and women in

our two countries who believe that as educated people they must take an intelligent interest in

politics. But as they have no knowledge of, or feel for, the realities, this means that they form

their opinions in form of debating points. If one is living in comfort in Macclesfield or Minnesota,

it is easy to say things like ‘we’re as bad as they are because we too have troops in such and such

country.’ Even apart from the not inconsiderable minor differences, there is no comparison at

all—on the basic ground that it is not the presence of troops but what they are there for which

counts. In Vietnam it is at least worth remarking in the present context that the regime Ho has

imposed in Hanoi, and is seeking to impose in Saigon, is precisely that which the

Czechoslovakians are at such desperate pains to be rid of.” Robert Conquest, “The Czech

Tragedy: Nature of the Beast,” Interplay (October 1968), p. 20.

“The Politics of Caution,” Newsweek (September 16, 1968), p. 24.

Ibid., p. 24.

131

With Humphrey trailing badly in all of the major polls Brzezinski sought some help from

his old friend Henry Kissinger. With little to lose Brzezinski and John Reilly were prepared to

make the trip to Cambridge to inspect the Nixon “files” Kissinger had mentioned earlier in the

summer. In mid-September Brzezinski telephoned Kissinger's office to inquire if the offer was

still open. Kissinger’s secretary came on the line. “You know, Dr. Brzezinski, that Dr. Kissinger is

working for Nixon now?" The Humphrey campaign would hear no more about the Nixon “shit

files.”

Years later Brzezinski sought to downplay the controversy. “We had a flap over some

documents that he had from the Rockefeller campaign. He maintains that he didn’t say

something that I think I heard him say. But it’s not really terribly material. The point is that at

that time Kissinger was with Rockefeller, then Rockefeller fell by the side and Henry, in a

politically skillful way, made himself available both to Humphrey and to Nixon without

(committing) to either.”

Kissinger would take a more adamant view. “It’s total non-sense—absolute nonsense. I

mean it’s an insult to the intelligence of the people involved. I always had been friendly with

Humphrey. I knew Humphrey better than Nixon. But I didn’t deal with Humphrey during the

campaign. The only files I had were academic type files. I was not involved in the political side

whatsoever. But the fact is I didn’t make any files available. There’s no dispute about that.”

Yet there remains at least some dispute about whether the original offer had been made.

Samuel Huntington recalls the event more vividly. “Kissinger was playing both sides. He had an

office right next to mine at Harvard. He kept saying that he was going to cooperate and he would

make promises.” Huntington recalls Kissinger made a specific offer while the two met each other

that summer at Martha’s Vineyard.

Terence Smith, “Kissinger Role in ’68 Race Stirs Conflicting Views,” The New York Times (June

13, 1983).

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

Telephone Interview (June 3, 2002).

132

“He said he had all these files on Nixon and that he would supply them to us--but he

never did. I don’t think they had any particular dirt, but you have to recognize that this was long

before computers, the Internet, or anything like that. I gathered from what Kissinger told me that

they had every statement that Nixon had ever made—cataloged by topic and so forth and so

on—so if you wanted to pin Nixon down or quote something it was all there—and we didn’t

have any capability to do that sort of research.”

With or without the files, by mid-September Humphrey had begun to chip way at

Nixon’s once sizable lead. With the campaign in its final stages Brzezinski and other aides urged

Humphrey to break with Johnson’s Vietnam policy. Since June Brzezinski was frustrated by

Humphrey’s unwillingness to stand up to Johnson and stake out his own path. On September 30

Brzezinski and John Reilly outlined the speech for Humphrey in Salt Lake City where the vice

president declared his commitment to a unilateral bombing halt on North Vietnam.

As the 1968 campaign entered its final month Henry Kissinger would become embroiled

in still another campaign controversy. The Paris Peace talks had commenced in the spring of 1968

in an effort to reach a peace settlement in Vietnam. The negotiations had long been deadlocked

over South Vietnamese objections. Yet by October both sides appeared close to an agreement.

The Nixon campaign understood that any dramatic announcement about peace in Vietnam

would add considerable momentum to Humphrey’s late charging campaign.

At this time Nixon’s foreign policy aide Richard Allen claimed that Kissinger approached

the Nixon campaign offering to provide classified information surrounding the negotiations in

Paris. According to Allen’s account he was working at Nixon’s national headquarters in early

September when he got an unsolicited call from Kissinger inquiring whether the Nixon staff

would be interested in any inside information that he might be able to provide from the Paris

peace talks. Kissinger, according to Allen, mentioned that he had friends on the delegation and

Telephone Interview, (September 10, 2002).

Interview, Washington DC, (November 4, 1999).

133

that such information would enable Nixon to counteract, any dramatic “peace” announcement by

the Johnson administration.

Allen claimed that Kissinger, after returning from meetings with the U.S. peace

delegation in Paris, reported directly to the Nixon campaignthat “something big was afoot

regarding Vietnam.” In a final telephone call just before the election, Kissinger informed the

Allen that Ambassador Averell Harriman had “broken open the champagne” because a bombing

halt had been achieved.

On October 31 President Johnson announced his commitment to a unilateral bombing

halt in North Vietnam. But the tentative agreement on a bombing halt was still dependent on

approval by South Vietnamese president Thieu. With the election only days away, President

Johnson received FBI reports that Anna Chennault, a Nixon fund-raiser, was acting as a go-

between for the Republicans with the South Vietnamese government. Nixon’s campaign manager

had asked Chennault to inform Thieu that he should oppose the bombing halt and thereby

undermine the peace talks. Thieu was then assured that he would get a better deal should Nixon

defeat Humphrey in the upcoming election. President Thieu would indeed publicly repudiate the

breakthrough three days before the American election, using the excuse that he would not attend

any peace talks at which the Vietcong were in attendance.

US embassy spy operations and wiretaps of Thieu’s offices meant that Johnson was

aware of the Thieu-Nixon backdoor connection. Yet Johnson’s strained relations with J Edgar

Hoover at the FBI meant that Hoover did not tell the president everything. Nonetheless Johnson

was said to have “exploded” when he heard of Thieu’s decision to pull out of the peace talks. He

told his advisers that he could “rock the world” if he went public with the Nixon’s pre-election

“conniving” with the South Vietnamese regime. Johnson called Nixon the weekend before the

Terence Smith, “Kissinger Role in ’68 Race Stirs Conflicting Views,” The New York Times (June

13, 1983).

Ibid.

Martin Kettle, “Nixon Wrecked Early Peace in Vietnam,” The Guardian (August 9, 2000).

134

election to ask him about the situation. Nixon proceeded to deny that Chennault was working for

him. It was reported that when the call ended “Nixon and his friends collapsed with laughter.”

Johnson, certain that Nixon was lying, informed Humphrey of the events while the Vice

President was at the time in route to a campaign stop. “By God,” said Humphrey in

uncharacteristic outrage,“ when we land I’m going to denounce Thieu. I’ll denounce Nixon!”. But

Humphrey decided against going public with such an explosive charge. The presidential

historian Theodore White would later call Humphrey’s decision to sit on such information one of

the most “decent actions ever taken by an American political figure.”

Richard Holbrooke, then

a young aide to Averell Harriman, would later charge that the Nixon campaign had “massively,

directly and covertly interfered in a major diplomatic negotiation, probably one of the most

important negotiations in American diplomatic history.”

In November 1968 Nixon edged Humphrey in one of the closest races in American

history. Brzezinski was at Humphrey headquarters in St. Paul watching the television reports as

the vote swung back and forth. In the early morning hours the networks reported that Nixon had

received 43.4 percent of the vote to Humphrey’s 42.7. George Wallace, absorbing a significant

chunk of the old blue-collar labor left, took 13.5 percent.

Brzezinski, watching from the gloomy

Humphrey headquarters, recalls being torn by mixed emotions that evening:

Ibid,

Ibid.

The splits in the Democratic Party would prove fatal to Humphrey’s late breaking comeback.

As one observer put it, “It was the rule-or-ruin liberals—academic, journalistic, and political—

who let down the side most conspicuously. In retrospect, it is ludicrous that the Democrat with

the best liberal record of anyone in public life, aligned with the President who has advanced the

causes of liberalism further than anybody since Roosevelt, should have been undone by liberal

defectors. Yet this is clearly what happened. Americans for Democratic Action, the bellwether

New York Times, the McCarthyites, many academicians and many Democratic Congressional

candidates endorsed Humphrey late and halfheartedly, or, if wholeheartedly, in afterthoughts of

doubtful conviction…Vietnam was always the excuse for these liberals’ reluctance to support

Humphrey, if it could be called support. Yet Mr. Johnson had obviously sacrificed himself to

make peace and Nixon was more hawkish than Humphrey. So it was never a valid excuse except

135

I remember sitting there that night with Humphrey watching the election seesaw—and

really being worried what would happen to the United States if we won. Because by then I had

concluded that Humphrey was a wonderfully decent man but probably would be a lousy

president. I wasn’t at all happy about Nixon—I didn’t admire him at all. But I had the feeling that

Humphrey would be just a chaotic, indecisive president. It was the things he did, the indecisive

way he ran the campaign, and the way he would hedge the foreign policy issues, and couldn’t

make up his mind, the Vietnam War problem he didn’t want to bite the bullet on it because he

was intimidated by Johnson. It just made me feel that he was a terribly nice, decent attractive

human being but might not have had the guts to be the kind of tough decision maker the

president needs to be.

In late November of 1968 Richard Nixon appointed Henry Kissinger as his special

assistant of national security affairs. The announcement came as a surprise to many who had

reason to believe that Kissinger had never thought much of Nixon. Those working behind the

scenes on the Nixon campaign staff were less surprised. Richard Allen recalled; “My attitude was

that it was inevitable that Kissinger would have to be part of our administration…Kissinger had

proven his mettle by tipping us. It took some balls to give us those tips.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski left the Humphrey campaign and returned to his post at Columbia.

He was aware that 1968 marked a turning point, both in U.S. domestic politics, and perhaps as

to freak liberals who embrace the recently fashionable New Left doctrine that Communism

would be good for South Vietnam, indeed for all of benighted Southeast Asia.” Kenneth

Crawford, “Liberal Lemmings,” Newsweek (November 25, 1968), p. 37.

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000). The columnist Stewart Alsop captured this point

in a column shortly after the election. “Every politician likes to be liked, and it is the art of politics

to gather people of contradictory views under one large tent. But nobody likes to be liked more

than Humphrey—this may be his greatest weakness. And it surely should have been obvious that

it would be impossible to gather under one tent Lyndon Johnson and his followers and Eugene

McCarthy and his followers. It should surely have been obvious that it was not possible to reach

any sort of accommodation with McCarthy, simply because an accommodation would have

destroyed McCarthy’s political reason for being. But Humphrey foolishly tried. Every time

Humphrey made cooing noises, McCarthy simply took more extreme positions—like his

proposal for forcing this country’s South Vietnamese allies into a coalition with their life-and-

death enemies, the Communists, before holding an election. Instead of denouncing this proposal

as morally indefensible and big-power imperialism of the crassest sort—which it was—

Humphrey went on making cooing noises. Finally, and inevitably, Humphrey had no choice but

to support the basic policies of the Administration of which he had been a part. Thus the cooing

noises earned him nothing but a reputation for weakness.” Stewart Alsop, “Can Humphrey

Win?” Newsweek (September 9, 1968), p. 104.

Terence Smith, “Kissinger Role in ’68 Race Stirs Conflicting Views,” The New York Times (June

13, 1983).

136

importantly, on the political situation in Eastern Europe. Adam Michnik was in jail during the

time of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Within a few months he would be sentenced to

three years in prison for his role in the March protests in Poland. He, like many in the

opposition, was beginning to feel excluded by the bilateral nature of the U.S.-Soviet relationship.

“The American attitude wasn’t good,” recalled Michnik some years later. “It was like

they practically agreed with the Brezhnev Doctrine. Senator McCarthy said that the intervention

in Czechoslovakia was a ‘minor incident.’ Brzezinski said this was a very cynical statement and

that he was an imbecile for making it—and he was absolutely right.”

While American student radicals spent 1968 shouting communist slogans and hoisting

the red flags to demonstrate their commitment to socialism Michnik was having different

thoughts on the future of the communist system. “That was the year it turned out that everything

had been non-sense. The system that proclaimed freedom attacked defenseless students with

inspired goons and vigilantes. The system that proclaimed liberty sent tanks into Czechoslovakia.

The system that hung its slogans of universal brotherhood unleashed the most disgusting anti-

Semitic campaign in Poland, the first in postwar Europe. This is the point where I said to myself,

halt, stop, I do not want to have anything to do with the system…. I cut my umbilical cord to

Communism.”

Brzezinski believed that 1968 had shown that the Soviet system was now rotting from

within. But Zbigniew Brzezinski was one of the few members of the intellectual community who

continued to believe that the “forces of history” were moving in America’s direction. Brzezinski

understood that the West European communist parties had been shocked by the brutal force used

to crush Alexander Dubeck’s attempt to introduce “socialism with a human face.” He believed

this would open up new inroads for the policy of “peaceful engagement” if the Nixon

Administration did not take the temptation to enter a condominium arrangement over the heads

Interview, Warsaw, Poland, (March 30, 2001).

The New York Review of Books, (November 14, 1987).

137

of the Europeans. At the same Brzezinski also left the Humphrey campaign with tremendous

misgivings about the leftward shift in the Democratic Party. Nixon’s victory and the performance

of George Wallace had demonstrated the electoral power of the South. Yet Brzezinski also

believed there were Democratic alternatives to the segregationist message of George Wallace and

Strom Thurmond. Indeed, while the national Democratic Party was shifting leftward, a young

“born again” peanut farmer named James Earl “Jimmy” Carter spent that memorable year of

1968 mounting a rather improbable grassroots campaign for the governorship of Georgia.

138

CHAPTER FOUR: ENTER NIXON AND KISSINGER

Richard Nixon entered the White House at a particularly vexing moment in U.S. history.

A nation that in 1960 stood as the undisputed leader of the “free world” now appeared as an

uncertain giant timid and unsure of its role in a vastly changing world. It was the beginning of

what political observers would term the “crisis of confidence” in the United States. Brzezinski

believed that the United States was engulfed in a cultural and intellectual malaise that was

inflicting great harm. The roots ran far deeper than Vietnam. The nation was coming off a decade

that saw race riots, economic decline, and the rise of extremes across the political spectrum.

Indeed, the prospects for improvement looked scarcely better. American factories now appeared

antiquated products of a bygone era. The great industrial cities of the Midwest, once the models

of American productivity, were now referred to disparagingly as the “rust belt.”

In December of 1968 Zbigniew Brzezinski attended a four-day conference hosted by

Princeton University and sponsored by the International Association for Cultural Freedom. The

conference was entitled “The United States. It’s Problems, Impact, and Image in the World.” The

issue appeared grave enough to attract a vast cross-section of thinkers-- including Henry

Kissinger—whose public profile had been elevated by his appointment as Richard Nixon’s

special assistant for national security affairs only two weeks before.

The overwhelming tone of the conference was hostile to the U.S. role in the world—

particularly the continuing war in Vietnam. Brzezinski, who had come to favor a major de-

escalation in Vietnam, took issue with what he saw as a supercilious attitude coming from

European intellectuals. “There is something quaintly old-fashioned in the eloquent denunciations

of United States global involvement,” noted Brzezinski,“ especially coming from Europeans,

whose record for successful maintenance of world peace is not exactly admirable. The fact that

the United States’ commitment to international affairs is now on a global scale has been

139

determined by history. It cannot be undone, and the only relevant question that remains is what

will be its form and goals.”

Brzezinski then offered what he saw as the most urgent priorities of President-elect

Nixon’s foreign policy: “The first order of business will be to see whether the war in Vietnam can

be terminated on terms acceptable to the American people—not only in terms of the immediate

future but also of the likely anticipated reaction of the American public three or four years from

now. Secondly, I think it’s time to redefine our attitude toward China. The abnormalcy not only

hurts American interests in Asia but also affects negatively our relationship with the Soviet

Union. In Europe there is a crisis of confidence not only because of the loss of momentum toward

European unity but also because of Czechoslovakia; and because of the bitterness many

Europeans have toward bilateral American-Soviet negotiations on arms control. “

Brzezinski’s comments also indicated his concerns that the growing cultural pessimism

in the West was preventing the construction of a meaningful global community. He warned that

a U.S. retreat to isolationism could unleash anarchy into the global system that would likely be

assisted, rather than contained, by the Soviet Union. Brzezinski stressed the difficulties that

awaited the United States in the 1970s: “Here they [the Nixon administration] will have to do the

almost impossible; intensify consultations with the West Europeans, see what kind of

spontaneous moves toward unity there can be and at the same time maintaining bilateral arms

control talks with Russia. We can try to create options so that the Russians can become involved

in the positive tasks of the world with the rest of the developed world if they choose to, but not to

have too high expectations that they will.”

Brzezinski presented his still controversial view that the Soviet Union was no longer an

ideological competitor but disruptive force that, for all its rhetoric, was acting as a brake on

Israel Shenker, “Intellectuals Look at the World, the US. and Themselves and Find All 3 in

Trouble,” The New York Times (December 7, 1968).

Israel Shenker, “6 Experts, Interveiwed in Princeton, Urge Complete Review of U.S. Foreign

Policy,” The New York Times (December 8, 1968).

140

assisting the more impoverished nations of the world. “I believe we live in a world in which there

is a far greater social consciousness about human misery, and that even the material problems

within the United States do not mean a total indifference to what’s happening in the world. Our

political consciousness is catching up. We’re no longer living in a society in which 80 percent of

the people live reasonably well. And we’re moving into a stage in which we’re no longer satisfied

with a world in which America and Europe and Japan move rapidly, and the rest stagnate.”

In the late 1960s Brzezinski’s academic work had moved away from his previously strict

focus on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Brzezinski saw the United States entering a new

challenge—one that made the Soviet Union almost irrelevant. In 1970 Brzezinski would produce

Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era. Brzezinski had worked on the book for

four years. He conceded that it had taken him that long to understand the vast changes then

taking place around the globe. Brzezinski lifted the title from an excerpt out of Herman Hesse’s

novel Steppenwolf . “Human life “ wrote the German novelist “was reduced to real suffering only

when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap… when a whole generation is caught in this

way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to

understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence.”

Between Two Ages would provide a rather prophetic look at the world of next thirty years-

--including an analysis of the global impact of high technology, the increasingly global reach of

American cultural and economic influence (later known as “globalization”), the economic

stagnation and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, and—perhaps most importantly---the

looming threat of a global backlash from the world’s poorer nations as the more economically

advanced nations moved further into an era of post-industrial prosperity.

Brzezinski was particularly disdainful of “the self-flagellating mood” that had seized a

good part of the American intellectual world. “The fashionable talk today is all on the subject of

Ibid.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tecnetronic Era (New York: 1970),

p. 33.

141

the country’s imminent doom,” he noted in a 1970 interview. “The more pessimistic the

prediction the louder the acclaim it evokes.”

Brzezinski’s work was hardly polyannish,

however. He warned that the last time the world was caught “between ages” occurred in the 19

century when the European nations began to move from the agricultural to the industrial age.

The result was the rise of “mass politics” and the coming to power of totalitarian ideologies that

offered messianic solutions to the uncertainties of the day. Brzezinski observed that the world in

1970 was about to embark on a similar transition—and it should take immediate measures to

prepare for it.

Brzezinski’s work refuted the fashionable claims that the United States was a

“reactionary” nation that had already entered a state of decline. On the contrary, he noted that

the United States remained the most innovative and powerful nation in the world and was

certain to continue this role well into the 21

century. Brzezinski noted that America’s problems

of the 1960s were rooted in the difficulty of serving as history’s “guinea pig”—that is, the first

nation to make the traumatic adjustment from the industrial age into what he termed the age of

“technetronics.” Brzezinski concluded rather optimistically that the American society had “the

capacity, the talent, the wealth and, increasingly, the will” to surmount the difficulties in the

current historic transition. Indeed, the American economy at the time was already undergoing a

transition from the “rust belt” economy to the nascent hi-tech industry then taking root in

California’s “silicon valley.”

As a sweeping generalization, it can be said that Rome exported law; England,

parliamentary political democracy; France, culture and republican nationalism; the contemporary

United States, technological-scientific innovation and mass culture derived from high

consumption. Brzezinski noted, “American society, more than any other, ‘communicates’ with

the entire globe. Roughly sixty-five percent of all world communications originate in this

McCandlish Phillips, “Scholar See U.S. At a Turning Point,” The New York Times (August 12,

1970).

142

country.” This, he hinted, would only increase with the coming impact of a global

communications network. “Moreover, the United States has been most active in the promotion of

a global communications system by means of satellites and it is pioneering the development of a

world-wide information grid. It is expected that such a grid will come into being about 1975. For

the first time in history the cumulative knowledge of mankind will be made accessible on a

global scale—and it will be almost instantaneously available in response to demand.”

Brzezinski was thus optimistic about the United States’ ability to move with relative ease

into the new age of high technology. The reasons for this were rooted in what he regarded as

basic American characteristics. “What makes America unique in our time,” Brzezinski argued “is

that confrontation with the new is part of the daily American experience. For better or worse, the

rest of the world learns what is in store for it by observing what happens in the United States;

whether it be the latest scientific discoveries in space and medicine or the electric toothbrush in

the bathroom, pop art of LSD; air conditioning or air pollution; old-age problems or juvenile

delinquency. The evidence is more elusive in such matters as style, music, values, and social

mores, but there too the term ‘Americanization’ obviously implies a specific source.”

Brzezinski was far less confident about the Soviet Union’s ability to make the necessary

adjustments to the new age. His analysis of the Soviet system utilized a variant on the “end of

ideology” idea, popularized in the 1950s by Daniel Bell and Walter Rostow, that all nations

eventually follow a uniform model of the “stages of economic growth.” But Brzezinski placed the

argument in more familiar “dialectical terms” to make his point abouit the Soviet Union. Simply

put, Brzezinski argued that the Soviets had been mistaken that history had concluded with the

rise of the industrial age. While Soviet propaganda continued to boast of massive outputs of raw

industrial goods it had fallen behind the more advanced nations who were moving gradually

into the “technetronic” era.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, p. 31.

Ibid., p. 32.

143

“I wrote that book in part deliberately using Marxist categories,” Brzezinski recalled

some thirty years after its publication, “because I thought the book would have its greatest

impact in the communist world by using the categories of historical analysis to which they were

accustomed. This was to demonstrate to them that far from being part of an inevitably successful

progression toward world communism they were part of an inevitably doomed system---for

historically determinist reasons.”

The Soviet official press mounted a visceral denunciation of the book. Although it

usually took the Soviets some time to review foreign books, Between Two Ages was reviewed

almost instantly in both the academic as well as popular Soviet press. The critiques were

particularly hostile to Brzezinski’s charge that the Soviet system was in a “dialectally hostile”

relationship to the growth needs of its society. Despite the official efforts Brzezinski recalls the

book hit its intended audience. “The book actually had its greatest impact over there,” Brzezinski

recalled. “It was passed around quite a bit and read illicitly. The Soviets were quite critical of its

thesis. But on the private level I suspect among the more knowledgeable Russians--the kind of

KGB or the institute generation--it was appreciated. Because it corresponded to their feelings and

their sensitivities, the waste and lack of competitiveness, and the stupid determinism based on

increasingly irrelevant categories such as ‘we’re going to produce more iron or coal than the

Americans.’”

Yet Brzezinski’s final analysis did not bode well for the world’s more advanced nations

unless they took immediate precautions. The world, Brzezinski warned, was now experiencing

the most extensive and the most intensive transformation in its entire history. He noted the most

significant threat to world stability was the looming backlash that could arise should the Western

world continued to grow wealthy while the world’s poorer regions remained mired in relative

poverty. This problem was made even more acute by the fact that the economic disparities were

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000).

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000). On this point see also Zbigniew Brzezinski,

"Soviet Vulnerability," Newsweek (November 1, 1971), p. 45.

144

increasingly visible in a world linked by an increasingly sophisticated global communications

network.

Brzezinski associated the central phenomenon of global political awakening with a

number of monumental changes in the political condition of the world since World War II. The

most obvious was the collapse of Western colonialism, a phenomenon that had guided the

international system since roughly 1500. Brzezinski noted that on the eve of World War II, about

80 percent of the land mass of the world and 75 percent of the world’s population were then

under the control of Western imperial powers. Of that, 25 percent of the population was under

the singular control of the British Empire.

The postwar de-colonization was accompanied by the staggering fact that the world’s

population had grown more in the twenty-five years after the war than it had in the preceding

200 years, particularly in the world’s more impoverished regions. Brzezinski noted that the

addition of some 100 additional new states made for an increasingly combustible international

system. Traditional agrarian societies in these states were moving on a massive scale toward

urbanization and, most frequently these new urban centers had emerged without an adequate

social infrastructure. Brzezinski warned that “most of these people would be living in the

developing world, most will be young, most of them will be poor, most of them will be politically

awakened, most of them will be concentrated in urban areas, most of them will be susceptible to

mass mobilization.”

Brzezinski noted that America, while clearly the most innovative and creative society in

the world, was also a “major disruptive influence on the world scene. In fact communism, which

many Americans see as the principal cause of unrest, primarily capitalizes on frustrations and

This would be seen most clearly in the years after the Cold War—particularly following the

attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001when new Arabic networks---

particularly the Al Jazeera satellite network based out of Qatar--became a powerful force in

informing Arab opinion. Israel tellingly responded with its own Arabic broadcasts in an attempt

to combat the messages. See Joel Greenberg, “In a War of the Airwaves, Israel Fights Back in

Arabic,” The International Herald Tribune (July 8, 2002), p. 3.

Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, p. 36

145

aspirations, whose major source is the American impact on the rest of the world.” Brzezinski

argued that this problem was made worse in that the absolute economic growth would no longer

be enough to satisfy the increasingly restive nations. “Whether the less developed countries grow

rapidly or slowly, or not at all,” Brzezinski warned, “almost inevitably many of them will

continue to be dominated by intensifying feelings of psychological deprivation. In a world

electronically intermeshed, absolute or relative underdevelopment will be intolerable, especially

as the more advanced countries begin to move beyond that industrial era into which the less

developed countries have as yet to enter. It is thus no longer a matter of the ‘revolution of rising

expectations.’” The problem, Brzezinski cautioned, “arises from an intensifying feeling of relative

deprivation of which they are made more acutely aware by the spread of education and

communications. As a result, passive resignation may give way to active explosions of undirected

anger.”

In August of 1970 Brzezinski discussed these themes in an interview with the New York

Times. He suggested that Marshal McLuhan’s “global village” was a rather hopeful myth. The

accurate analogy was that of a “global city”—“a nervous, agitated, tense, and fragmented web of

interdependent relations.”

Brzezinski believed that Americans needed only to look at the

degenerating state of its largest city to find an appropriate metaphor. Brzezinski suggested the

“messy, fragmented, incoherent, congested, violent” state of New York City could be the model

of the turmoil that could engulf the world in the coming years. “You see more violence in the

Ibid., p. 36. Brzezinski compared the increased radicalization in the Third World to the

scenario in Russia before the outbreak of revolution in 1917. “In Russia the industrial revolution

outpaced mass education; literacy followed—rather than preceded—material change. The

revolutionary movements, particularly the Marxist one, strove to close the gap by politically

educating—hence radicalizing—the masses. Today in the Third World a subjective revolution is

preceding change in the objective environment and creating a state of unrest, uneasiness, anger,

anguish, and outrage.” Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, pp. 39-40.

McCandlish Phillips, “Scholar Sees U.S. At a Turning Point,” The New York Times (August 12,

1970).

146

poorer segment than in the richer segment here,” he noted from his office at Columbia. “In the

world-city it is the same thing. No one is really in charge; thus you have a state of anarchy.”

As Brzezinski was granting that interview construction was being completed on two

office buildings that would dramatically change the skyline of lower Manhattan. Though

formally known as “The World Trade Center,” the city tabloids took to calling the two buildings

“Nelson and David” due to the vast influence the Rockefeller brothers had on their planning and

development. The towers, at least for a time, would be the world’s tallest buildings and provide

office space for more than 50,000 people—and in thirty years they would also provide the most

dramatic target for the possible backlash Brzezinski spoke of in Between Two Ages.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Between Two Ages was Brzezinski’s proposed

solution. This would entail not a bilateral détente with the Soviet Union—or even a

rapprochement with China—though both were desirable to an extent. What was urgently

needed, he insisted, was a sustained effort to promote closer “trilateral” ties between the United

States, Japan and Western Europe—which were also beginning to confront the challenges of the

new technetronic era. Brzezinski insisted this community of developed nations must eventually

band together—perhaps even institutionally—to distribute more effectively the fruits of science

and technology and provide the most basic tools to narrow the North-South economic disparities.

These “trilateral” regions were also linked by still one further very important similarity—unlike

the Soviet Union and China--they were operating “within a framework of democratic institutions

that, though far from perfect, represent the most decent and just system of government so far

devised by man.”

Brzezinski insisted this would be possible only with the creation of a more efficient and

organized system of disseminating such scientific and technological breakthroughs on a global

scale. Brzezinski’s “trilateral” solution would make him an anathema to the more extreme fringes

Ibid.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan (New York, 1972) pp. 141-

142.

147

of the United States political system. The political right castigated Brzezinski for “one-worldism”

that sought to institute global socialism. More leftist voices tended to dismiss Brzezinski’s

solutions as a diabolical plot to make the world safe for capitalism and multinational

corporations. The debate would rage long and hard for decades. Brzezinski’s case for technology

was, and would continue to be, extremely controversial.

Brzezinski was particularly skeptical of the fashionable solution of “zero growth” which

advocated the halting of economic and demographic growth in the advanced society as a means

to overcome global inequality. Brzezinski warned that the ability of the advanced countries to

assist the less advanced countries would be significantly reduced by the “zero growth” plan since

a major effort at a redistribution of the world’s wealth was unlikely without sustaining economic

growth in the more developed nations of the world, not to mention the fact that there was simply

no international agency powerful with the authority to mandate such a plan.

Between Two Ages was viewed with marked skepticism by many left-wing critics who focused

almost exclusively on Brzezinski’s ongoing verbal battles with the New Left. A notable exception

was Michael Harrington who wrote a review of Brzezinski ‘s book for The Village Voice. “One of

the reasons Zbigniew Brzezinski’s new book is so important,” Harrington noted, “would also

persuade some of The Voice’s readers (and reviewers) not to read it: the author was a member of

the Policy Planning Council in the State Department between 1966 and 1968 and served as

foreign policy adviser to Hubert Humphrey’s campaign in 1968. In the fashionable, anti-

intellectual cant of some on the left, that makes him a ‘war criminal’ and one can put down this

volume after having read nothing but the short biographical note. I believe the war in Vietnam is

unconscionable, and must be ended now. But that hardly permits one to make nonsensical

analogies between Lyndon Johnson’s America and Adolf Hitler’s Germany or to overlook the

honest, and even anguished, decency of some who supported that venture. Moreover, in

Brzezinski’s case it is extremely significant that a man who participated at such high levels of

government in that period is now convinced that ideological politics—that simple counter-

position of Communism and anti-Communism which dominated American life at the height of

the Cold War—must come to an end.” Michael Harrington, “Books,” The Village Voice (December

17, 1970).

Brzezinski noted that the idea of “zero growth” appealed to both extreme rightists “who

wished to preserve the past” and extreme leftists “who feared the future.” Brzezinski offered that

the idea of “zero-growth” could only be attained through massive redistribution of wealth—

which was unlikely to occur without recourse to violent coercion—especially if there were no

outlets for compensating growth. “Those promoting zero growth” Brzezinski argued “as a means

of advancing egalitarianism in American society have probably not considered the degree to

which American capitalism might become openly coercive without further economic growth.

Coercion would be used to protect privilege in the setting of economic stagnation and relative

absence of opportunity.” Brzezinski noted that since Stalin’s death the Soviet bloc countries had

148

Brzezinski thought it ironic that the very groups that so demonstrably pointed out the

desperate condition of the world’s poorest countries were steadfastly opposed to the most

immediate solution to relieve their plight-- the remarkable scientific and technological revolution

then taking place in the more advanced nations. Brzezinski rejected the fashionable dismissal of

science as necessarily evil. “Without science, modern philosophy cannot possibly supply answers

to such concrete problems as ecology, survival, pollution, nutrition, even peace---without

philosophy, science would be directionless, possibly destructive. We have to ask why---that is the

philosophical part. We also have to ask how---that is the scientific part. That is why the New Left

has absolutely no answer. It’s an historic reaction, rather than an historic vanguard. It fails to

perceive the novelty of our technetronic age. It is an obsolescent force because it thinks it can

escape from science by turning its back on it—to opt out. It cannot. The New Left will become

more the violent left, because of its frustration.”

Brzezinski’s trilateral proposals also met opposition from within the White House.

Richard Nixon was determined to direct foreign policy within the confines of the White House.

The tradition of American diplomacy held that official contacts with foreign governments went

through the channels of the State Department. The idea was that information--even highly

classified---should move through the bureaucratic mill until the various analysts, department

heads, and diplomats had the opportunity to weigh in with their recommendations and/or

relied on the idea of rapid economic growth as a partial substitute for forced coercion. When they

did not grow, the element of coercion was always much higher. Violent uprisings, Brzezinski

observed, had already occurred in those Communist countries where growth slowed to the point

that it affected the social condition. Such “zero-growth” had done little to improve the

environments of those countries—which at the time were among the most polluted on the planet.

The inequality that existed in the United States , he noted, had been at least partially tolerated by

the American tradition of a relatively balanced opportunity. But this opportunity, Brzezinski

argued, was dependent on flexibility and mobility—concepts inherent in the concept of economic

growth. This growth—achieved by initiative and creativity, provided at least the hope of

upward mobility. Brzezinski suggested the end result of “zero growth” solution was “stagnant

socialism” which was already visible throughout the Soviet style economies. Zbigniew

Brzezinski, “The Politics of Zero Growth,” Newsweek (March 27, 1972), p. 54.

McCandlish Phillips, “Scholar Sees U.S. At a Turning Point,” The New York Times (August 12,

1970).

149

objections. Nixon did not trust bureaucracies and would move to exclude the State Department,

and particularly Secretary of State William Rogers, from foreign policy decisions.

Nixon would enlist Henry Kissinger to ensure that this process worked. In the ensuing

years Kissinger’s post of national security adviser would be transformed from a mere policy

coordinator, to the president’s foremost adviser in formulating policy.

Nixon and Kissinger

would then erect a system that excluded their own professional foreign service from any

significant role in shaping policy. The motives for doing so also reflected Nixon’s darker side.

Upon assuming office he told his staff that foreign policy was to be handled by the White House,

“not by the striped-pants faggots in Foggy Bottom.”

The relationship produced a complex

system of operations that bypassed the professional diplomats in the State Department.

The initial result was a fierce turf battle between Kissinger and Rogers. “I’m sorry about

how Henry and Bill go at each other,” Nixon once told his speech-writer William Safire. “It’s

really rather deep-seated. Henry thinks Bill isn’t very deep, and Bill thinks Henry is power

Lyndon Johnson relished his ability to tap the brainpower of the various experts operating

throughout the vast bureaucracies. To do so more effectively he kept a bank of phones on his

desk –each equipped with rows of buttons. “If I needed to get hold of somebody, all I had to do

was mash a button. And I mean anybody—even some little fellow tucked away in one of the

agencies.” He recalled this to aides after a visit to the Nixon Oval Office. The new president, he

reported with some disbelief, “had just one dinky phone” with three buttons on it. “That’s all!

Just three buttons! And they all go to Germans.” Walter Issacson, Kissinger (New York, 1992), p.

152.

At Nixon’s first White House press conference on January 27, 1969, the newly inaugurated

president issued a revealing statement about Vietnam. “This is all going to take time, but I can

assure you that it will have my personal attention. The Secretary of State, my Adviser for

National Security Affairs, the Secretary of Defense, all of us will give it every possible attention

and we hope to come up with some new approaches.” That statement introduced a new phase in

the relationship between the president and his NSC staff chief. The secretary of state, the adviser

for national security affairs, and the secretary of defense all were listed together, in that order, as

the president’s principal foreign policy counselors. The NSC’s principal staff officer was listed as

a coequal policymaker with the president’s two leading cabinet members. The terminology was

also significant--the “assistant for national security affairs” was now labeled as the president’s

“adviser” on national security affairs. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “NSC’s Midlife Crisis,” Foreign

Policy no. 69 (Winter, 1987-88), pp.

Duncan L. Clarke, “Why State Can’t Lead,” Foreign Policy, no. 66 (Spring 1987), pp. 128-42.

150

crazy.” The president then smiled. “And in a sense,” he said, “they’re both right.”

By the end

of their first year in office Nixon and Kissinger were spending hours each day in rambling

conversations that sought in every way to exclude the Secretary of State from weighing in on the

more vital issues of foreign policy. As Kissinger biographer Walter Issacson recalls “Kissinger

would guide him along like a deferential tutor, praising his observations, adding a few insights,

and pointing out various shortcomings of the State Department.”

With Nixon’s agreement, Kissinger initiated “back channel” contact with important

officials representing the United States abroad. While most diplomatic cables continued to go to

the State Department, the more essential material came directly to Kissinger. Those few

individuals who dared reveal the existence of the “back channel” found themselves isolated. The

most significant back channel was of course the secret negotiating conduit to Moscow. Early in

the administration Kissinger held a series of private meetings with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly

Dobrynin. Secretary of State Rogers would not be invited. Henceforth the most important

substantive contact with the Soviet leadership would take place directly through Kissinger.

Thereafter Dobrynin would visit as often as once a week, usually coming through a little known

door to the East Wing of the White House and meeting Kissinger privately.

The relationship with the Soviet Union was particularly important to Nixon and

Kissinger. They were both exceedingly pessimistic that the United States could continue to

pursue a strict foreign policy of containment. Vietnam had sharply discredited the idea of foreign

Issacson, Kissinger, p. 198.

The more disturbing aspects of the Nixon tapes concerned his ramblings with Kissinger. As

Walter Issacson, wrote, “The most egregious cases came when Nixon seemed to bait Kissinger,

saying things—especially about Jews—that cried out for Kissinger to challenge him. Kissinger

never would. Once, Nixon phoned and started a rambling attack on Jews and blacks as Winston

Lord listened in on a dead key. “Why didn’t you say something?’ Lord asked afterward. “I have

enough trouble,” Kissinger told his aide, “fighting with him on the things that really matter; his

attitudes toward Jews and blacks are not my worry.” Indeed Issacson notes that “Nixon seemed

to take a fiendish glee in launching into diatribes against Jews and watching as Kissinger shifted

feet nervously, afraid to contradict him. “Nixon would talk about Jewish traitors,” John

Ehrlichman recalled, “and he’d play off Kissinger, ‘Isn’t that right, Henry? Don’t you agree?’ And

Henry would respond: ‘Well, Mr. President, there are Jews and then there are Jews.’” Issacson, p.

148.

151

intervention to counter Soviet moves in the third world. At the same time the Soviet military

buildup made the military containment practiced before Vietnam a virtual impossibility. Détente

was thus an attempt to make a virtue out of necessity.

Nixon and Kissinger believed that the only counter America’s growing mood of retreat

was to construct a more viable détente with Moscow. Kissinger, in the parlance of academia, was

a proponent of “realism.” This was a historically European world-view that stressed the need for

an unsentimental “balance of power” diplomacy. He thus saw the need to move toward a classic

balance of power politics that would no longer treat the Soviet Union and China as ideological

competitors, but as traditional “great powers” with their own legitimate interests to protect. The

end result would be a renewed focus on state-to-state diplomacy negotiated between the great

powers with the end goal of preserving geo-political stability in the world.

The philosophical underpinnings of Nixon’s foreign policy could be found in Kissinger’s

Harvard doctoral dissertation. Later published as A World Restored, Kissinger wrote of the efforts

of the Austrian statesman Metternich and his ability to control the revolutionary changes at the

Congress of Vienna in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. Kissinger believed that stability was the

prime goal of diplomacy. In that sense “moral crusades” made for dangerous diplomacy—

The balance between the two superpowers had long been between the U.S. Strategic Air

Command, later supplemented by the navy’s nuclear submarines, and the Soviet conventional

forces. In short, the U.S. nuclear threat deterred the Soviet Union by threatening to destroy its

cities; the urban population was hostage for the Kremlin’s restraint. By contrast, the Soviet Union

did not gain an intercontinental capability and capacity to destroy the United States. However, by

the late 1960s the Soviet strategic power had caught up with that of the United States. The result

was that the Soviets could now hold America’s population—no longer just Western Europe’s—

hostage. James Spanier, American Foreign Policy Since World War II (New York, 1985), p. 170.

According to John Lewis Gaddis, the Nixon-Kissinger approach resembled the non-military

containment strategies originally advocated by George Kennan in the late 1940s. Kissinger and

Kennan's similar world-views grew out of a shared commitment to the "realist" tradition in

American foreign policy. Gaddis notes “This was rooted in the study of European diplomatic

history, a degree of detachment from the academic and policy-making elites of the 1950s and

1960s, and, above all, a sense of strategy--an insistence on the importance of establishing coherent

relationships between ends and means.” See John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, (New

York, 1982 p. 308). For a thorough analysis of Nixon-Kissinger's foreign policy strategy see

Raymond L. Garthoff's Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan

(Washington, DC 1985).

152

indeed, he would argue, a stable world order was a moral principle in itself since lofty ideas of

human rights were unlikely to prosper in conditions of international anarchy. As one Harvard

colleague suggested at the time, if Kissinger had to choose between disorder and injustice he

would choose injustice “not because he favors injustice, but because he feels in his bones there

can be no justice without order.”

The idea was that Moscow could be “entangled” in a web of mutual economic and

diplomatic interests that would gradually turn the Soviet Union from a “revolutionary” state

trying to undermine the global system to a “status quo” state with its own vested interests in

maintaining global stability. The term heard most often was “linkage,” which held that progress

on one issue would be tied to progress on others—until there emerged something close to a

general settlement on the cold war hot spots. In short, the Nixon-Kissinger policy would be an

attempt to convince the Soviets that it was in their own vested interest to “contain” themselves.

Brzezinski would become one of most persistent critics of the Nixon-Kissinger version of

détente. Among his most frequent refrains was that the Soviet Union “was simply too strong

militarily not to be a rival and yet too weak domestically to become a confident and relaxed

partner. “ He believed that a return to a 19

century world-view was not the answer to manage

the very modern problems then facing a rapidly changing world. These objections were also

rooted in his fundamental belief that the Soviet Union had very little interest in becoming a

“status quo” state. Indeed the bulk of Brzezinski’s academic work was based on the premise that

the Soviet Union was decidedly not a status quo power—and to simply act if one were dealing

with France or Belgium was an exercise in self-delusion. The problem was deeply rooted in the

nature and political education of the Soviet leadership. Indeed, while Nixon and Kissinger saw

economic interaction as a way to “entangle” the Soviets into cooperation, Brzezinski believed it

“Mr. Nixon’s Professor,” Newsweek (December 22, 1969).

Spanier, p. 172.

153

was a futile attempt to buttress a bankrupt system and would reduce pressure for badly needed

political and economic liberalization.

Brzezinski was particularly skeptical about using détente with Moscow as another form

of “containment.”

He warned that a troubling combination of deeply engrained ideological

orthodoxy and recently awakened great-power nationalism would mean that Moscow would

interpret détente as a sign of weakness. The Soviet leaders, in his view, were equipped with an

almost reflexive desire to attempt to match the United States in power and influence.

This was

especially true if the Soviets interpreted U.S. resolve as retracting in the wake of

Vietnam.

Brzezinski cautioned that the perception of U.S. weakness was likely to invigorate

Soviet claims that the world’s “correlation of forces” was moving in their direction. This

condition was made more dangerous by the development of Soviet long-range intervention

forces that would tempt the Soviet leaders into global undertakings that they previously had little

choice but to eschew.

Brzezinski’s chief concern was that the Soviets were merely engaging in a “selective

détente” that would use the benefits of détente while continuing to exploit opportunities—and

thus promote chaos---around the globe. Though Brzezinski ridiculed the notion of a “pax-

Sovietica,” he did fear the Soviets as a source of global disruption. Even if the Soviet Union could

not manufacture a computer chip, it was still quite capable of contributing to global anarchy by

arming revolutionary causes in the developing world or sponsoring terrorists to disrupt the

global economy---a path that Brzezinski believed the Soviets had chosen in the 1960s when it

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Community of Developed Nations,” Newsweek (February 1, 1971), p.

40.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Deceptive Structure of Peace,” Foreign Policy (Spring 1974), p. 43.

“Dealing With Moscow: East-West Experts View Value and Risks,” The New York Times

(August 7, 1974).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Economics of Détente: A US Portfolio in the USSR?,” The New

Leader, vol. 57, no. 16 (August 5, 1974), pp. 5-7.

154

became clear that they could not compete with the more dynamic societies of the United States,

Western Europe, and Japan.

“Stability on the basis of condominium was something I feared very much,” Brzezinski

recalled years later. “I thought that condominium would first of all not be stable---and secondly it

would elevate the Soviet Union and make permanent its control over Eastern Europe while at the

same time create a strong reaction against the United States within our own sphere. So I didn’t

think it was a good historical formula. I also sensed, or more than sensed, I knew from

conversations that I had with Henry that at that time it was based on a very pervasive

Spenglarian pessimism which was motivating Henry. The feeling that the West was in historical

decline, where as I was arguing in Between Two Ages that the gap was just beginning to widen in

our favor and that it would widen in a qualitative fashion soon. So it involved a somewhat

different historical perspective on the nature of our times.”

Brzezinski was also skeptical about claims that détente with the Soviet Union made the

situation in Europe more “stable.” This came back to Brzezinski’s original ideas of peaceful

engagement. One of Kissinger’s first acts in the White House was to inform Soviet ambassador

Dobrynin that President Nixon “intended to make no move in relation to Eastern Europe that

would be assessed in Moscow as a ‘challenge’ to its position in this region.”

Brzezinski saw the Nixon-Kissinger approach to Eastern Europe not only a defeatist

policy-- but a potentially unstable one. Writing in January of 1970 Brzezinski warned that if the

populations of Eastern Europe lose faith in the idea of gradual liberalization they would turn to

more violent solutions, “especially if at some point paralysis in the Soviet leadership were to

produce what might appear to be an opportunity.”

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000).

Thomas Parrish, The Cold War Encyclopedia (New York, 1996), p. 172.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “America and Europe,” Foreign Affairs, vol.49, no. 1 (October, 1970), pp.

18-19.

155

Events would soon prove him right. On December 13, 1970 the Polish government

announced a substantial increase in the price of food and fuels. The move was a desperate

attempt to correct the hidden inflationary impact of mass subsidies required to keep the

centralized economy afloat. The move, although merited by economic realities, revealed the gap

between the Polish public and the communist party. Announced on the eve of the Christmas

holidays, the price hikes were especially provocative. The workers in Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard

responded with a massive work stoppage. When police attempted to disperse the crowds with

truncheons and water cannons, the workers responded with widespread rioting. Armed with

lead pipes and bicycle chains the striking workers took to the streets looting and brawling with

police. Another group of rioters, singing the Internationale, marched to the local Communist

party headquarters and set it to flame.

The government-controlled media in Poland claimed that the demonstrators were merely

“hooligans and adventurers, having nothing in common with the working class.” But it soon

became clear that the rioters were indeed workers, and that they were interested in far more than

mere plunder. The strikers had expanded their demands to include freedom of the press and

religion as well as the right to form unions that were not run by the communist party. Of

particular significance, the Gdansk workers sent a delegation to the local university to apologize

to the students for their failure to support their cause in 1968.

The disturbances spread rapidly along the Baltic coast to the cities of Sopot and Gdynia.

Alarmed by the growing demonstrations, the government contemplated its options. In a televised

address to the nation, Premier Jozef Cyrankiewicz promised that the workers’ complaints over

See “We Want Food, We Want Food!,” Newsweek (December 28, 1970), p. 24

This violence was far more dangerous than the Polish disturbances of March 1968. At that time

only the students participated. But this time it was the workers who were up in arms. And any

time workers expressed their dissatisfaction, the entire socialist community became deeply

concerned. The other Soviet bloc regimes braced for any contagion effect. The East German

government initiated salary increases for more than 1 million workers. Czechoslovakia and

Hungary quickly stocked stores with additional food and consumer goods for Christmas

shoppers. Ibid., p. 24

156

the new prices could be “discussed.” The Prime Minister, insisting that “enemies of Poland” were

behind the disturbances—also warned that the police were authorized to shoot demonstrators if

necessary.

When workers refused to vacate the Gdansk shipyard facilities, heavily armed units were

mobilized in an attempt to disperse them. On December 16 police troops opened fire on the

workers. According to official accounts 45 had been killed and nearly 1,200 injured. More

independent estimates would come to higher numbers on both counts. The events of December

1970 would become a powerful symbol for the increasingly active Polish opposition. The

shooting of Polish workers in front of the shipyard gates violated that unwritten commandment

that Pole shall not kill Pole. The myth of the martyrs proved durable to the shipyard workers. To

Lech Walesa, then a young shipyard electrician, the duty to honor the shipyard martyrs became a

burning obsession.

The events of December 1970 indicated the importance of Brzezinski’s long time goal of

achieving an international recognition of the German-Poland border. The sanctioning of Poland’s

western boundary with West Germany was particularly important. See Adam Bromke, “Beyond

the Gomulka Era,” Foreign Affairs vol. 49, no. 3, (April 1971), pp. 484-485. “Another consequence

of West Germany’s Ostpolitik has been the elimination to a large extent of fear of that country,

which in the 1950s and still in the 1960s pushed the Czechs and especially the Poles to seek

protection from the Russians. In his address during the popular upheaval in Poland in 1956

Premier Cyrankiewicz strongly emphasized that German claims to the Polish western territories

necessitated Poland’s alliance with the USSR. Yet, in his speech during the Polish revolt in

December 1970 this theme was absent. Two weeks after the visit of Chancellor Brandt to Warsaw

to sign the Polish-West German treaty, which sanctioned Poland’s western boundary, it simply

would not have been credible.” Adam Bromke, “The CSCE and Eastern Europe,” The World Today

vol. 29, no. 5, (May 1973), p. 201.

Szczecin, a port on the Oder River near the frontier with East Germany, was the scene of

considerable violence. Three days after the first troubles in Gdansk, about a third of Szczecin’s

22,000 waterfront workers remained on strike. When a crowd of 1,000 workers attempted to

march on party headquarters they were met by police units. Soon a barrage of Mototov cocktails

set the party building aflame. Outside army tanks repeatedly charged the crowd. “The people

fled to avoid being run over, but a mother and her child were unable to make it,” reported one

Swedish journalist. “An onrushing tank struck both of them. A young solider, standing nearby

and watching, broke into tears.” In Slupsk, a Pomeranian industrial city 75 miles west of Gdansk,

young demonstrators marched through the streets chanting “We want food, we want food!” A

Danish reporter, one of the few Western journalists to witness the riots, telephoned his office in

Copenhagen that the police response in Slupsk had been equally brutal. “It is impossible to count

the number of times I have seen police attack people I knew had not been involved in anything,”

157

Gomulka would become a personal scapegoat for all of the ills that had beset Polish

society. Edward Gierek, the party’s new leader, promised reforms and punishment of the guilty.

Gierek, a former coal miner, conceded that the party had lost touch with the workers---and

moved to rescind the price hikes. He was widely considered a “technocrat,” a term used to

describe the leaders of communist regimes less inclined to preach world revolution and more

concerned with maintaining stable societies with modern economies. Gierek visited a Warsaw

steel plant, shaking hands, like a Western politician on the campaign circuit, with workers as well

as officials. Gierek had “admitted” in private that “Gomulka and his group” were to blame for

the December events.

“The workers,” said one Warsaw intellectual shortly after the strike, “have kicked open

the door to the future. But who will walk through and what they will do remains to be seen.” A

Gdansk journalist noted rather prophetically “People have discovered that they can change

things. So they say that if what happened in December doesn’t improve their lives, maybe they’ll

do it again.”

And, of course, they would do it again in 1976 and 1980. In the meantime the Polish riots

attracted relatively little attention in the United States.

But Moscow viewed the unrest as a grave

threat.

This, after all, was not a philosophical protest of reformist intellectuals. It was a revolt

by workers against the oppression of a “worker-state.”

As Brzezinski had long noted, the

he reported. “The brutality was all on one side. Only those in uniform used terror.” Moments

later, a Polish voice broke to the line and cut him off. “We Want Food, We Want Food!” p. 22.

Roman Laba, The Roots of Solidarity (Princeton, 1991) p. 23.

“Poland: Patching It Up,” Newsweek (February 1, 1971), p. 34.

As Brzezinski noted this remained a basic problem of stability in the Communist world. “More

than 50 years after its creation the Communist system still does not provide for orderly political

succession. Power is still personal—not constitutional—and changes occur only through bitter

and debilitating coups. Most recently such a coup shook Poland with more reliance on force to

effect the change in leadership than is generally realized….This situation prompts both rigidity

and insecurity.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The State of Communism,” Newsweek (March 15, 1971), p.

56.

Even more threatening to Moscow was the fact that the worker’s grievances went beyond the

economic sphere. As formulated in numerous statements, leaflets, and an open letter to Gierek,

158

Polish turmoil underscored a problem prevailing throughout the Soviet bloc; the increasing

impatience that their living standards were lagging far behind those of the West. One route,

implicit in Brzezinski’s strategy of peaceful engagement, was to decentralize the political and

economic system and open communist regimes to a freer flow of information. A less painful

solution was to simply borrow capital and technology from the West to prop up their stagnating

economies. And this is what they did.

Eastern Europe, however, was not really the focus of the Nixon and Kissinger foreign

policy. In early March of 1969 a battle erupted when a contingent of Chinese soldiers attacked

some Soviet frontier guards on Dmansky Island, a disputed island in the Ussuri River that

marked the Sino-Soviet border. Soviet casualties reportedly included the death of several dozen

border guards. Strongly worded protest notes were sent by both sides. On March 15, the Soviets

launched a sharp attack with heavy artillery units that also included missiles and tanks. They

thrust deep into Chinese territory for a short period of time—casualties were believed to be

heavy.

In April of 1970 Moscow’s Red Square was decorated with flags and bunting in a lavish

production for what would have been Lenin’s 100

birthday. More than 6,000 representatives of

the world’s Communist parties gathered in the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses. They would hear

two days of speechmaking about the glories of the Soviet system. Leonid Brezhnev’s keynote

address trumpeted Soviet accomplishments and Communist invincibility. Not only did the

Chinese refuse to show up for the celebrations in Moscow. Indeed they chose to honor Lenin’s

birthday with a violent verbal attack on the Soviet Union.. Chinese pronouncements declared the

their demands also included the release of all demonstrators still under arrest and a moratorium

on further sanctions against strikers; the punishment of officials responsible for the use of

violence in December; the improvement of public information on state policies; the

transformation of the trade unions into genuine channels for the institutionalized expression of

workers’ interests; and in the latter connection, the free election of local union representatives.

See Radio Free Europe, “Polish Situation Report, “no. 5 (January 22, 1971). Timothy Garton Ash,

The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, (New York, 1985), pp. 11-12.

J.F. Brown, "Détente and Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe," Survey (Spring/Summer, 1974), pp.

46-58.

159

Soviet Union to be “a Hitler-type dictatorship,” and denounced the “Brezhnev doctrine as

“imperialism with a socialist label.”

Though Brzezinski would use less invective language, he was left unimpressed with the

celebrations surrounding Lenin’s centennial. As a leading voice on Soviet affairs, he was

frequently asked to comment on the significance of the Lenin’s legacy. “Lenin’s emphasis on

dogmatic belief, intolerance toward dissent, violence, conspiratorial activity, almost total

subordination of the individual to the party, not to speak of his paranoiac supsiciousness….were

not only dictated by the brutal autocratic tradition in which Lenin operated but became also the

extension of that very tradition.”

Brzezinski was even less impressed by Soviet “achievements.” “It is a staggering fact,”

noted Brzezinski, “that 50 years after the Bolshevik Revolution the Soviets still cannot produce an

economically viable automobile and have to have Italian help in doing so. It is even more

ominous, from the standpoint of their technological competition with the West that today the

United States has something like 60,000 computers in use in its economy while the Soviet Union

has probably no more than 3,000.”

“The Soviet Union,” Brzezinski continued, “is ruled by a self-perpetuating oligarchy.

This governing elite relies on the bureaucratization of virtually every walk of life as a means of

carrying out policy, maintaining security, controlling change and promoting progress. It has

become abundantly clear over the past decade to any close observer of Russian affairs that this

combination of an aging oligarchy atop an all-pervading bureaucracy has turned out to be a

cumbersome vehicle with which to effect a broad process of modernization. Russia’s ruling

group is unquestionably the oldest, man for man, in any nation of importance in the modern-day

world. As a group, it is uncertain, cautious, ambiguous, mired in party dogma, and moribund. In

“Soviet Union: The Spoilers,” Newsweek (May 4, 1970), p. 45

“Leninism: Any Number Can Play,” Newsweek (April 27, 1970), p. 39.

“An Interview with an Authority on Communism, Zbigniew Brzezinski,” U.S. News and World

Report (April 20, 1970), p. 72.

160

some ways, it is a throwback to the Curia of the Vatican—that ancient clerical bureaucracy that

deteriorated into a body of venerable reactionaries. At the same time, the Soviet bureaucracy has

developed into a deeply conservative institution—preservers of the status quo of Russian

Communism.”

Brzezinski would then offer a rather prescient picture of the Soviet future.

A red flag raised spontaneously by the students of Moscow over their university, given

the authoritarian political setting, will have much graver political symbolism than the same flag

fluttering over Columbia or the Sorbonne. But it will not be, I feel, until the early 1980s that the

first fully post-Stalin new political leadership will begin to enter into the political arena. An

aspiring leader aged 45 in 1980 will have been only 18 at the time of Stalin’s death, and 21 when

de-Stalinization actually began in the Soviet Union. Though that generation will probably find its

access to power blocked by political leaders a decade or even two decades older, it will press for

influence from the echelons immediately below that of the Central Committee. Given the more

volatile domestic as well as global setting in which it will have matured, given its higher

education, given probably by then the more flexible character of the adjoining East European

states, it is quite possible that the emerging political elite may be less committed to the notion

that social development requires intense concentration of political power. Nonetheless, even then

evolution into a pluralist system is likely to be resisted by the entrenched political oligarchy. The

introduction of political pluralism will require at some point a deliberate decision to open the

Soviet Union to competitive ideas, to let each Soviet citizen read what he wants, to reduce the

level of the party’s ideological control, to decentralize decision-making and thus to share power

with society; in effect, a major transformation of the system as a whole. Unintended consequences

of economic-technological adjustments will not suffice to bring about significant political change.

As in Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia (prior to 1968), at some point the political elite must decide

to embark on political reforms if there are to be significant political changes.

In 1970, however, the reform attempts of Mikhail Gorbachev were still a distant prospect

as Nixon and Kissinger began to play a double game involving the Soviet Union and China. On

July 15, 1971 Nixon went before a national television audience to announce that he would visit

Beijing within the next year in an effort to normalize relations between the two countries that had

been suspended since 1949. It was a shocking announcement, not in the least because it came

from a president who forged his political reputation denouncing the evils of the communist

system. The politics of the announcement required Nixon’s original vision and credentials as an

anti-communist---as well as Kissinger’s covert negotiations and his ability to turn the vision into

Ibid., p. 71.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “For Lenin’s Centenary: The Soviet Past & Future,” Encounter (March,

1970), pp. 3-16.

161

a global framework that kept the United States at the center of the triangular relationship that

drove a wedge between the world’s two communist giants.

At a time when the mood in America was moving toward its traditional isolationist

impulses, the opening to China rekindled the idea that America could play a vital and

constructive role in the world. Two decades of “yellow peril” were replaced by a love affair with

China. Nixon’s announcement was soon overshadowed by press reports detailing the two years

of secret negotiations carried on through Henry Kissinger, the American and Chinese embassies

in Warsaw, and third parties like Pakistan. Nixon’s proposed visit would elevate Kissinger’s star

to new heights--much to the dismay of Nixon who would soon order that Kissinger set up “an

absolute wall around himself—he must not see on any basis the New York Times, the

Washington Post, CBS, or NBC.”

Brzezinski had mixed emotions about Nixon’s shocking announcement. Since 1968 he

had been urging the U.S. to make an opening to China as a method of countering Soviet

aggression. He compared Nixon’s announcement to a scenario of “800 million Mexicans recalling

bitterly that Americans stole large slices of Mexican territory, condemning daily the American

social system as decadent and ripe for the ash can of history, arming themselves with nuclear

weapons---and it was suddenly announced that Mr. Brezhnev was to pay a call on the Mexican

leaders.”

Yet Brzezinski noted that the secretive nature of U.S. negotiations had offended

America’s more traditional allies—particularly the increasingly important relationship with

Japan. The United States had repeatedly assured Japan that there was no “race” to normalize

relations with China—with whom Japan had been seeking closer political relations to

supplement its already burgeoning trade relations. Tokyo officials would indeed express shock

and anger at the U.S. failure to provide advance notice of its sudden opening—especially after

Issacson, p. 349.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Substance and Style,” Newsweek (August 9, 1971).

162

U.S. leaders had assured Tokyo that it would be consulted on issues of vital importance. This

would presumably include one as significant as Nixon’s overture to China.

Few Americans were paying attention to Japan, however, when President Nixon’s plane

touched down in Beijing on February 21, 1972. While United States bombers continued to attack

Communist forces in Cambodia and Vietnam, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) band

welcomed Nixon with its best version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” In any case the Chinese

leadership was less interested in ideological consistency than to utilize the U.S. as a

counterweight to the increasingly bellicose Soviet Union and an economically revived Japan. It

was indeed a remarkable visit. Millions of Americans watched Nixon, through the modern

wonder of satellite television, shake hands with China’s Chairman Mao Zedong and take a tour

of the Great Wall and the Imperial Palace. For eight days all three national networks interrupted

their regular programming to provide daily reports of Nixon’s amazing visit.

In what Nixon would term a “week that changed the world” he and Mao held “frank”

discussions stipulating that United States and China would not seek dominance in the Asian

Pacific region while promising to cooperate in preventing other powers (read the Soviet Union)

from doing so, and to avoid international war. Both governments declared that they would seek

to develop trade, improve cultural and scientific relations and work to restore full diplomatic

relations. The most contentious issue of Taiwan was papered over with Nixon’s promise that the

United States would eventually withdraw its military forces from Taiwan and Indochina---

See “Nixon’s Rebuff to Japan,” Newsweek (March 22, 1971), p. 79. As Brzezinski would note

“The problem of China, while a major issue in its own right, is related to the regional question.

Boosting Japan as the main regional power in the Far East is tantamount to stimulating Japanese-

Chinese rivalry. This may not be good for the stability of the region; efforts to that end will

adversely affect American-Chinese relations and complicate both internal Japanese politics and

Japanese-Chinese relations. Much to be preferred would be some effort to stimulate three-way

Japanese-American-Chinese consultations on the economic-social problems of the region and

eventually also on political-security matters. At first conducted through informal channels, such

talks eventually could become more formal and develop into a standing conference; Brzezinski,

The Fragile Blossom, p. 136.

163

though these pronouncements were obscured in the conveniently ambiguous language of the

final communiqué.

The Nixon “grand strategy” had still an even bigger card to play. In October 1971 he had

announced he would travel to Moscow in May of 1972. But Moscow was less willing to concede

the ideological high ground. Both Nixon and Kissinger saw improved relations with Moscow as

“linkage” that would compel Moscow to pressure the North Vietnamese to reach an

accommodation with Washington in exchange for credits and arms control treaties. Kissinger was

officious in this respect—requesting Dobrynin’s cooperation ten times in 1969 alone. Brzezinski

was especially skeptical of the Soviet willingness to cooperate. Indeed, the Soviets soon learned

that reverse linkage could be applied.

In March of 1972, two months before Nixon’s scheduled visit to Moscow, North

Vietnamese forces—complete with Soviet-supplied tanks--launched a massive offensive across

Vietnam’s demilitarized zone. Saigon’s army fled in a massive retreat. Nixon feared that the

collapse of South Vietnam was one of the few things that could seriously imperil his election in

the fall. Nixon for a time postured that the North Vietnamese aggression was enough to threaten

the Moscow summit. But it soon appeared that Washington was even more eager to convene the

summit as scheduled. Moscow made this clear when they sent a note to Washington suggesting

Nixon’s visit had dramatically changed the shape of the 1972 election. Leading Democratic

contenders found themselves in the awkward position of praising Nixon’s foreign policy.

Somehow Nixon, the old red baiter, appeared to have been transformed into a great statesman.

Senator Edward Kennedy, widely thought to be the most attractive candidate to challenge Nixon

in the upcoming election, was among the most effusive in praising Nixon’s visit, calling the

communiqué “one of the most progressive documents” in American history. Robert Divine, Since

1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Recent American History (New York, 1985), p. 187.

Jacob Helbrunn, “The Declinist,” The New Republic (November 16, 1992), p. 37. Nixon’s visit to

China was initially thought to have made the quagmire in Vietnam something of an

anachronism. For the United States the need to stem the spread of the Chinese communism no

longer seemed quite so pressing. And now that Beijing considered the Soviets, rather than the

United States, to be their chief strategic rival, they could hardly look forward to the prospect of a

North Vietnamese victory supported by Moscow. In a similar manner, now that the Soviets

found themselves being played off against China, it was thought that Moscow might become

more interested in reducing tensions with the United States rather than simply prolonging

America’s agony in Vietnam. See Issacson, p. 415.

164

that restraint in the face of Hanoi’s invasion would improve prospects for negotiations at the May

summit.

Brzezinski pointed to Vietnam as only the most immediate example of misplaced

optimism that the Soviets would “contain” themselves in the name of détente. Brzezinski had

cautioned President Johnson that the Soviets were not acting as an honest broker in Vietnam. He

was even more incredulous that Kissigner believed that somehow the Soviets would be willing to

invest their ideological capital to help extricate the United States from its bleeding wound. “The

Soviets clearly have a vested interest in dragging out the war,” noted Brzezinski at the time, “if

only because it exacerbates U.S. difficulties with China, and contributes to domestic discontent

and continues to drain the U.S. economy. “

Nixon responded with a massive air assault against Hanoi. For the first time since 1969,

American planes attacked targets deep into Vietnam, hitting the outskirts of both Hanoi and

Haiphong. For the first time U.S. jets would utilize the pinpoint accuracy of laser assisted “smart

bombs” –to destroy bridges. When this offensive failed to halt the North Vietnamese attacks on

the South, Nixon ordered the Navy to mine the approaches to Haiphong harbor where a number

of Soviet supply ships were docked. Brezhnev, despite bitter appeals from North Vietnam to

cancel the summit, decided it would go ahead as planned. The Soviet Central Committee would

ratify the decision only three days before Nixon’s flight was due to arrive.

There were of course other reasons behind the decision. The Soviets, while passionately

refuting Brzezinski’s charges in Between Two Ages, were deeply concerned about falling further

behind the West in the scientific-technological revolution. There was thus a strong motivation to

Ibid., p. 415.

See “And the War Goes On,” Newsweek (May 8, 1972), p. 21. As one scholar has noted, the

belief “that given sufficient inducement, the Soviet Union could and would get the United States

out of its predicament on terms short of total defeat was adhered to with “astonishing tenacity by

distinguished Americans from Averell Harriman to Henry Kissinger.” Harry Gelman, “Rise and

Fall of Détente,” Problems of Communism (March-April 1985), p. 53

Divine, p. 189.

165

look to the West for a “technological fix” to assist their stagnating economy—especially if it could

be done without the risks of engaging in any meaningful political or economic liberalization—or

in any way challenge the interests of the bureaucracies that were passionately committed to self-

preservation. In the end the Soviet leadership decided that imports of Western technology and

agricultural goods was the only solution.

Perhaps as important was Russia’s historic quest to

match the West. A visit by the U.S. president also seemed to at least partially satisfy the Soviet

obsession to be regarded as something of a “co-superpower.” “We will face the U.S. as equals”

exulted a Soviet journalist on the eve of the summit. “This has been our dream for a decade. This

is our biggest achievement.”

On May 22, 1972 Nixon and Kissinger arrived in the Soviet Union. Despite the escalating

war in Vietnam, the Soviets greeted Nixon warmly. In the glittering surroundings of St. George’s

Hall in the Great Kremlin Palace, Nixon and Brezhnev engaged amiably over vodka and caviar.

The new relationship was symbolized by new terminology—it became known as “détente.” The

word, French in origin, was defined as the loosening of tension as in a taut string. In Russian it

translated as “razryadka” which meant a relaxation of tension. President Kennedy had used the

term in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis. But the term came into widespread use by the press

corps when Kissinger used it in his background briefings in Moscow.

Spanier, p. 188-89.

“An Uncertain Giant,” Newsweek (May 29, 1972), p. 38.

Issacson, p. 437. As one scholar summarized the debate over detente. “According to one school

of thought in the West there has been a basic shift in Soviet attitudes in recent years, even though,

for domestic reasons, the Soviet leaders are not willing to admit it expressis verbis….According to

this same school, the Cold War was the result of misunderstanding, suspicion and distrust, or, to

a considerable extent, was the fault of Western statesman who aggravated the struggle by

‘ideologizing’ what was really an old fashioned conflict between great powers…According to this

view, the reduction of strategic arms and forces levels, however desirable, will not affect the

sources of the distrust; only by political arrangements, by a psychological readjustment, by a halt

in propaganda warfare, by no longer viewing the other side as a enemy but as a partner in the

great common task facing mankind in the years to come, can a gradual erosion of hostile attitudes

come about. This, in turn, would require keeping criticism of the other side to the very minimum,

becoming better acquainted with each other through cultural exchanges and, of course, engaging

166

At the end of eight days the U.S and Soviet delegations reached agreement on a number

of issues—the foremost being the signing of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I)

which pledged each superpower to set limits on the arms race.

The ceremonies concluded with

the signing of “basic principles” which committed the two nations to “peace and security” and

“will not be subject to outside interference in their internal affairs.” If this might be seen as a

revocation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, it was carefully stipulated that the agreement would not

affect “any obligations with respect to other countries earlier assumed.”

Nixon and Brezhnev

signed a U.S.-Soviet Basic Principles Agreement that directly contradicted the idea of

institutionalizing any form of human rights policies at the international level. Nixon even went

out of his way to stress the theme of “non-interference” in an address (televised throughout the

Soviet Union) during the summit. “The only sound basis for a peaceful and progressive

international order is sovereign equality and mutual respect. We believe in the right of each

nation to chart its own course, to choose its own system to go its own way, without interference

from other nations.”

In the end Nixon hailed the summit as another step toward a “generation

in various mutually beneficial enterprises;” Walter Laqueur, “Détente: Western and Soviet

Interpretations,” Survey vol. 19 no. 3 (Summer 1973), pp. 75-76.

A key component of SALT I was the fact that it recognized Soviet parity in nuclear striking

power. Nixon was willing to give up the insistence of American numerical superiority in order to

secure limits on Soviet defensive and offensive missiles. One of the documents, an executive

agreement, “froze” offensive missiles at near existing levels for a five-year period. The other

documents, contained in a treaty requiring Senate approval, limited each nation to two anti-

ballistic missile sites in its territory. It also placed a limit on the number of American and Soviet

land-based and submarine-based missile forces. The press hailed the SALT documents as the

beginning of effective arms control. More realistic experts realized that the agreements had only

moved the competition to the laboratories. Indeed the United States and Soviet Union would use

the five-year freeze as an opportunity to develop more sophisticated weapons systems. The

Soviets immediately launched a major effort to master MIRV technology, while the United States

began to develop the B-1 bomber and the Trident submarine. Instead of an immediate reduction

in defense spending, SALT I led to a new round of strategic-arms expenditures as the United

States sought to build the weapons of the future.

See “Basic Principles of Relations Between the United States of America and the Union of

Soviet Socialist Republics,” Department of State Bulletin (June 26, 1972), pp. 898-99.

John J. Maresca, To Helsinki: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1973-1975

(Durham, NC 1987), p. 12.

167

of peace.” The ceremonial toast by the two leaders added to the growing impression that the

Cold War was finally coming to a peaceful end.

Brzezinski’s doubts about the nature of détente were confirmed when Nixon visited

Poland on the way home from the Moscow summit. The euphoria of the new superpower

relationship was still in the air as Air Force One set down in Warsaw. Gierek’s economic policy

had been based on a crash program of massive spending—which in turn required massive

borrowing to finance investments. The idea was that goods produced with the newly imported

Western technology would be sold back to the West—which would then pay for the loans. In

contrast to the stagnant 1960s, when real incomes rose annually by 1 or 2 percent, the early 1970s

were a period of unprecedented advancement in which annual pay raises of ten percent were

seen. More privileged groups (miners, shipbuilders, functionaries, police and military) would do

even better. For the first time, the general population began to believe in profiting from the

communist system.

Most commentators saw Nixon’s visit to Poland as a natural off-shoot of détente with the

Soviet Union. The Polish regime had reason to think so. Advance reports stated that the

presidential visit “was aimed at demonstrating that Washington and Communist East European

states can deal with each other without using Moscow as a broker.” The main U.S. strategy it

Despite its economic failures, one author has compared Gierek's first five-year plan to a

"Communist New Deal" which, like FDR's New Deal, had significant social and political impact.

The Gierek leadership knew that without systemic reform it would have to inspire confidence

within Poland and the West where most of the credits would be sought. Thus Gierek embarked

on a program of increased dialogue with Polish society and sought to expand relations with the

Catholic Church. See Thomas W. Simons, Eastern Europe in the Postwar World (New York, 1993), p.

161. This involved an appeal to Polish nationalism, which included a campaign to rebuild the

Royal Castle in Warsaw. It is interesting to note that one of Brzezinski's suggestions toward

"peaceful engagement" in the 1960s was that the Royal Castle be reconstructed with American

funds (he compared it to the Rockefeller-financed restoration of Versailles), which would contrast

favorably with the Soviet-style "Palace of Culture" that dominated the Warsaw skyline and

served as a constant reminder of Stalinist rule. See Brzezinski, "Peaceful Engagement,” p. 27.

168

was said was to “depoliliticize” differences, and instead, stress economic, cultural and scientific

relations.

Brzezinski noted that Nixon’s visit--- the first presidential visit to an East European state

not defying Moscow--- represented a tacit recognition of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Though he

still favored increased economic interaction with the Soviet bloc nations, he thought the foreign

loans would simply be wasted unless they were accompanied by the promise of political and

economic reforms.

Indeed, the primary goal from the standpoint of the Polish government was to garner

Western assistance in hopes of resuscitating a flagging economy. The highlight of Nixon’s trip

was a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz at a dinner in the president’s honor

“After Russia—Two Other Important Stops for the President,” U.S. News and World Report

(May 29, 1972), p. 31.

The Soviets believed, based on the experience of the Prague Spring, that as long as the

leadership of the ruling Communist party remained in loyal hands, the situation would be under

control. In this respect, the Gierek/Jaroszewicz team seemed ideally suited to the task; the former

was notoriously ambitious and eager to ingratiate himself with Brezhnev, whereas the latter had

long been regarded as “Moscow’s man in Warsaw.” The third factor was Gierek’s assurances to

an apprehensive Kremlin that a policy of gradually squeezing out the opposition (as had

happened after 1956) was preferable to an all-out crackdown, which might succeed only in

generating more popular support for dissident groups. Gierek’s relative moderation was quickly

buttressed by Soviet pressure on the Gierek/Jaroszewicz team. In a brief and little publicized trip

to Moscow on January 5, 1971, the new Polish leaders were obliged to commit themselves to the

continued cooperation in heavy and defense-related industries, which the ousted Gomulka

leadership had only recently decided to downgrade because of their unprofitabilty and Poland’s

long standing dissatisfaction with terms of trade within the CMEA. These influenced coal

mining, ferrous metallurgy, heavy machine and aircraft construction, as well as shipbuilding and

repairs—all of which weighed heavily in Polish-Soviet trade. During this same meeting, the Poles

came under sharp attack for Gomulka’s political deviations (especially his concessions to the

church and private agriculture) and were admonished to bring domestic policy into greater

conformity with the “general laws of socialism.” Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, William E. Griffith ed.,

“The Future of Poland,” The Opening Curtain (Boulder, 1987), p. 187. To reinforce Moscow’s

supervision of the Gierek regime, a new Soviet ambassador, Stanislav Pilotovich, arrived in

Warsaw in March 1971, replacing Averkii Aristov, who had served in Poland for ten years and

was reported to have been close to Gomulka and opposed to Gierek. A Polish-speaking member

of the Soviet Central Committee, Pilotovich had a reputation as a hard-liner. See Radio Free

Europe Research (RFER), Polish Situation Report/17 (May 3, 1971).

169

in the Council of Ministers’ Palace.

After he exchanged toasts with Nixon, Jaroszewicz made a

formal request for economic assistance from the United States. The following day, Poland and the

United States announced the establishment of a joint commission designed to expand trade

through “increased contacts on governmental and business levels.” According to the official

communiqué, Poland “indicated an interest in purchases of capital goods, licenses and

technology” while the United States would consider “further steps leading to bilateral trade and

economic cooperation.”

Nixon, at the same time, paid very little attention to the fact that he was visiting a rather

oppressive state. Jaroszewicz, as mentioned, was widely seen as “Moscow’s man” in the Polish

oligarchy, instructed by the Kremlin to keep an eye on Gierek, whose “Western” background

created some reservations in the Kremlin.

At the very moment Nixon was toasting Jaroszewicz

less than a half a mile away another event was taking place. Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the

Polish Primate, was leading tens of thousands of Catholic worshipers in a celebration of Corpus

Christi. The new protocols of detente required Nixon not to meet with a religious leader out of

favor with the government—and he wouldn’t. But Brzezinski realized it was a significant issue

Indeed the Polish authorities took extra precautions to avoid the popular response that

accompanied Nixon’s famous visit to Warsaw in 1959. Editorials in the Polish press focused on

only the “official” nature of the visit while flags had been placed along Nixon’s motorcade route

only two hours before his plane landed thus ensuring that Nixon’s path through Warsaw was

greeted with sparse crowds and relatively muted enthusiasm. James Feron, “Nixon in Warsaw,

Greets the Public and Meets Gierek,” The New York Times (June 1, 1972).

James Feron, “Poland and the U.S. Agree to Seek Increase in Trade,” The New York Times (June

2, 1972). Indeed economic interaction had already commenced. Poland was the only member of

the Warsaw Pact granted most-favored-nation status in trade. That had produced results. In 1971

two-way U.S.-Polish trade amounted to more than 180 million dollars, not too far short of the

American trade with the far-larger Soviet Union. In 1971 the U.S. had authorized the sale of

blueprints to build advanced oil-refining plants in Poland, opened Great Lakes ports to Polish

ships, and granted more than 60 million in credits so Poles could buy U.S. farm products.

Andrzej Korbonski, “Soviet Policy Toward Poland,” in Sarah Meiklejohn Terry ed., Soviet

Policy in Eastern Europe (New Haven, 1984), p. 66.

170

for the Polish population—and a fact he would seek to amend when he made a similar visit with

President Carter five years later.

Nixon’s failure to meet with or even mention the Polish opposition was little noticed in

the drama surrounding that weeks’ visit to Moscow. But some noticed more than others. Adam

Michnik was among several Poles jailed in anticipation of the Nixon’s visit. “When Nixon came

to Poland members of the democratic opposition were arrested,” Michnik recalls.“ I wondered

whether we it was because they were worried we would throw a bomb at him, or throw flowers

at him. The point was that the Americans seemed to consider it a normal thing that people were

imprisoned during this visit and they were not very concerned about it. At the same time Nixon

did not offer any encouragement to the opposition. It was if we were told ‘resign yourself to your

fate.’”

Few were paying much attention to Poland, however, in those heady days of détente.

The openings to China and the Soviet Union would elevate Kissinger’s status as an international

pop phenomenon.

By 1972 his fame transcended his craft the same way Muhammad Ali’s did

Feron, “Nixon in Warsaw.”

Interview, Warsaw (March 30, 2001). In his original article outlining the strategy of peaceful

engagement, Brzezinski noted that “moral considerations apart,” the United States must insist on

self-determination in Eastern Europe in order to prevent the violent anti-Western reaction there

which would follow any apparent endorsement of Soviet control and any act which seemed to

recognize that Communist rule was permanent. “Our failure to maintain this position,”

Brzezinski noted,“ would weaken the democratic spirit which persists in Eastern Europe despite

the passivity of the Western democracies in 1956. It would strengthen the cohesion of the

Communist world, compromise the principles on which American policy has been based and

weaken the United States as a symbol of freedom and self-determination.” Zbigniew Brzezinski

and William Griffith, “Peaceful Engagement In Eastern Europe,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 39, no. 4,

(Spring 1961), p. 645.

On the way home, Nixon and Kissinger stopped in Iran to shore up the Shah as America’s

surrogate in the region. While there, Kissinger reveled in his new celebrity, visiting a nightclub

that featured a belly dancer named Nadia, whom he allowed to be photographed in his lap.

“She’s a charming girl and very interested in foreign policy,” he said when asked what they had

discussed. “I spent some time explaining how to convert the SLBMs on a G-class submarine into

Y-class subs. I want to make the world safe for Nadias.” The picture ran on the front page of the

Washington Post and other papers, relegating those of Nixon being greeted in Warsaw by

thousands of cheering Poles to the inside pages. Nixon’s Chief of Staff, John Haldeman, was not

171

in prize fighting or Walter Cronkite’s did in news broadcasting. Over the next two decades he

would appear on the cover of Time twenty-one times--more than any person in the magazine’s

history except for Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Carter.

Kissinger became the toast of

Katherine Graham’s Georgetown cocktail parties and was seen in public with the likes of Jill St.

John, Shirley MacLaine, Marlo Thomas, Liv Ulman, Gloria Steinham, and Diane Sawyer. This

female attention gave the owlish bachelor the unlikely status as a sex symbol —and gave

credence to his famous quip that “power was the greatest aphrodisiac.”

At the same time Kissinger, most unlike Nixon, was a master at courting the press corps.

Armed with a self-deprecating wit and professorial charms Kissinger became an extraordinary

spokesman for his diplomatic breakthroughs. Perhaps just as important was the fact that most

national reporters were for the most part supporters of détente with Moscow. After the turmoil of

the 1960s it was hard for most journalists to be “against” a sharp reduction in superpower

tensions. Kissinger also had a way with nurturing rather favorite coverage. In this respect

Kissinger was known to resort to subtle flattery. “I’m calling you,” Kissinger would confide,

“because I know you are the only one covering me who will understand this.” “You know you

are being played like a violin,” said Christopher Ogden, who covered Kissinger for Time, “but it’s

still extremely seductive.” “You always have the feeling that he’s told you ten percent more than

he has to,” recalled Barbara Walters.

Journalists also were known to bask in the reflected glory of an international icon.

Kissinger’s celebrity made stars out of those reporters who covered him. When Kissinger’s plane

would land, the local correspondents and even a few diplomats were known to converge on his

press entourage on the tarmac and interview its members. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. “We

amused. “Enough is enough,” he raged on the flight home. “It’s inexcusable to upstage the

president.” Issacson, p. 438.

Issacson, p. 581.

Issacson, p. 577.

172

know more than most U.S. ambassadors in the places we visit,” commented one reporter on the

Kissinger beat, probably accurately.

Brzezinski would always insist that he was not “anti-détente.” Indeed, the entire concept

of peaceful engagement outlined in the early 1960s was based on the belief that more relaxed

East-West relations would help to transform the Soviet bloc regimes into more moderate social

democracies. Yet he viewed the Nixon-Kissinger détente as a “highly compartmentalized” and

“pessimistic” détente that provided the Soviets with what they wanted yet asking very little in

return. Indeed Brzezinski insisted that his alternative to the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy was

not a return to Cold War tension of the 1950s—but a more “reciprocal” détente where credits and

technology would be linked to reforms designed to liberalize and de-centralize the system—and

gradually loosen Moscow’s grip on Eastern Europe.

Nevertheless Brzezinski’s criticisms of détente tended to be dismissed as the antiquated

views of a Cold Warrior, or still more often, the product of petty jealousy for the masterstrokes of

his rival Henry Kissinger. Indeed, compared to Kissinger’s fame Brzezinski’s name still looked

like a typographical error to most Americans. Brzezinski’s profile was elevated when he began

writing a regular column for Newsweek in 1971. He had written several hundred articles since the

1950s, but the vast majority of them appeared in scholarly journals with a limited audience. By

contrast the Newsweek column would ensure mass readership found in the nation’s barber-shops,

airports and waiting rooms. “I thought for me at the time that it was a bonanza,” he recalls. “It

Issacson, p. 573.

Brzezinski’s writings on détente are voluminous. See "The International and the Planetary,"

Encounter, vol. 39 no. 2 (August 1972), pp. 49-55. “Debating Détente,” The New Leader (October 2,

1972). "The Balance of Power Delusion," Foreign Policy (Summer, 1972), pp. 49-55. "What Kind of

Detente?," The Atlantic Community Quarterly, 13 (Fall, 1975), pp. 289-92. “The Deceptive Structure

of Peace,” Foreign Policy, vol. 14 (Spring 1974), pp. 35-55. "U.S. Foreign Policy: The Search for

Focus," Foreign Affairs, (July 1973), pp. 708-27.

173

was getting my name across—and getting my views accepted and for people to accept the

originality of my name.”

The Newsweek column would also offer a succinct platform to criticize the Nixon-

Kissinger form of détente. Kissinger, predictably, was not impressed with many of Brzezinski’s

critiques of détente. Still he was not averse to consulting with his old Harvard colleague who was

now shaping up as a formidable rival. “I read them most of the time,” Kissinger recalled years

later. “I wasn’t crazy about some of them. On the other hand I invited him regularly to come and

have lunch with me. You don’t have too much time—as Security Adviser or Secretary of State---

but four or five times a year I would say.”

If Brzezinski was critical of Nixon’s foreign policy, he was even more disillusioned by

the Democrats inability to formulate anything resembling a credible philosophical opposition.

It was widely believed that Nixon’s dramatic openings to China and the Soviet Union had gone

far to blunt Democratic opposition to his re-election on foreign policy grounds. Yet Brzezinski

insisted that a Democratic candidate must have the courage and foresight to step forth with an

alternative foreign policy. Brzezinski’s primary concern was that the Democratic leaders were

putting all their energy into simply opposing the war in Vietnam rather than outlining the need

for a more positive and engaged American role in the rapidly changing world.

“In a foreign policy, alternatives are not so much a matter of contrast as of emphasis”

Brzezinski argued. “The Democrats need not reject Mr. Nixon’s approaches to Peking or to

Moscow; indeed, within proper limits they are highly desirable, both for tactical as well as

strategic reasons, yet by and large what the Democrats have offered is very limited indeed.

Leaving aside the escapist isolationism of those for whom foreign policy can be reduced to a

ritualistic incantation about ‘reordering our national priorities,’ much of the Democratic fire has

Interview, Washington, DC (November 4, 1999).

Telephone Interview (June 3, 2002).

See “Extremes on Foreign Policy Denounced,” The New York Times (December 13, 1970), p. 24.

174

so far been focused on the question of Vietnam. To be sure, the war still poses painful dilemmas

for this country, but the foreign policy of the U.S. in the 1970s will have to be concerned with

issues broader than those currently posed by this tragic conflict.”

Brzezinski’s hawkish reputation had nonetheless estranged him from the liberal wing

that had succeeded in taking over the Democratic Party after 1968. The Democrats were indeed

wedded to the idea of détente with Moscow. In their view since the Soviets were ready to

establish friendly ties with the West, everything must be done by the West to prevent a relapse

into confrontation. Indeed, since the late 1960s it had become fashionable among American

liberals to suggest that both the United States and the Soviet Union maintained “spheres of

influence” in Europe that differed little in their nature. The situation was described as a “moral

equivalency”—and Brzezinski would regard this term as a gross misrepresentation that simply

ignored the vast historical differences between the two powers.

The Democratic Party, becoming increasingly dominated by its liberal wing, had reason

to delude itself into thinking that a mere antiwar stance could defeat Nixon. On October 15, 1971

more than 1 million Americans left their schools and jobs to participate in Vietnam “Moratorium

Day” activities. The largest crowd gathered on Boston Common, where an estimated 100,000

people heard antiwar speeches from liberal Senators Edward Kennedy and George McGovern,

who were emerging as the leading Democratic front-runners to challenge Nixon in 1972.

Brzezinski feared the Democratic leaders were offering isolationist palliatives that had little to

say other than to criticize the war in Vietnam. This most tangible Democratic proposal was

Senator Mike Mansfield’s move to cut American forces in Western Europe by one-half. This was

an anathema to the increasingly diminished internationalist wing of the Democratic Party.

Brzezinski feared the unintended consequences of such a move. He argued that “a major U.S.

pullout would strengthen the European feeling that America is disengaging politically from

Europe; thus it could have the effect of reducing, rather than intensifying, the intimacy of Atlantic

ties. Europe would then probably turn inward and, uncertain of it security, it might begin to seek

accommodation with Moscow on Moscow’s terms or, alternatively, try to develop its own

nuclear arms. Neither a Europe divorced from America and increasingly neutralist, nor one that

strives to become a major nuclear power would be likely to enhance international stability.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Purpose and Policy,” Newsweek (February 22, 1971), p. 47.

See John Lewis Gaddis, “On Moral Equivalency and Cold War History,” Ethics and

International Affairs vol. 10 (1996), pp. 131-48.

175

Nixon’s political advisers sensed a growing frustration from American voters that the

Democratic Party had swung too far to the left. In the spring of 1970, a group of “hard hat”

construction workers, put off by the increasingly irreverent tactics of some of the antiwar

demonstrators, led a counter-demonstration in New York City. According to Donald Rogers, a

Nixon labor adviser, the workers had acted on their own volition when they heard that antiwar

protestors had burned the American flag, raised the North Vietnamese banner, and urinated on a

statue of George Washington. Nixon staffers had little trouble linking such protests to his

primary challengers within the Democratic Party.

Nixon telephoned the leaders of the “hard hats” that evening and invited them to the

White House to show his appreciation. This show of public support for Nixon constituted for

Charles Colson, special assistant to the President, “a seminal event” and an “important symbol

of an emerging political coalition.” Nixon came to believe that many “silent” Americans had

come to oppose the Vietnam War chiefly because the United States seemed unwilling to win it—

what they really opposed was a unilateral withdrawal, particularly if U.S. POWs remained

captive of the North Vietnamese forces.

In early November 1971 Nixon gave a televised speech that appealed to the “great silent

majority of my fellow Americans.” Nixon coupled a firm denunciation of the antiwar protestors

with a plan to withdraw all United States combat forces “on an orderly scheduled timetable.”

Nixon’s speech would go far to blunt the momentum of the antiwar movement and isolate

Democrats demanding an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.

According to Colson, the

“buckets” of telegrams supporting Nixon’s appeal to the “silent majority” poured in about

“standing firm in Vietnam.” In the ensuing weeks Nixon’s standing in the opinion polls had risen

substantially. Shortly thereafter Nixon announced additional troop withdrawals from Vietnam.

Safire, Before the Fall, p. 22.

Divine, p. 173.

176

He could point out that this made a total of 115,000 American soldiers he had brought home since

he had taken office.

Nixon and his senior advisers would convene later in Key Biscayne, Florida to formally

discuss a more formal strategy to attract the increasingly conservative ethnic and labor electorate

long associated with the Democratic Party. Nixon’s political advisers had been especially

attracted by the political analysis offered by a young scholar named Kevin Phillips. Phillips had

recently written a book called The Emerging Republican Majority. As the title indicated, Phillips

argued that Nixon’s victory in 1968 was not an aberration. He argued that the real significance of

the tumult of the 1960s was a populist revolt of the American middle-class that had grown more

conservative in its postwar prosperity. The “economic issue” which had benefited the Democratic

Party since the Great Depression was being eclipsed by a revolt of the middle class and its

rejection of the perceived permissiveness of 1960s liberalism. This was particularly encouraging

to the more conservative Reagan-wing of the GOP, who feared that Barry Goldwater’s debacle in

1964 meant that no candidate with similar views could ever sustain a national campaign to the

White House.

Brzezinski, who had warned of such an occurrence in the late 1960s, was not encouraged

by the Democratic chances of unseating Nixon. The early front-runner was Senator Edmund

Muskie of Maine. Damaged by his role as Humphrey’s running-mate in 1968, Muskie’s easy-

going manner failed to excite the more liberal core vote needed to carry the primaries. Muskie’s

attempts to do so seemed somewhat forced and officious. His only surefire applause line on the

campaign came when he echoed New York Times’ columnist Anthony Lewis’ assertion that “the

United States is the most dangerous and destructive power in the world.”

Otherwise the

Muskie campaign went nowhere. He won by a surprisingly narrow margin in his neighboring

state of New Hampshire. His campaign then imploded when he broke down in tears while

Godrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (New York, 1976), p. 414.

Carl Gershman, “The Soviet Dissidents and the American Left,” The New Leader (October 29,

1973), pp.

177

defending his wife from charges leveled against her in a conservative local newspaper. Muskie’s

disappointing results in the Florida and Wisconsin primaries would drive him out of the running.

The Democratic field was now narrowed to a choice between Alabama governor George

Wallace and South Dakota Senator George McGovern. To Brzezinski, and a dwindling number of

centrist Democrats, this was the predictable fallout from the 1968 campaign. Wallace, coming off

his surprisingly successful 1968 third-party candidacy, appealed to those voters disaffected by

the excesses of the 1960s. He was particularly effective in veiling his more overt racism into

criticism of school bussing which he blamed on the “pointy-headed” intellectuals who were now

running the Democratic Party. Wallace, though an embarrassment to the more establishment

Democrats, had an electoral appeal that was hard to ignore. He won the Florida primary

supported by a calculated racist appeal to white blue-collar workers. He was also a major

contender in the Northern industrial states before an assassination attempt in May left the

Alabama governor paralyzed from the waist down and removed him from the race. It also

allowed Nixon to fulfill the Southern strategy of combining Republican and Wallace supporters

of the Old Confederacy.

This left the contest for the Democratic nomination to McGovern who had displayed

surprising strength, scoring well in New Hampshire and sweeping to victory in Wisconsin with a

well-organized campaign that appealed to party liberals and the newly enfranchised voters

under the age of twenty-one. McGovern, sounding an old isolationist refrain, asked American to

“come home again.” This, it was understood, meant not only that he would get out of Vietnam--

but that he would—in a favorite liberal phrase of the day---“reorder our priorities” from an

emphasis on foreign affairs to a primary concern with domestic problems. The McGovern

campaign called for a $30 billion cut in defense spending, amnesty for Vietnam war deserters,

total withdrawal of support for the Thieu regime in South Vietnam. Particularly worrisome to

178

Brzezinski was McGovern’s pledge to cut the U.S. military presence in Europe “to the bone” by

pulling out half the American troops stationed there.

McGovern’s liberalism would alienate many moderates and the old-wing of the

Democratic party. Hubert Humphrey, the party’s standard-bearer in 1968, mounted a last ditch

campaign to capture the nomination. The showdown came in California when Humphrey waged

an all-out effort to portray McGovern as an unelectable liberal outside the national mainstream.

McGovern didn’t exactly move to dispel this image. “Quite frankly,” he declared, “I am not a

centrist candidate.”

In the end McGovern held off Humphrey’s challenge. He now faced the

more difficult task of unseating Richard Nixon in the November election.

Brzezinski was more concerned with foreign policy aspects of the election. “The whole

country came turning inward” Brzezinski recalls, “and it became increasingly difficult to conduct

any sort of strategically minded foreign policy and everything became polarized. So we had

Nixon on one side and McGovern on the other—those weren’t exactly rational alternatives.”

To be fair the McGovernites weren’t all that crazy about Brzezinski either. “Brzezinski

was totally out of fashion and out of circulation during the McGovern era when the Democratic

Party committed suicide,” Charles Gati recalled. “Not only political suicide but a total moral

suicide. It was absurd—it was just really stupid. Those were the years when the Democratic Party

was not hospitable to the centrist crowd—that Brzezinski stood for—which was basically the

Humphrey view at that time. That is, no illusions about Soviet communism but pursue a liberal

agenda at home. That was the Truman position and that was Brzezinski’s position. ‘Come Home

America’ was McGovern’s phrase at the 1972 convention and that was not something that an

One correspondent was clearly alarmed by this development. “Unquestionably, the Soviet

Union would try to fill the political vacuum created by the U.S. and ultimately present

Washington with an agonizing dilemma—either to be plunged into a new confrontation with

Moscow or see Western Europe become a virtual Soviet satellite.” Arnaud de Borchgrave,

“Europe: The New Soviet Threat,” Newsweek (July 10, 1972), p. 41.

William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (Oxford, 1986), p. 419.

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000).

179

internationalist like Brzezinski could take--because McGovern was full of illusions about the

outside world. He was full of illusions about Soviet communism and he underestimated this

system. Not only the power of the United States but the moral obligation of the United States to

do good. He was a prime example of this idea of moral equivalence—that is—‘the outside world

is bad—so are we—therefore we should not set an example and we should not be active.’ Well

that’s the sort of thing that Brzezinski could never accept.”

Indeed McGovern’s liberal strength in the primaries proved his weakness in the general

election. While McGovern’s views appealed to an energetic minority, they offended precisely

those segments of the New Deal coalition that Nixon hoped to win to his cause. Nixon’s highly

publicized trips to Beijing and Moscow (and the continuing withdrawal of troops from Vietnam)

had co-opted Democratic opposition on foreign policy grounds. Nixon now could rely on a

strategy that would reaffirm his support among “middle Americans” to both occupy the center

and mobilize the right. He did the former by promising to be a president of “peace and

prosperity” and by appealing nostalgically to the politics of the fifties, while he strengthened his

appeal to the right by pledging to end “the age of permissiveness” and attacking McGovern on

the controversial social issues. Indeed, Nixon’s seasoned operatives had little trouble in

portraying the South Dakota senator as a candidate widely outside the mainstream of American

values. Throughout the campaign the liberal McGovern would be forced to assure a skeptical

electorate that he was not in fact the candidate of “acid, amnesty, and abortion.”

The result was a sizable defection among more moderate Democrats, a virtual mirror

image of what happened to the GOP in 1964 when the Republican right split the party with its

fervent support of Barry Goldwater. By the summer of 1972 many old-line Democrats mounted a

conspicuous “Anyone But McGovern” campaign from the Democratic center. When the party

platform took bold positions on the issues of abortion, busing, and the war, many old-line

Democrats insisted that they would either vote for Nixon or refuse to endorse the ticket. As one

Interview, Washington, DC (September 13, 2001).

18 0

AFL-CIO leader lamented “We can’t hold our own rank and file with McGovern---He’s

surrounded by people who are more interested in amnesty and pot than in jobs.”

Jimmy

Carter, then a rather obscure one-term governor from Georgia, was one of the many centrist

Democrats who believed that McGovern was simply too liberal to get elected. Indeed, only a few

weeks before the convention Carter had been at the forefront of a last-ditch stop McGovern effort

at a National Governors’ Conference in Houston.

The McGovern campaign was also plagued by a predictable degree of incoherence. The

Democratic convention in Miami Beach could have been taken from the GOP playbook. The

publicly aired convention debates on such controversial topics as abortion and homosexuality

would further divide the party. The turmoil also delayed to 3.00 a.m. McGovern’s acceptance

speech which he was forced to deliver to a television audience composed of political junkies and

insomniacs. “There is too much hair,” grumbled one labor leader, “ and not enough cigars at this

convention.”

There was another issue stemming from the convention. McGovern had not seriously

considerd a running-mate until very late in the game. Many names were considered in an

attempt to bolster McGovern’s already slim chances against Richard Nixon. One name that was

apparently in the running was Jimmy Carter. Carter, surprisingly, was receptive when several of

his Atlanta aides approached him with the rather odd idea of joining McGovern on the national

ticket.

Carter and his advisers were also aware how John Kennedy’s unsuccessful bid for the

1956 Democratic vice-presidential slot had lifted his national profile for his successful run in 1960.

Carter’s media adviser first broached the subject at a convention party in Miami Beach. “Let me

ask you,” Gerald Rafshoon said, “would you be interested in Vice President?” Carter, seeing little

“Anybody But McGovern,” Newsweek (July 17, 1972).

Jules Witcover, Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-76 (New York, 1977), p. 113.

“Anybody But McGovern,” p. 22.

18 1

to lose, replied, “Why not?” Rafshoon had access to polls that showed McGovern, to say the very

least, was running behind Nixon in the South. Armed with these polls findings, Rafshoon and

Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s executive secretary at the time, sought to make their case to the

McGovern people that the addition of Carter to the ticket might lift his chances. But they didn’t

get far. Rafshoon recalled that the most degrading moment was when he and Jordan found

themselves stonewalled by McGovern’s advisers. Their best hope was to try to get a hearing with

Pat Caddell-- McGovern’s twenty-two year old pollster who was at the time still a Harvard

undergraduate.

“We could never get in to see him,” Rafshoon recalled. “He wanted to see us but he was

busy and all that. The scene is, we’re sitting outside, trying to get on the main floor at the Doral

Hotel, the nineteenth floor, and we had been waiting for an hour on the floor below, where they

kept the turkeys. The holding room.” When Rafshoon and Jordan finally reached Caddell, they

sensed that that were getting the classic brush off. “We spent about three minutes with Caddell,”

Rafshoon recalled. “He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, it looks good. Oh yeah, I’m going to make a

recommendation.’ He said later he recommended a Southerner. I think he recommended (Florida

governor) Reuben Askew. He thought we were crazy.”

Shortly afterward Peter Bourne (a psychiatrist who had worked with Carter’s wife,

Rosalynn, on mental-health and drug-abuse problems) prepared a ten-page memo to Carter

outlining a potential campaign strategy for 1976. The memo noted that reforms had changed who

controlled the Democratic Party. “The old politicians who think that once McGovern is defeated,

it will be politics as usual are dead wrong,” Bourne wrote, “and do not understand the social

forces at work in the country.” McGovern was not a Goldwater, who was a throwback;

McGovern was where the party was heading.”

Witcover, Marathon, p. 113.

Ibid., p.

18 2

The day Carter received Bourne’s memo, McGovern went on national television to

announce that Missouri Senator Thomas F. Eagleton would be his running mate.

Eagleton’s

appeal was thought to be in his pro-labor voting record, border-state geography, and traditional

Catholicism. All of this vanished when newspapers revealed the next week that the Missouri

senator had twice been treated for manic depression and given electric shock therapy. McGovern

immediately insisted he was “1000 percent for Tom Eagelton.” But as the controversy mounted,

McGovern forced Eagleton off the ticket. The Democratic National Committee quickly selected

Sargent Shriver to fill the void. But the damage had been done. An underdog from the outset,

McGovern’s only chance to win lay in his appeal as a sincere and forthright candidate and to

demonstrate that he was not the dangerous radical the Republicans had portrayed. The Eagelton

affair convinced many wavering voters that McGovern could not be trusted with the

presidency.

In reality McGovern’s running mate wasn’t going to help him much. More importantly,

in the final weeks of the campaign, Kissinger stole McGovern’s only viable issue. After lengthy

negotiation Kissinger would announce, just days before the election, that “peace is at hand” in

Vietnam. On election-day Nixon took 61 percent of the popular vote and buried McGovern in the

electoral college by 521 to 17. McGovern could console the party’s true believers by taking the

District of Columbia and the single state of Massachusetts. Nixon captured the entirety of the

once “solid south” from the Democrats. Nixon, once dismissed as the “great American loser,”

had won a larger majority than any nominee in the history of the Republican Party. But

Brzezinski believed that Nixon’s overwhelming victory was due in large part to the quality of the

Witcover, Marathon, p. 117-118. Meanwhile Kissinger was doing his part. Jill St. John was a

strong opponent of the war. After going to Vietnam on a Bob Hope Christmas tour, she came

back and worked for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 peace candidacy. Over dinner she liked to argue

with Kissinger. “He could run rings around me and punch holes in my arguments,” she recalled,

“but he could never convince me.” Nevertheless, she was his best supporting actress in public. At

a Hollywood party thrown for Nixon during the 1972 campaign she told reporters “Henry has

been trying for three years and he’s finally gotten me to support the president.” To which

Kissinger added, “And you guys thought I’d been wasting my time out here in Hollywood.”

Issacson, p. 361.

18 3

Democratic candidate than to the popularity of Nixon. Indeed, the low turnout, only 55 percent

of the electorate, confirmed reports that many Americans had voted for the lesser of two evils

and had displayed a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for either candidate. In June 1972 five

burglars—later linked to the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP)—had been arrested by

as they attempted to break into Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

Indeed, as Nixon took office for a second term, the vast web of conspiracy behind the break-in

was beginning to unravel.

A month after the election talks in Paris also broke down. Nixon responded by trying to bomb

Hanoi into agreement and ordered a major B-52 bombing assault over Christmas. For twelve

days the North came under the most sustained bombing campaign of the war. Hanoi was forced

back to the negotiating table. Within a month a cease-fire agreement was formally signed. The

Paris Accords brought a U.S. troop withdrawal and the promise of the return of prisoners of war.

Viet Cong troops, however, were allowed to remain in the South. The South Vietnamese

objections were ignored, but they were offered continuing U.S. economic aid and military

assistance if Hanoi resorted to military action again. Nixon spoke of “peace with honor,” but the

major issue of who was to eventually govern South Vietnam was left unresolved.

18 4

CHAPTER FIVE: JIMMY CARTER AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The Democrats came out of 1972 election in a state of turmoil. The New Deal collation

that had dominated presidential politics since the 1930s had splintered amidst the chaos of the

late 1960s. More troubling to Zbigniew Brzezinski was that things seemed only to be getting

worse. Only four years earlier Hubert Humphrey lost a razor thin decision to Richard Nixon. But

this was at the height of the Vietnam War and the aftermath of the disastrous Chicago

convention. This time George McGovern had lost 49 states—including his own---and the vast

majority of the popular vote. However good it felt for Democrats to vote their “conscious” the

fact remained that Richard Nixon, a candidate with rather sizable flaws, had obliterated

McGovern in one the greatest landslides in American history.

It was not surprising then that the dramatic breakthroughs with the Soviet Union and

China were given credit for Nixon’s overwhelming victory.

Such in house efforts to credit the

glory to Nixon would do little, however, to dampen the press adulation surrounding Henry

Kissinger. Indeed, as Nixon took his second oath of office in January 1973 Kissinger was truly an

international superstar. His behind-the-scenes role in engineering the dramatic openings to China

and the Soviet Union had intrigued the national press corps, who had never quite warmed to

Nixon. Public opinion polls in 1973 listed Kissinger as the “most popular person in America.” In

a move that would puzzle and outrage the administration’s anti-war critics, Kissinger was

awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for his attempts to negotiate a settlement in Vietnam. His

fame would even extend to reaches beyond the world of international diplomacy—given some

credence to his famous line that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Indeed a poll of Playboy

Club bunnies in 1972 ranked Kissinger number one as “the man I would most like to go out on a

18 5

date with. Contestants at the 1973 Miss Universe pageant would go a step further by voting

Kissinger as “the greatest person in the world today.”

In the wake of the 1972 election Zbigniew Brzezinski’s writings continued to be

characterized by his contention that Nixon’s “generation of peace” had been oversold for

domestic consumption and that the long-term prospects for any meaningful détente with the

Soviet Union were rather limited. Brzezinski believed that, quite unlike McGovern’s neo-

isolationism, a Democratic candidate seeking the White House in 1976 must put forth an

optimistic vision for the construction of a more stable international order.

Brzezinski was also distrustful of the rising influence of the “New Right” of the

Republican Party affiliated with the hard line rhetoric of California governor Ronald Reagan.

While perhaps sharing some of the same distrust of Soviet motives, Brzezinski believed the New

Right was prone to lump global complexities into categories of “good vs. evil.” The New Right

not only firmly rejected the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy of détente, but also saw Brzezinski’s

concept of “peaceful engagement” toward Eastern Europe as little more than aiding and abetting

what it regarded a monolithic communist evil.

Walter Issacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York, 1992), p. 500. But even at the point of his

greatest triumph Nixon was displaying the less presidential traits that would ultimately

terminate his second term in disgrace. Following the election Nixon became enraged that the

media were giving credit to Kissinger, rather than he, for the United States’ foreign policy

triumphs. Nixon was particularly disturbed upon hearing he would have to share Time

Magazine’s “Man of the Year” award with Henry Kissinger (a revelation that made Nixon

“white-lipped with anger” according to Chief of Staff John Haldeman). Ibid., p. 479. Kissinger, all

too aware of Nixon’s insecurities, tried to heal the growing rift and wrote Nixon a note in the

days after the election that he had placed on the president’s pillow. “To take a divided nation”

wrote Kissinger, “mired in war, losing its confidence, wracked by intellectuals without

conviction, and give it a new purpose and overcome its hesitations---will loom ever larger in the

history books. It has been an inspiration to see your fortitude in adversity and your willingness to

walk alone.” Ibid., p. 462

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Balance of Power Delusion,” Foreign Policy 7 (Summer 1972), pp. 54-

59. Brzezinski, “Debating Détente,” The New Leader, vol. 55 no. 19 (October 2, 1972), pp. 5-6.

For Brzezinski’s critique of the New Right foreign policy see “Extremes on Foreign Policy

Denounced,” The New York Times (December 13, 1970), p. 24. For a later and more substantial

critique of the hard right wing see Zbigniew Brzezinski, “What’s Wrong With Reagan’s Foreign

Policy,” The New York Times Magazine (December 8, 1982). Also Edward A. Gargan, “Brzezinski

18 6

Brzezinski also came to believe that conservative political forces in America had become

obsessed with the Soviet threat while overlooking the problems associated with an increasingly

turbulent Third World beset by “magnifying distinctions between the rich and poor” and

“punctured by percolating anarchistic violence.”

If the New Right was suspicious of its own

government, it was on the verge of paranoia about any dealings with multilateral organizations

that might be seen as impeding on U.S. sovereignty. Brzezinski’s efforts to move the United

States toward a more “multilateral” foreign policy thus came under relentless attack from the

fringes of the right wing of the Republican Party.”

Brzezinski insisted that the Nixon-Kissinger focus on a strictly bilateral détente with

Moscow had alienated the United States’ more traditional allies in Western Europe and Japan. At

the same time its focus on a 19

century style balance of power prevented it from dealing with

the anarchy that threatened to emerge from the increasingly impoverished and overpopulated

regions of the developing world. Brzezinski’s most familiar alternative was that of a “reciprocal”

détente with the Soviet Union which would include more formalized institutional “trilateral”

links between Western Europe and Japan.

Assails U.S. Foreign Policy,” The New York Times (November 17, 1982). “Q & A: Zbigniew

Brzezinski: View From the Democratic Sidelines,” MaCleans vol. 95 no. 24, (June 14, 1982), p. 8.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Not War But Anarchy,” Newsweek (April 5, 1971), p. 47. See also

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The International and the Planetary,’ Encounter, vol. 39 no. 2 (August

1972), pp. 49-55.

For a look at some of the more hostile right-wing criticisms of Brzezinski, see “Zbig Brother,”

Public Opinion (February 1978), pp 5-110. Henry Paolucci, “Carter’s Kissinger,” The National

Review (October 1, 1976), pp. 1054-1060.

Arnaud de Borchgrave, “Western Europe’s Drift Toward Neutralism,” Newsweek (June 25,

1973), p. 43. Also “U.S. and Western Europe: An Alliance in Trouble,” U.S. News & World Report

(April 16, 1973), pp. 45-48. Brzezinski had long argued that a strictly bilateral détente with

Moscow would eventually lead to the splintering of the Western alliance. Indeed, by the early

1970s Brzezinski feared the Soviets had been at least equally successful in their longtime goal of

“finlandizing” Western Europe.

Yet as one observer noted there was a significant difference in

what the West Europeans were doing as compared to the Finns. “What the Finns are doing is

dictated by circumstances largely beyond their control, whereas Europeans would be in this

situation on a more voluntary basis. It is a melancholy thought that during the Khrushchev

period many East Europeans hoped to eventually reach the status of Finland. They have not

achieved it. And now the prospect is no longer excluded that it is the West European nations

18 7

This “trilateral” vision of global cooperation was based on Brzezinski’s belief that the

world’s most advanced industrial democracies must continue to move toward greater political

and economic integration. Brzezinski regarded Japan as the linchpin in this “trilateral”

formulation. It was based on his belief that, after five centuries of a world dominated by Europe,

Asia was becoming increasingly important in international affairs. The United States, Brzezinski

insisted, must adjust to these circumstances. This conviction also led to the uncomfortable

realization that he himself was not fully equipped to appreciate the nature of the changing world:

In 1968 I was Humphrey’s foreign policy director in the campaign. I went back to

Columbia with the realization that if Humphrey had won I might have had some sort of senior

position in foreign affairs of the United States and with a keen awareness that I would be holding

that position knowing a great deal about the Soviet Union and Central Europe, somewhat about

Western Europe and not much more than that about the rest of the foreign policy issues. And I

said to myself ‘this is ridiculous,’ I am really not prepared for a top position. Because of the

campaign, it dawned on me painfully that I was in the tradition of Bundy, Rostow, and earlier

Kennan and others. Namely, a person who knows a great deal about international affairs from

the prism of the European experience at a time when Europe was no longer the center of the

world. I thought it is likely that in the years to come, the Far East, in particular Japan, is going to

be very important.

Brzezinski also recalls there was an obvious problem to overcome. “I knew nothing about

Asia, literally. And therefore, as soon as we lost the election, I wrote to Mac Bundy, the president

of the Ford Foundation. I said to him, ‘Look, I would like to propose to you that you give me a

fellowship for a year or two. And what I’ll do is I’ll go to Japan---and I’ll just sit there---I’m not

going to learn Japanese, I’m not pretending or intending to be a Far Eastern expert. It’s too late in

which eventually find themselves in this position (without having Finnish sisu to cope with).

Anti-Americanism parading as pro-Europeanism, squabbles over agricultural prices with small

regard for wider political considerations, concealed and unconcealed neutralist tendencies—all

these may lead to West European non-alignment rather than to West European unity. The French

policy of being in and out of NATO at one and the same time, the ‘Scandinavian’ attitude of

Norway, Denmark and Iceland, German illusions about Ostpolitik, the internal malaise of Italy

and Great Britain—all these West European political and economic weaknesses provide

opportunity targets for Soviet policy and Soviet leaders are only too well aware of this.

“Exploiting the contradictions among the imperialists’ is an old Leninist tradition. The Soviet and

East European press constantly harp on the differences over trade and monetary policies which

are occurring between the United States, the EEC, and Japan.” Leopold Labedz, “The Soviet

Union and Western Europe,” Survey vol. 19 no. 3 (Summer 1973), p. 15.

Interview, Washington DC, (March 29, 2000).

18 8

my life and I’m not interested in that. But I think, given my interest in foreign affairs and U.S.

foreign policy in particular I ought to have a higher sensitivity to what is looming in the Far East,

in particular Japan’s emerging role---and I would like to look at the world from the vantage point

of Japan and give some thought to what Japan might be doing in the world and how it effects

American interests—Korea, America, China.“

In early 1971 Brzezinski began a six-month stay in Japan. Brzezinski visit occurred at a

sensitive point in U.S.-Japanese relations. The Japanese economic boom had created resentment

in the United States based on the perception that Japan’s “economic miracle” was rooted in unfair

trade practices. By 1970 U.S. politicians were facing increasing pressure to combat Japanese

imports with a sharp increase in protectionist measures. Brzezinski argued that Japan’s rapid rate

of growth was likely to slow dramatically which could provide an unprecedented challenge to its

postwar political stability.

Brzezinski’s observations were put forth in a book entitled The Fragile Blossom.

“I wrote

The Fragile Blossom, which I did not intend to write,” Brzezinski recalled years later, “But I got

more impressions than I expected. I came back with the concept that it is time to elevate Japan

from underneath the umbrella of American tutelage and make it part of a larger cooperative

entity.”

Ibid.

For a succinct version of this argument see Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Sayonara to Certainty,”

Newsweek (September 20, 1971), p. 53.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan (New York, 1972).

Interview, Washington DC, (November 4, 1999). The book would also provide the most

detailed outline of the formal “trilateral” group that would eventually manifest itself as the

Trilateral Commission. “Over time this would help to stimulate common perspectives and

programs. Three-way consultations between parliamentarians should similarly be

institutionalized. Alongside the above, more informal three-way contacts are needed; a

continuous dialogue among the social elites of the three entities needs to be stimulated, just as the

Monnet Action Committee and the Bilderberg Meeting contributed so much to the emergence of

the European identity and to an Atlantic spirit of cooperation….A wide cooperative framework,

involving a gradual process of shaping a community of developed nations would put Japan in

the front rank of a global effort to provide for more orderly and satisfactory international political

and economic relations.” Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom, p. 140-141.

18 9

Brzezinski also believed that the Nixon-Kissinger emphasis on a bilateral détente with

Moscow had done little to further the “trilateral” idea. Indeed by the early 1970s relations

between the United States and Western Europe were complicated by policy differences on

Vietnam and the Middle East as well as by the more fundamental disputes over trade, monetary

policies, and the allocation of defense costs.

Indeed while prominent U.S. politicians continued

to lobby for a sizable U.S. force reductions in Western Europe, increasingly vocal left-wing

European voices began to suggest that the American postwar “occupation” of Western Europe

was little different than the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe.

By 1972 the NATO alliance appeared to have reached its postwar low point. There were,

as Newsweek correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave would observe, a few clumsy attempts to heal

the breach: “Nightmares about an American troop pullout are not all that worry Europe’s

leaders. In many recent actions of the Nixon Administration, European officials see signs of a

clear American lack of interest in the Continent’s problems—an attitude that could tempt fate.

When it was announced that California’s Gov. Ronald Reagan would be Mr. Nixon’s special

For a contemporary analysis of the troubles in Western alliance, see Arnaud de Borchgrave,

“Western Europe’s Drift Toward Neutralism,” Newsweek (June 25, 1973), p. 43. Also “U.S. and

Western Europe: An Alliance in Trouble,” U.S. News & World Report (April 16, 1973), pp. 45-48.

This rise of anti-Americanism was a particular concern in West Germany. Indeed, many

influential voices on the West German left sought to get the United States out of West Germany,

West Germany out of NATO, and to declare German neutralism or neutrality. This scenario was

based the assumption that if the United States were to leave Europe, then the Soviet Union would

also feel compelled to “leave.” Central Europe would then be free to embark on a path toward

“real socialism.” Of particular concern to Brzezinski was the fact that these attitudes were not

limited to youthful left-wing radicals in German universities, but were also gaining credence

inside Chancellor Wiley Brandt’s Social Democratic Party. This movement emerged from an

organization known as “Jusos.” Its membership was made up of young Socialists generally under

thirty-five years of age. Though they were nominal supporters of Wiley Brandt, their aims went

far beyond those pursued by the Chancellor. It was the tightly organized Jusos—not the

terrorists—who most alarmed the more traditional West German establishment. Working at the

grass roots level, the Jusos attained an influence far beyond their numbers. The goals of the Jusos

included: an end to Bonn’s financial support—1 billion dollars a year—for U.S. forces stationed in

West Germany; to create a nuclear free demilitarized zone in Central Europe, and to make

Germany a Marxist state inside a Marxist Europe. A growing number of less radical SPD

politicians began to adopt such views. Indeed, the SPD leader of the state of Schleswig-Holstein,

Joachim Steffen, had likened the U.S. military presence in West Germany to the Soviet occupation

of Czechoslovakia. See “Upsurge in Anti-U.S. Protest—A New Danger in Germany,” U.S. News &

World Report (April 16, 1973), p. 48.

19 0

emissary to reassure Europe of U.S. support, one European Foreign Minister raged, ‘You send

Henry Kissinger to Peking and Reagan to Europe. If you were trying to kill off the idea of a warm

transatlantic relationship completely you couldn’t do better than sending Reagan to talk to men

who have dealt over the years with the likes of Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, Dean Rusk and

George Ball.’”

Nevertheless, both sides of the Atlantic realized that the problems afflicting the Western

allies were rooted far more in economics than personalities. As Nixon took office in 1969, the U.S.

economy was suffering from spiraling inflation. As trade deficits and dollars abroad accumulated

other nations began to cash their dollars for American gold before their value was further eroded

by American inflation.

In August of 1971 Nixon and his economic advisers gathered at Camp David to discuss a

bolder economic strategy to ensure that the nation’s economy would recover in time for the 1972

election. Nixon returned to Washington with a stunning new economic program. Without prior

consultation with the United States’ main trading partners, Nixon announced a temporary 10

percent surtax on imported goods and the suspending the United States’ practice of converting

dollars to gold.

The “Nixon shocks” would stun America’s closest allies. By 1972 new trade

barriers were being erected throughout the world—between the lesser developed countries and

Arnaud de Borchgrave, “Europe: The New Soviet Threat,” Newsweek (July 10, 1972), p. 42

The Western economic system since World War II had been linked by the Breton Woods

system. In July 1944, American and British officials met at Breton Woods, New Hampshire, in an

effort to set up a postwar monetary system. The most vexing task was to avoid the economic

chaos the 1930s that stemmed from tariff wars and the wild fluctuations in exchange rates. The

Breton Woods system thus placed the dollar at the fixed center of a new economic system. Each

country declared a value of its currency against the dollar and permitted it to float only 1 percent

up or down. The dollar, in turn, was linked to gold at a firm rate of $35 an ounce. This would

permit any nation, at least in theory, to come to Fort Knox and redeem their dollars for gold at

that fixed rate. This economic system, together with the International Monetary Fund, the World

Bank, and the free trade agreements comprising the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

(GATT) became the underlying foundation of the postwar economic system. The system, by most

accounts, worked well until the late 1960s. The self-adjusting free trade and liberal monetary

system provided a steady rate of growth. This in turn allowed the Western industrial

democracies to construct democratic institutions and the modern postwar welfare state.

19 1

the developed countries—as well as between the industrialized nations of Japan, the United

States, and Western Europe.

Nixon’s moves furthered Brzezinski’s belief that Western alliance needed a more formal

“trilateral” organization to more closely orchestrate its political and economic structures. In

December 1971 Brzezinski asked Huntington Harris, a trustee of the Brookings Institution, to

fund a series of reports analyzing foreign affairs from the "trilateral" viewpoint. The strength of

these Tripartite Studies persuaded David Rockefeller to place his influence and financial support

behind the concept.

Rockefeller arranged the initial planning group at the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico

Hills, in Tarytown, New York. Henry Owen was in attendance at that initial meeting. “There was

something like seventeen people there. And we reached agreement that that’s what we wanted—

a ‘trilateral commission’-- and that was what we agreed to call it. We established it with equal

number of Japanese, Europeans, and Americans. And we agreed to have meetings regularly with

It was only years later that the full impact of Nixon’s economic policies would become

evident.

As New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman noted at the time of

Nixon’s death: “In most of the obituaries and retrospectives about the life and times of President

Richard M. Nixon, his foreign policy achievements were hailed as the centerpiece of his

Presidency. But oddly, all of these eulogies either ignored, or mentioned only in passing, what

may have been one of the most enduring of Mr. Nixon’s foreign policy initiatives: his decision in

1971 to take the dollar off the gold standard and demolish the Bretton Woods monetary

system…The reason this Nixon initiative gets short shrift is because news and history tend to be

written in the context of the Super Story—a large narrative drama that sets the broad context in

which events are judged. The international Super Story of the Nixon era was the cold war; news

was deemed significant or insignificant in relation to where it fit in the East-West drama. The

opening to China and détente naturally assumed a high profile; economics was secondary. Most

journalists and editors, having been suckled on the cold war, naturally gravitate to news about

national security, not economic security.” Thomas Friedman, “A Nixon Legacy Devalued by a

Cold War Standard,” The New York Times (May 1, 1994).

In 1972 Brzezinski would accompany Rockefeller to the annual meeting of the Bilderberg

Group in an unsuccessful effort to include Japan into their concept of closer U.S.-West European

integration. The Bilderbergers penchant for secrecy and multilateral solutions would long make it

a target of right-wing conspiracy theorists who saw the group as a “Jewish-backed cabal” in

league with the communists to “subvert free enterprise and American values.” See Peter

Thompson, “Bilderberg and the West,” in Holly Sklar ed., Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission

and Elite Planning for World Management (Boston, 1980), p. 188-189.

19 2

Zbig, who had played such a vital role in bringing it about, as sort of a secretary-general of the

whole commission.”

In July 1973 Brzezinski took a leave from his post at Columbia to become the first director

of the Trilateral Commission. Among his initial duties would be to oversee the selection of its

original 200 members that would ultimately include a remarkable cross section of the world’s

power centers.

But the most significant member would turn out to be a little known one-term

governor from Georgia named Jimmy Carter.

Brzezinski recalled how the selection came about. “I remember discussing his

membership with my two principal Trilateral Commission colleagues, Gerard Smith and George

Franklin. We wanted a forward-looking Democratic governor who would be congenial to the

trilateral perspective. Reubin Askew of Florida was mentioned as a logical candidate, but then

one of them noted that Jimmy Carter, the newly elected governor of Georgia, courageous on civil

rights and reportedly a bright and upcoming Democrat, was interested in developing trade

Interview, Washington, DC (June 28, 2001). This initial “trilateral” meeting at Rockefeller’s

estate would provide the prototype for what would eventually become known as the annual “G-

7” meetings between the seven industrialized nations in an effort to coordinate interest rates,

monetary and fiscal policies in hopes of maintaining some semblance of currency stability. The

first of these meetings was held in Rambouillet in 1975—and it was in large degree an effort to

put the recommendations put forth by the Trilateral Commission into effect.

From the world of business came the top executives of international corporations such as

Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Wachovia Bank & Trust Co., Texas Instruments, Exxon, Caterpillar

Tractor, Hewlett Packard, Continental Illinois, National Bank & Trust Col, Brown Brothers,

Harriman and Co., Sears, Roebuck & Co., Shell, Fiat, Barclays Bank, Bank of Tokyo, Seiko,

Datsun, Hitachi, Sony, and Toyota. From the media came the editor-in-chief of Time, the

president of CBS, as well as the directors of the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the New

York Times. From the world of “big labor” came I.W. Abel, president of the United Steelworkers

of America, Leonard Woodcock, president of the United Automobile Workers, and Lane

Kirkland, then secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO and the heir apparent to George Meany. The

foreign policy specialists included veterans from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations,

including George Ball, Harold Brown and Cyrus Vance. Walter Mondale, a senator from

Minnesota, was among those invited from the political world. See Holly Sklar and Ros Everdell,

“Who’s Who on the Trilateral Commission,” in The Trilateral Commission, pp. 90-131.

19 3

relations between his state of Georgia and the Common Market and Japan. I then said, ’Well, he’s

obviously our man.’”

Carter’s subsequent political rise would fuel the obsession of right-wing conspiracy

theorists who viewed the Trilateral Commission as a front to impose a “socialist” world

government.” A different sort of charge came from left-wingers who viewed the Trilateral

Commission as a “rich man’s club” seeking to hold off a long overdue social revolution in the

Third World.

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 5.

The “X-Files”theme was seen in this sample found on the internet. “In July of 1952 the world

was electrified by large newspaper headlines and photos of squadrons of UFOs flying repeatedly

over the nation’s capital in Washington DC. Four months later WWII General Dwight

Eisenhower was elected President. The same month President Eisenhower took office (January

1953) the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) was ordered to determine if UFOs were

interstellar vehicles. OSI convened the Robertson Panel of scientists, which recommended

expansion of an Air Force study on UFOs, Project Blue Book. A year later, in April, 1954, as

documented by Gerald Light, President Eisenhower made a secret trip to Muroc Field in the

California desert, accompanied by generals, reporter Franklin Allen of the Hearst Newspapers

Group, Los Angeles Catholic Bishop James McIntyre and others. The President had previously

arranged to be in nearby Palm Springs, purportedly for a golfing vacation. He was spirited over

to Muroc one night, while reporters were fed the cover story that the President had a toothache

and needed to see a dentist. While at Muroc Air Field, Eisenhower was present while an

extraterrestrial disc landed. Several Star Visitors emerged to converse with the President and the

generals. The extraterrestrials requested that Eisenhower make the public aware of

extraterrestrial contact with Earth forthwith. The President protested that humans were not

ready, and needed time to be prepared for adjusting to this stupendous reality. By the end of the

following month, May 1954, President Eisenhower’s CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, Prince

Bernhard of Netherlands, David Rockefeller and other top world financiers, later-Secretary of

State Dean Rusk, later British Minister of Defense Dennis Healey, and other Western power

leaders convened the inaugural meeting of the Bilderberg Group, a means of Western collective

management of the world order. One of the early items on the Bilderberg agenda was

extraterrestrial contact. Shortly after establishing itself, the Bilderberg Group collaborated with

the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), another international policy body devoted to world

management. They discussed the problem of adjusting humankind to extraterrestrial presence.

Bilderberg and CFR decided jointly in the mid-1950s to enter into an arrangement with the

extraterrestrials. The ET’s were given an island in the French Polynesia as a base on Earth. This

arrangement afforded them an opportunity to monitor closely Earth cultures and behavior and it

permitted Earth governments a way to monitor extraterrestrial culture and behavior.” The report

went on to suggest that the U.S. held out for many concessions before agreeing to the

arrangement “and history subsequent to 1954 suggests that what the U.S. obtained was the lion’s

share of extraterrestrial scientist consultants, to assist American scientists in understanding and

adapting exotic ET technologies into such devices we now know as the computer chip, fibre

optics, lasers, gene-splicing therapy, cloning, night-vision equipment, super-tenacity fibers (such

as Kevlar lightweight armor), aerospace ceramics, Stealth technology, particle-beam devices, and

19 4

Like most conspiracy theories those targeted at the Trilateral Commission were diverse

and occasionally bizarre. Pat Robertson, the conservative television evangelist, would insist the

Trilateral Commission was somehow linked to free-masonry and the occult, and that it sprung

from the “depth of something that is evil.” Pat Robertson, The New World Order (Dallas, 1993), pp.

33, 102. Lyndon Larouche, a perennial fringe political candidate, accused the Trilateral

Commission of just about everything imaginable, including the maintenance of a vast

international drug trade. In his quest for the 1980 Republican nomination George Bush was

pressured to resign from the Trilateral Commission to appease the increasingly influential right-

wing of the party. In 1992 there emerged a whispering campaign that Bill Clinton, a longtime

Trilateral member, had been “anointed” the Democratic presidential nominee by the Bilderberg

group. Perhaps the most grandiose Trilateral conspiracy could be seen in “The X-Files,” the

popular 1990s television program whose plot surrounded a determined FBI agent determined to

unearth a covert “world government” that was conspiring with highly advanced alien beings. In

the early 1990s Professor McGriff, a member of the militant rap group Public Enemy, marked his

concerts with long diatribes against the Trilateral Commission--which he referred to as a “wicked

global Jewish conspiracy.”

Timothy McVeigh insisted the Trilateral Commission was the heart

of a secret “New World Order” to which he expressed his displeasure by blowing up the federal

building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Over the years Brzezinski would become visibly irritated when approached with such

charges:

I encounter that all the time when I speak around the country and the kooks that you

know pop up with this theory come from either the loony left wing or the loony right wing

perspective. If it’s the loony right-winger, he’ll stand up and say, ‘You’re a conspiracy of people

who want to impose one world government and deprive us of our sovereignty.’ And if it’s an

gravity control flight.” “Believe it Or Not!” Received from Dr. Richard Boylan,

http://www.ettracker.com/index -21.html

David Mills, “Beware the Trilateral Commission! The Influential World Panel Conspiracy

Theorists Love to Hate,” The Washington Post (April 25, 1992).

See Godfrey Sperling, “Zbigniew Brzezinski on Oklahoma City,” The Christian Science Monitor

(May ?, 1995).

19 5

extremely loony left-winger he’ll stand up and say, ‘You’re a conspiracy of rich capitalists who

want to control the world for the sake of global profits.’ And that crazy outfit Larouche, started

with the left and swung to the right for example over the last 15 years. But the answer is, look, the

Commission operates openly, there’s nothing secret about it. It is a group of influential people,

we don’t hide that. On the contrary, we deliberately want influential people from the three

regions who try to deal with the problems of the three regions encounter by discussion, by

promotional studies, by advocacy. We have advocated over the years debt relief for the poor

countries of the world. We have advocated a close cooperation in science between our industrial

democracies. We are by and large in favor of free trade arrangement. We are against

protectionism tariffs….I think we perform a useful educational function. Any viewer who is

watching me wants to explore the so-called conspiracy, all he has to do is to write to the Office of

the Commission and we will give him whatever he wants. There is nothing secret about it.

James Earl Carter, Jr. was born to Earl and Lillian Carter in 1924 in Plains, Georgia-- a

rural community in southwestern Georgia with a single main street and population of a few

hundred. Jimmy Carter’s childhood was unique in that region, if only because most of his

playmates were the children of the black tenants who lived on or around his father’s farm.

“Jimmy was raised up with nothin’ but colored people,’” recalled A.D. Davis, one of Jimmy

Carter’s African-American childhood friends, “he ain’t never acted like he was more’ somebody

because he was white.”

In 1946 Jimmy Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis with a focus on

nuclear engineering. In 1951 Carter was assigned to the Navy’s newly formed nuclear-submarine

program directed by the legendary Captain Hyman Rickover. The two had met in 1952 when

Carter sat down before the admiral for a job interview. At the end of the two-hour sitting,

Rickover’s asked Carter if he had always “done his best.” The young sailor from Georgia, after

giving it some thought, conceded that perhaps he had not always tried his “best.” Rickover’s

curt reply of “Why not!?” left an indelible impression on Carter.

The career path of Jimmy Carter would change abruptly in 1953. That year, following the

death of his father, Carter made the agonizing decision to resign from the navy and return to

Plains to manage the family’s indebted family farm. With wife Rosalynn keeping the books,

Interview with Brian Lamb, C-SPAN, Booknotes Transcript (April 2, 1989).

Peter Goldman, “Sizing Up Carter,” Newsweek (September 13, 1976), p. 25.

19 6

Carter transformed the struggling peanut business into a multi-million dollar venture. “During

the harvest,” recalls one friend, “he and Rosalynn would work eighteen and twenty hours a day.

He never sat on his bottom and waited for business—and before long he increased his daddy’s

volume 25 times.”

Carter’s return to Plains also coincided with a development that would impact Southern

politics for a generation. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court would outlaw the segregation

of public school. The Brown v. Board of Education decision would create a backlash throughout

the South that would significantly impact the political career of Jimmy Carter. One friend recalls

that the Carter’s attitude was like that of the lawyer Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill

a Mockingbird,”—a moderate who did not buck the basic racial order but tried to do the “decent

things” within it.

Carter became active in local affairs in and around Plains—becoming a deacon of the

church and serving on the local school board. Despite frequent “invitations” from the local police

chief, Carter was one of the few white male citizens in Plains to hold out against joining the

segregationist “White Citizens Council.” This act would subject Carter’s peanut business to a

local boycott. In 1962 Carter ran a successful campaign for a seat in the Georgia State Senate.

Although the initial election returns showed Carter losing by a narrow margin, he filed a

successful suit that would overturn the result.

Carter’s term in the Georgia Senate would thus coincide with the changing politics in the

South. Gradually even the most “yellow dog” Democrats were turning away from the civil rights

messages of Lyndon Johnson, to the more conservative message of Barry Goldwater or the more

overtly racist appeal of Alabama governor George Wallace. Jimmy Carter’s eldest son Chip, at the

time fourteen years old, wore an “LBJ” button to school, only to have it repeatedly ripped off his

shirt by classmates. One day the scuffles were serious enough that the Chip came home to his

Ibid, p. 30.

Ibid, p. 31.

19 7

father in tears. Jimmy Carter’s advice was rather firm. “Put the button back on,” he told his son

“What if they tear it off again?” asked Chip. “Put it on again,” said his father. “Then, they’ll just

tear it off again,” Chip persisted. “Then, you just put it back on again if you want to wear it. Do

what you want to do—and learn to box.”

Jimmy Carter meanwhile was attempting to wade through the uneasy political waters of

being a racial moderate in the South that was turning increasing to the segregationist voice of

George Wallace. Carter would collect 200 petition signatures to support county-attorney Warren

Fortson, who had been threatened with dismissal for proposing the formation of a biracial

committee to mediate in the civil rights campaign in nearby Sumter. This act would again subject

Carter’s business to public pressure. “Jimmy got boycotted again because he spoke up for me,”

recalled Fortson, “He sure and hell did. They tried to fry him for it. In my book, that’s

courage.”

In the summer of 1965, at the height of the civil rights demonstrations in nearby

Americus, the Plains Baptist Church scheduled a vote on whether to continue to exclude African-

Americans from the congregation. Carter’s uncharacteristically impassioned speech against

exclusion led some members of his church to organize still another boycott of his business.

In 1966 Carter surprised even his closest friends in announcing that he was running for

the governorship of Georgia. Carter’s campaign would face serious obstacles. He was virtually

unknown in statewide politics, had little money to speak of, and had virtually no connections

with Atlanta’s influential “old boy” network. Indeed, the Atlanta newspapers would quickly

dismiss him as “Jimmy Who?” But Carter’s simple resiliency made his quixotic campaign hard to

ignore. Carter would not win, but his methodical campaign had given him statewide name

recognition. It would also provide the groundwork for a more successful campaign in 1970.

In early 1967 Carter had what he would later describe as a “profound religious

experience.” The pastor of the Plains Baptist Church gave a sermon entitled “If You Were

James Wooten, Dasher (). p. 254-55.

Goldman, p. 31.

19 8

Arrested for Being a Christian, Would There Be Any Evidence to Convict You?” Carter’s answer

led him to a serious reconsideration of his religious priorities. “I recognized for the first time that

I had lacked something very precious—a complete commitment to Christ, a presence of the Holy

Spirit in my life in a more profound and personal way, and since then I’ve had an inner peace

and inner conviction and assurance that transformed my life for the better.”

For nearly four years Carter would manage the family peanut farm while running an

exhaustive campaign for the governorship of Georgia. In November of 1970, Jimmy Carter, at the

age of 46, was elected governor of Georgia. Carter’s innaugral address signaled a dramatic

change in the tenor of Southern politics. “At the end of a long campaign I believe I know our

people as well as anyone. Based on this knowledge of Georgians—north and south, rural and

urban, liberal and conservative--I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination

is over.” Carter’s inaugural speech would be the most important of his political career. In May of

1971 Carter appeared on the cover of Time in a feature depicting a more forward-looking “New

South.”

Yet Carter’s impact was impeded by a Georgia law that limited the governor to a single

four -year term. In late 1972 Carter thus began entertaining even bolder plans. The

unceremonious rebuff by George McGovern at the convention in Miami Beach had provided a

Jules Witcover, Marathon, The Pursuit of the Presidency 1972-1976 (New York, 1977), p. 288.

Carter also took more symbolic gestures, including proclaiming January 15, 1973 as “Martin

Luther King, Jr. Day” in Georgia. During his tenure he would unveil a portrait of the King in the

rotunda of the state capitol in Atlanta. The gesture would foreshadow Carter’s belief that the

“soft power” of human rights could become more powerful than the most sophisticated arms

systems—and that human rights could take root in places very far from Georgia. “I want my

country to be number one” Carter declared in the speech dedicating the portrait of the slain civil

rights leader “I want the United States of America to be the pre-eminent nation in all the world,

but I do not equate pre-eminence solely with military might nor with the ability to subjugate

others or to demonstrate prowess on the battlefield. We must have adequate forces to defend

ourselves. But, in addition to that, an accomplishment in truth, a recognition of the equality and

worth of man, a constant searching for honesty and morality, an openness of government, the

ability of all men to control their own destinies and a constant recognition of the values of

compassion and love among all our people—these are the proper measures of a great nation.”

Jimmy Carter, “Martin Luther King, Jr.” in Jimmy Carter, A Government as Good As Its People

(New York, 1977), p. 27.

19 9

valuable lesson for Carter’s advisers. As Gerald Rafshoon would later note: “We came out of

there realizing that as much as we knew about Jimmy Carter and thought he had a good national

image, the national politicians didn’t take him seriously, and didn’t take us seriously. I remember

walking back from the convention the night McGovern was nominated, and Hamilton and I are

saying, ‘Why can’t Jimmy run for President? He’s not going to run for the Senate. And four years

from now we certainly aren’t going to go around here trying to curry favor with somebody

asking to put an ex-Georgia governor on as Vice-President.’”

In September 1972 Carter’s staff met in Atlanta to explore the idea of a embarking on a

presidential campaign. “I can’t tell you how difficult it was to talk about,” Hamilton Jordan

would later note. “There we were, in Atlanta, Georgia, in the Governor’s mansion in 1972. The

general election hadn’t even taken place. We all knew it looked kind of preposterous. But we

were serious about it. It was hard to say it. I can remember I didn’t make a very good

presentation. It was hard to really talk about it. It was almost embarrassing.”

On December 12, 1974, Carter formally declared himself as a candidate for the presidency

of the United States. Carter’s announcement was met, as one biographer has noted, “with yawns

and a few chuckles, but little more.”

Carter’s early campaign strategy was based on a three-

way race between Senator Edward Kennedy and Alabama Governor George Wallace. Few

pundits at the time were taking Carter seriously. “The notion,” commented campaign journalist

Jules Witcover “that Jimmy Carter could beat either Wallace or Kennedy anywhere was, of

Witcover, Marathon, p. 115. Carter’s strategists had learned a great deal from McGovern

primary campaign in 1972. In 1972 McGovern was able to secure the nomination largely because

the rules for selecting delegates had been revised to provide for a more democratic selection

process and for proportional representation (i.e, more minorities and women) at national

conventions. To assure compliance with these standards, a growing number of states began to

conduct direct primaries, which meant that the 1976 nomination would be decided largely at the

ballot box, rather than in the traditional “smoke filled rooms” of the party kingmakers. Carter

strategists believed that if their candidate could win some of the early primaries that he could

generate enough momentum to take the nomination. Burton Kauffman, The Presidency of James

Earl Carter,

Witcover, p. 118.

Wooten, p. 347.

200

course, considered ludicrous by nearly everyone who had ever heard of Carter, and outside of

Georgia that meant practically nobody.”

National anonymity was only one of Carter’s potential weaknesses. At the height of the

Cold War Carter’s advisers knew that few voters would be willing to entrust the presidency to a

one-term governor with no foreign policy experience. In 1973 campaign adviser Hamilton Jordan

suggested that Carter apply for membership in the Trilateral Commission. Zbigniew Brzezinski,

recalling the rather dismal choice between Nixon and McGovern, was one of the few who did

take notice. “I saw in him decency and humaneness,” Brzezinski would later note, “and I also felt

that there was a great deal of steel underneath. As a result, I hoped that in the area of foreign

policy he would be able to combine principle with power, the only prescription in my judgment

for a successful American foreign-policy.”

Indeed Brzezinski understood that the world had become far more complicated in the

decades since the moral certainties of the early Cold War. Brzezinski believed the United States

had painted itself into a corner by refusing to settle the Middle East conflict in the wake of the

Six-Day War in 1967. By the early 1970s Brzezinski believed that Israel’s continued occupation of

the disputed lands it had won in 1967 highlighted the dangerous global “fault-line” between the

world’s rich and poor nations he had discussed in Between Two Ages.

ibid, p. 125.

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 6.

Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist and specialist in Middle-East affairs, once

observed. “Israel’s victory in 1967 injected a new spirit of grandiosity, of manifest destiny, into

the Jewish state. It ushered out the pioneer era of simplicity in Israeli life and ushered in an era of

consumerism, stock speculating, dollar accounts, credit cards, and living beyond one’s means,

which peaked in the 1970s, when Israel almost spent itself into bankruptcy. The material riches

offered by America suddenly gained a new appeal for Israelis. In the old days when you lived

‘American-style’ in Israel, it meant you stood out like a sore thumb. After 1967, you stood out if

you didn’t. Israelis ate hamburgers at ‘MacDavid’s” instead of ‘MacDonald’s,” shopped at

American-style supermarkets, counted their wealth in dollars not shekels, and were as likely to

dress up as Rambo on the Halloween-like Purim festival as they were Haman or Esther.

Americans who immigrated to Israel after 1967, attracted to the simple and primitive frontier

ways of Israeli life, began to complain that Israel was turning into precisely what they were

trying to escape.” Friedman noted that the nature of the Israeli settlements in the captured

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Brzezinski argued that a negotiated settlement granting “land for peace,” was

paradoxically in Israel’s long-term interest since a westernized democracy, could not

permanently subjugate millions of Palestinians. Israel’s own democracy and moral self-respect,

he reasoned, would be jeopardized if it attempted to do so. Brzezinski believed the United States

must put pressure on Israel to enact a settlement--especially since he had come to believe that

Israel actually preferred a stalemate to a settlement as Brzezinski argued in a controversial 1971

Newsweek article:

They do so because, understandably enough, they put little faith in international

guarantees or Arab promises. They do so also because a stalemate increases the likelihood of

Israeli retention of Arab territory. It is here that American and Israeli interests diverge. It is also

here that, paradoxically, Israel and Soviet tactics converge. The Soviets too prefer a stalemate to

either a new war or a settlement. The former poses the prospect of another Arab defeat (or costly

and dangerous Soviet involvement) and the latter would inevitably reduce the dependence of the

Arabs on the Soviets. It follows therefore, that it is both ultimately beneficial to Israel and

certainly in the American interest for the U.S. to use its diplomatic and military leverage to

separate the question of territory from the question of security. Our objective should be to link a

graduated step-by-step Israeli withdrawal essentially to the old frontiers with a parallel reduction

in the Soviet military presence in the Middle East, with the vacated territories subject to

supervised demilitarization. An approach of this sort might still find the Arabs receptive, for it

would mean recovery of territory in exchange for acceptance of Israel and the departure of the

territories did little to downplay this impression. “If there is one thing I have learned in the

Middle East, it is that the so-called extremists or religious zealots, whether in Jewish or Muslim

society, are not as extreme as we might think. The reason they are both tolerated and successful is

that they are almost always acting on the basis of widely shared feelings or yearnings. The West

Bank Jewish settlers were no exception. As Israel became more modern, materialistic, sterile,

Americanized society after 1967, many Israelis identified in their hearts with those men climbing

the rocky hills of the West Bank, rifles in hand and barbed wire at their feet, keeping watch for

the Arabs gathering in the distance. The settlers worked out the increasingly bourgeois Israeli’s

repressed yearnings to once again be a pioneer. Because the Labor Party leaders got caught up in

the intensity of what the settlers were doing, and because they had no real ideological vision

strong enough to stand up against them, they never really stopped and examined the long-term

consequences and never noticed that the passion of so many of the settlers was a subsidized

passion—a passion that began by living in tents and caravan homes but would insist on

swimming pools, paved roads, army protection, tax breaks, and ranch-style suburban homes

before they were through. Nevertheless, a pattern was began in Hebron that would be repeated

all over the West Bank during the next decade: Jewish settlers would go out and create facts, the

government would respond half-heartedly, with some of the Labor ministers openly supporting

the settlers, the government would reach some ambiguous compromise allowing them to stay,

and then another group of settlers would go out and create another fact.” Thomas Friedman,

From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York, 1990), pp. 261-262, 459.

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Soviet military. At least, it would hold out an alternative more promising than a hopeless

stalemate.

The Arab states responded to the new situation with the one very tangible source of

leverage they possessed. In 1973 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia sent his oil minister to warn the

United States that future oil exports would depend on a more balanced American policy in the

Arab-Israeli dispute. In June 1973 Leonid Brezhnev arrived in Washington for the second

superpower summit in two years. Beyond the customary ceremonial pomp, Brezhnev proposed

that the Soviet Union and United States agree on a Middle East settlement. He warned that the

United States pro-Israeli stance in the Middle-East was making it difficult for Moscow to restrain

its Arab allies.

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel in an effort to

recover the territories lost in the 1967 war. The Israelis, at the time observing Yom Kippur,

suffered severe losses in the first week of the war. With their backs to the wall the situation

looked ominous. Kissinger, after a tense emergency meeting with the Israeli ambassador, feared

Israel might exercise its nuclear capabilities.

As William Quant, a Middle East expert on

Kissinger’s staff, recalled “Without being told in so many words, we knew that a desperate Israel

might activate its nuclear option. This situation, by itself, created a kind of blackmail

potential….But no one had to say it, and I don’t think anybody did.”

Nixon, after some controversial deliberation, responded with a massive airlift to supply

the Israeli army.

It would prove a turning point in the war. The Israeli army scrambled to

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Stalemate or Settlement,” Newsweek (May 17, 1971), p. 50.

Issacson, p. 518.

Ibid, p. 518.

Nixon’s domestic critics accused him of using the crisis to divert attention from Watergate,

and other claimed Kissinger had over-reacted to the Soviet bluff. Yet Kissinger felt vindicated.

His actions had blocked possible Soviet intervention and forced the Israelis to observe the cease-

fire; the fighting had concluded without a clear-cut victory for either side, and thus Kissinger

began his famous “shuttle diplomacy” in the search for a settlement. For an interesting insight

into the decision-making process during these two weeks see Issacson, pp. 511-545.

203

recover the offensive. Within two weeks Israeli troops were driving toward Damascus in the

north and were within sixty miles of Cairo threatening to envelope the entire Egyptian Third

Army. The Egyptians, faced with a humiliating defeat, called upon Moscow for support. The

Soviets, angered by the U.S. failure to persuade Israel to accept a cease-fire, threatened to move

unilaterally in an effort to save the Egyptian troops. With Nixon embroiled in the Watergate

scandal, Kissinger convened a special meeting of the National Security Council and, with the

president’s approval, ordered American forces around the world to advance to “ Defense

Condition 3,” midway up the ladder to launching a nuclear attack.

At that point Kissinger

then intervened and pressured the Israelis to accept the cease-fire.

Brzezinski understood that the war in the Middle East had further aggravated U.S.

relations with its NATO allies in Europe. To many West Europeans the problem in the Middle

East centered on the U.S. one-sided support of Israel. They pointed out that Israel had ignored

At the very moment Kissinger was attempting to negotiate a Middle East cease-fire, Nixon

was desperately trying to find an attorney general willing to fire Watergate special prosecutor

Archibald Cox, who was pressuring Nixon to release potentially incriminating White House

tapes that would prove his involvement in the Watergate cover-up. Nixon ordered Attorney

General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson instead chose to resign rather than carry out the

order. The White House then turned to the Deputy Attorney General to fire Cox, but he too

refused and resigned in protest. The same instructions were given to Solicitor General Robert

Bork, who as Acting Attorney General fired Cox. But the events would only compound Nixon’s

problems as the White House and Congress were deluged by telegrams condemning what

became known in the press as the “Saturday Night Massacre.” For an excellent insight into

Nixon’s attempt to manage the simultaneous “double crisis” over Watergate and the Middle East

war see John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961-1974 (New York,

1991), pp. 451-456.

In the wake of the Yom Kippur War an influential coalition of intellectuals began to attack the

Nixon-Kissinger détente as being harmful to Israel’s interests. The group, later known as “neo-

conservatives” argued that Kissinger had prevented a potentially decisive Israeli victory in 1973

by arranging a premature cease-fire with Moscow. Brzezinski in later years would engage in

some heated intellectual debates with the “neo-cons.” Although he may have shared the their

view that détente with Moscow had its limits, he rejected the view that the U.S. interests in the

Middle East required blind support of Israel at all costs. Among the most noteworthy “neo-

conservatives” were Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary; Irving Kristol editor of Policy

Review; Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute and the Coalition for a Democratic

Majority and Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic. This cohort of “neo-conservatives” would

later become more socially conservative and almost exclusively associated with the Republican

Party. This “second generation” of neo-conservatives would rise to prominence within the

second George Bush administration, particularly in the decision to invade Iraq in March of 2003.

See “The Shadow Men,” The Economist (April 26, 2003), pp. 37-39.

204

the UN Security Council (Resolution 242) by refusing to negotiate a peace settlement and

relinquish the Arab territories occupied in 1967.

The NATO allies were especially disturbed

when the United States, without prior consultation, placed the NATO alliance in the middle of a

potential nuclear confrontation for the sake of Israel. At the height of the war the West Europeans

(who received 80 percent of their oil from the Arab producers) defied the United States the use of

NATO military bases to airlift supplies to Israel. The move by the West Europeans enraged

Kissinger who was heard to say “I don’t care what happens to NATO I’m so disgusted.”

The real crisis for America was only beginning. At the height of the war the Arab oil-

producing nations launched an oil embargo on the United States and all other nations that were

assisting Israel. The dramatic cutback in the world’s oil production created an immediate hike in

energy prices and would throw the Western economies into a decade of recession. Some

observers, including Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter, would note that with only 6 percent of the

world’s population, the United States was consuming nearly a third of all the energy produced.

Freiedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem, p. 457.

David Binder, “Kissinger Said to Express Disgust at Allies’ Position,” The New York Times

(October 31, 1973). In years to come even Henry Kissinger would become a convert to the

trilateral idea. “In 1973 when I served as Secretary of State, David Rockefeller showed up in my

office one day to tell me that he thought I needed a little help. I must confess, the thought was not

self-evident to me at the moment. He proposed to form a group of Americans, Europeans and

Japanese to look ahead to the future. And I asked him, ‘Who’s going to run this for you, David?’

He said, ‘Zbig Brzezinski.” (I must ruin Zbig’s reputation here by saying usually he and I agreed.

We managed to hide it very well.) I had worked with Nelson for many years; I had first known

David at the Council on Foreign Relations in the ‘50s, and I knew that Rockefeller meant it. He

picked something that is important; and they got the best man to do it for them. When I thought

about it, there actually was a need. We were in the middle of the energy crisis, totally unforeseen

by us. The last study that had been made in our government said the oil price might reach $5 by

1980; it had reached $12 at that point. All the industrialized democracies needed to find some

method of concerted action, a common approach. And so, I encouraged David to go ahead,

though I deserve no credit whatever for the consequences because David and Zbig and David’s

Co-Chairman created what we have today. Any society needs some people who bridge the gap

between where they are and where they should be going—people with vision and courage—and

the Trilateral Commission fulfilled a crucial role in that respect.” See “Tributes to David

Rockefeller Founder and Honorary Chairman—On the Occasion of the U.S. Group’s 25

Anniversary Evening,” (December 1, 1998).

205

But this did little to heal the shock for the average American who was enraged at having to pay

more for a commodity that had always been cheap and readily available.

Brzezinski was perhaps uniquely optimistic regarding America’s role in the world.

argued that the current crisis in the United States was part of a deep cultural malaise that had

infected much of America’s intellectual elite. Brzezinski warned that this pessimism marked a

sharp break with the basic ideas (progress, liberty, confidence, civility, and compromise) that had

guided the United States throughout its history and served as a model for the rest of the world.

“It is hard to think of a period since the American Revolution,” remarked Brzezinski, “when the

democratic system had had less appeal for the intellectual elite of the world.” He insisted that it

was “essential to tackle head-on the pervasive mood of pessimism which dominates our centers

of thought and learning.”

In the 1950s, the major Western oil companies in the Middle East had operated on what was

known as the “50-50 system.” This meant that they essentially halved the profits from oil

production (after subtracting all costs and expenses) with the country from which the raw crude

oil had been extracted. This system was largely beneficial to the western oil companies since they

not only gained access to the vast supplies of cheap Middle Eastern oil but could also use the 50

percent payment to the oil producing governments as an income-tax deduction. But gradually the

oil producing nations would begin to exercise more power. In 1960, the world’s major oil-

producing nations, led by Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, founded the Organization of Petroleum

Exporting Countries (OPEC). In the 1960s a global glut of oil, caused in part by new discoveries

in Libya and Algeria, prevented OPEC from attaining its goal of generating higher oil prices. That

situation changed dramatically in the early 1970s as the rapid industrial expansion in the United

States, Japan, and Western Europe created new demand. In 1971 OPEC was able to take

advantage of this situation by signing the Teheran agreement with the major oil companies,

which led to a rise in the posted price of oil. By the summer of 1973 oil prices had more than

doubled from the levels that had been relatively stable for more than two decades. For a look at

the politics and diplomacy of oil see Daniel Yergin The Prize (New York, 1991).

Brzezinski remained convinced that the world’s standard of living, at least in absolute terms,

was getting better.

“I myself am convinced” Brzezinski noted in 1975 “that the human condition

has been improving and continues to improve. In 1900, for example, only about one percent of

humanity lived in tolerable conditions. By 1970, with a vastly larger population, approximately

30 percent had achieved those standards. Certainly our own society has experienced marked

progress in terms of education, social sophistication, and political awareness.” Zbigniew

Brzezinski, “Making America Relevant,” Current (April 1975), p. 56-57.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Making America Relevant,” Current (April 1975), pp. 56-57. Brzezinski

continued to believe that the heart of this pessimism stemmed from the White House. “The

attendant danger of a philosophical isolation without precedent in American history has been

accentuated by the new style and substance of U.S. foreign policy, especially as pursued by the

206

Such was the atmosphere in May of 1975 when Brzezinski presided over the annual

Trilateral Commission meeting in Kyoto, Japan. Brzezinski’s keynote presentation warned that

the main axis of conflict was no longer between the Western world and the Communist world

but between the advanced countries and the developing countries. For the first time, he noted,

the 72 “new” nations had succeeded in inflicting significant reversals upon the world’s

industrialized states. While the developed nations still remained the focus of growth and

prosperity, the world’s new nations possessed what Brzezinski termed “negative power”—that

is, the ability to refuse their cooperation in the maintenance of world order--and instead opt for

violence and chaos:

If 1945 was the beginning of the existing international system, 1973 marked the beginning

of its end and hopefully the beginning of its renovation and readjustment. And that readjustment

is badly needed, for the world has changed profoundly in the course of the last thirty years. The

system in which we have operated for the last quarter of a century was a system created largely

by European-American initiative right after World War II. It was a system which embraced at

most 40 states, many of which were client states. Today the world community is composed of

some 150 states, dominated by a sense of nationalism, by an awareness of national aspirations,

and it is a community with remarkable inequality in social and economic conditions. Today, in a

world much more alive with political demands, the greatest single awareness is that of the

inequity and inequality of the human condition. If I were to generalize broadly, I would say that

the 19

century was dominated by the passion for liberty, while today the demand for equity is

the dominant political force in the world. And well it should be, for the world is truly

extraordinarily unequal. The community of 150 or so states contains only five (with a population

of only some 240 million) where per capita income is over $5000. It contains fifteen states (with

roughly 13% of world population—550 million) where per capita annual income is over $25000;

fifteen more states (with a similar population) with incomes over $1500; and 25 states (with

almost 10% of the world’s population) where income is over $500 per year. Finally, over 90 states,

comprising close to 60% of the world’s population, have annual per capita incomes of under

$500. And I many add, of these 90 states, as of last year, only 25 were growing at an annual rate

higher than 5% per annum.

Nixon administration that came into power in 1969. Covert, manipulative, and deceptive in style,

it seemed committed to a largely static view of the world, based on a traditional balance of

power, seeking accommodation among the major powers on the basis of spheres of influence,

and more generally orientated toward preserving the status quo than reforming it.” Zbigniew

Brzezinski, “America in a Hostile World,” Foreign Policy, 23 (Summer 1976), p. 73.

Robert C. Christopher, “The World’s New Cold War,” Newsweek (June 16, 1975), p. 37.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Trilateral Relations in a Global Context,” excerpts from Trilateral

Conference presentation, (May 31, 1975).

207

Jimmy Carter was in attendance at Kyoto in the early stages of his long shot run for the

White House. Though few at the time were taking Carter seriously (his national recognition

factor remained at a rather uninspiring 2 percent) he had received some good fortune. The

unexpected departure of Edward Kennedy from the campaign for the Democratic nomination in

November 1974 opened the floodgates to a dozen candidates, most of them coming from the

McGovernite-wing of the party.

Brzezinski was impressed by Carter’s speech at Kyoto which advocated a

“comprehensive” Middle East peace plan. The term “comprehensive” was a code phase for

pressing Israel to make some territorial sacrifices in exchange for peace. This was particularly

dangerous for a Democratic candidate since American Jews had traditionally been active in

Democratic Party. Brzezinski complimented Carter at one of the plenary sessions. “It’s nice”

Brzezinski noted, “ to see a Democratic candidate for President who has guts.”

At the end of

the conference Carter asked Brzezinski to appear with him at a press conference to provide some

visibility to what until then had been an anonymous candidacy:

From the outset, Carter’s primary obstacle was the potential candidacy of Massachusetts

Senator Edward Kennedy. Indeed, there had always been, at least since that tragic day in

November 1963, a sense of inevitability that another Kennedy would return the party to the glory

days of Camelot. The assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 left this legacy to Edward

Kennedy, the youngest and last of the Kennedy brothers. Kennedy, unlike any other Democrat,

was known nationwide and could attract audiences with his inspiring rhetoric to the liberal

causes. But Kennedy’s 1969 involvement in the incident at Chappaquiddick, in which the married

and apparently inebriated senator fled the scene while a young woman drown in the car he was

driving, seemed to end his presidential hopes. Yet the passing of time, not to mention

McGovern’s 49-state drubbing, had returned that sense of inevitability of a Kennedy candidacy.

By early 1974 most political experts were speculating that should Ted Kennedy get into the race

the nomination was virtually his for the taking. But in November 1974 Edward Kennedy shocked

the political establishment by removing himself from the race.

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 6

Leslie Gelb, a former State Department aide in the Carter administration and generally critical

of Brzezinski, would later note: “By the time Carter’s long-shot campaign was under way in 1976,

almost every Democratic hopeful had been the beneficiary of private conversations with the

Columbia professor. He had positioned himself substantially. His articles and advice carried the

perfect blend of anti-Communism and liberal humanism, of checking Soviet power and of

advancing human rights. He would have the Democrats contain Moscow better than Kissinger

and be more humane than Kissinger at the same time. Under Kissinger, he told the Democratic

208

He was running for president already and there were a number of American

newspapermen, and they gave him a hell of a time. They mocked him, ridiculed him, laughed at

him, said ‘what are you really running for?’ You just hope to squeeze in on the ticket as vice

president” and so forth. I remember being impressed; one, how he kept his cool; two, how

amiable he was; three, what he said—and he said to them the following; ‘The first test will be in

Iowa, and I have really campaigned hard. I have done more in that state than the other

candidates, and I expect to win. You fellows will probably ignore the victory. But then will come

the New Hampshire primary. I have campaigned all over the state and as hard as I have ever

campaigned in Georgia. I will win, and then your headlines will say ‘Southerner Wins in the

North,’ and after that will come Florida. It is right next to my home state, and I think I can knock

Wallace below the 40 percentage line, thus lifting the scourge of Wallace from the Democratic

Party; or I might even beat him. And then your headlines will say ‘Carter Front-runner.”

Carter’s comments would prove prophetic. Over the next three years Brzezinski would

emerge as Carter’s most trusted foreign policy adviser. “Brzezinski was the first guy in the

Community to pay attention to Carter, to take him seriously,” noted one Washington insider,

“He spent time with Carter, talked to him, sent him books and articles, educated him.”

By late

1975 Brzezinski began writing foreign policy papers for Carter on a more systematic basis. Carter,

in turn, requested the right to “plagiarize freely” from Brzezinski’s notes and articles. For the

hopefuls, America had lost its sense of values; it had stopped caring and standing for anything.

He was selling himself as a kind of “Good Henry Kissinger.” It was not as if Brzezinski had to

break down the doors to meet the Democratic candidates. By the time he went to them, they all

wanted him. He gave them a kind of legitimacy, the most important kind of the 1970s: expertise.

Like his contemporaries who were working in the same vineyard, he had met the politicians at

conferences, dined with them, sent them copies of his articles, and took their telephone calls to

provide quick advice for a comment to the news media. Like Kissinger, Brzezinski new how to

talk to men of power, to appreciate politics, to combine the language of scholarship and expertise

with the world of power. He could explain problems and ideas simply, put them in words that

politicians could use in speeches and televisions appearances, give them a clever phrase to catch

a headline. He understood their dilemmas, the need to combine high moral purpose with new-

sounding approaches and phrases that could win elections. It was not a waste of time for

politicians to talk with this professor.” Leslie Gelb, Our Own Worst Enemy (New York, 1984), pp.

94-95.

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 6.

Leslie Gelb, “The Secretary of State Sweepstakes,” New York Times Magazine (May 23, 1976).

209

next two years the bulk of Carter’s foreign policy speeches would be lifted, almost verbatim, from

Brzezinski’s academic articles.

In late December 1975 Carter asked Brzezinski to develop an outline of a “basic

speech/statement” on foreign affairs. Brzezinski responded with the following memo.

As a framework for your own foreign affairs approach let me suggest that your basic case

ought to be that our national purpose must be (1) as the first priority to create a stable inner core

for world affairs, based on closer collaboration among the advanced democracies (open-ended

trilateralism); (2) to shape on the above basis a more stable North-South relations, which means

(i) more cooperation with the emerging Third World countries (the richer and more successful),

though such devices as the tripartite Paris conferences, etc; (ii) compassionate aid to the Fourth

World, which the U.S. should grant as a matter of conscience as well as interest, but in which it

ought to also engage other states on a multilateral basis; (3) to promote détente with the Soviet

Union and to court China. Détente, of course is desirable but it ought to be more reciprocal.

Moreover, since the element of rivalry remains a reality, it cannot be the basis for coping with

global problems.

This would become the basic foreign policy outline for Jimmy Carter’s improbable run

for the presidency in 1976. The most important factor in this outline would be Brzezinski’s call for

a more “reciprocal” détente. This included a far more assertive policy toward Eastern Europe.

Brzezinski’s influence would lead critics to charge that Brzezinski had too much influence

with a novice politician. Some articles, most stressing the conspiracy angle and appearing in

fringe periodicals, accused Brzezinski of being Carter’s “Swengali” or playing “Henry Higgins”

to Carter’s “Elize Doolittle.” One critic, objecting to Time magazine’s depiction of Brzezinski as a

“foreign affairs scholar now advising Carter” noted cynically “Cardinal Richelieu might as well

have been referred to as ‘a priest now advising Louis XIV’” Craig S. Karpel, “Cartergate II. The

Real President,” Penthouse (December 1977), p. 89. Those less conspiratorial minded would point

out that Jimmy Carter valued loyalty more than any other quality in his advisers. He came to rely

on Brzezinski’s advice when few people in the Washington establishment took his candidacy

seriously. If Brzezinski was the first establishment heavyweight to back Carter, others placed

their bets on more established political figures. In July 1975 Cyrus Vance, who would one day

compete so publicly with Brzezinski for Carter’s ear in the White House, headed a committee

preparing for the presidential campaign of Seargent Shriver. As a Kennedy brother in law and

vice-presidential stand in for Tom Eagleton in McGovern’s 1972 campaign, many saw the Shriver

candidacy as an attempt to fill the “glamour vacuum” left by Ted Kennedy’s withdrawal from

the race. Shriver’s formal entry into the race invoked the legacy of John Kennedy, some would

say rather shamelessly, as the rationale for his candidacy. “His legacy awaits the leader who can

claim it” said Shriver, “I intend to claim that legacy not for myself alone but for the family who

first brought it into being; the millions who joyfully entered public life with him and the millions

of people throughout the world…for whom the memory of John Kennedy is an inspiration and a

lifting of the heart.” Witcover, Marathon, p. 161.

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 7

210

Kissinger and Brzezinski saw the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia through vastly different

lenses. While Brzezinski saw it as the success of peaceful engagement Kissinger took a more

conservative position. “No Western policy can guarantee a more favorable evolution in Central

Euorpe; all it can do is to take advantage of an opportunity if it arises.” Kissinger noted that

greater Western European unity would exert a growing attraction in the East, and “the major

initiatives to improve relations between Western and Eastern Europe should originate in Europe

with the United States in a reserve position.”

Brzezinski criticized this defeatist approach toward Eastern Europe as one of "moral

indifference" and "benign neglect." Though Nixon would embark on a number of visits to Eastern

Europe (to Romania in 1969, Yugoslavia in 1970, and Poland in 1972) Brzezinski would argue that

the nature of these visits paid little attention to the regions civil populations and thus had the

effect of an implicit U.S. support of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

The defenders of the Nixon-Kissinger

détente would insist that stability was of paramount importance in the region.

It was also

argued that once the region was “stabilized” the Soviet bloc regimes would feel secure enough to

enact “top down” reforms that would gradually loosen their regimes and open up their societies

to the West.

Brzezinski argued that such an interpretation involved a blatant misreading of the events

following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia after which Moscow engaged in a

“prophylactic” campaign to prevent any ideological “contamination” that might accompany

détente with the West.

Bennet Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges: The United States and Eastern Europe (New York, 1991), p.

116.

On this point see J.F. Brown, Eastern Europe and Communist Rule (Durham, 1988), p. 108. If

Soviet influence was removed from Eastern Europe, it was suggested, the region would likely

become subject to nationalistic disputes, and given the strategic nature of the region, quite

possibly a superpower nuclear confrontation. See Roy Licklider, "Soviet Control of Eastern

Europe: Morality Versus American National Interest," Political Science Quarterly, vol. 91, (Winter

1976-77), pp. 619-624.

On this point see J.F. Brown, "Détente and Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe," Survey

211

In the euphoria days of high détente, however, Brzezinski’s views toward Eastern

Europe were more often derided as the anachronistic views of a frustrated Cold Warrior. Indeed

by the early 1970s many in the United States assumed that the Cold War had come to a peaceful

conclusion with the Nixon-Brezhnev summit of 1972.

This attitude was reflected in the sustained attack on Radio Free Europe in the early

1970s. In 1967 Ramparts, a left-wing periodical, had exposed the fact that the CIA had long

assisted in the funding of the operating costs of Radio Free Europe.

This revelation, coupled

with détente, led to a sustained campaign to close RFE. Moreover the warming atmosphere of

superpower détente led U.S. liberals to charge that RFE harbored a primitive brand of anti-

communism out of step with the improved relations with Moscow.

Radio Free Europe also came under attack from the U.S. State Department and

supporters of the Nixon-Kissinger détente who sought to tame the radio services in order to

assuage Moscow’s sensitivities. Pressure also came from within the Western alliance. West

German Chancellors Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt both viewed Radio Free Europe an

obstacle to their policy of promoting a greater East-West “understanding.” Throughout the 1970s

both chancellors would seek to force RFE out of West Germany either by threatening to refuse a

renewal of its license or by inducing it to relocate “voluntarily.”

Rumors closer to home

suggested that Henry Kissinger was dangling RFE as a bargaining chip for Soviet concessions in

other areas.

But the most prominent opponent of Radio Free Europe was U.S. Senator William

(Spring/Summer, 1974), pp. 46-58.

See John M. Goshko, “RFE Alters Sullied Image,” The Washington Post (November 22, 1970).

See “Radio Free Europe: Station Break?” Newsweek (March 6, 1972), p. 50.

Brown, Eastern Europe and Communist Rule, p. 520. The other radio services were impacted by

détente. In 1974 James Keogh, the former executive editor for Time, took over the directorship of

USIA and immediately moved to distance his agency from the old “cold war” attitudes of his

hard line predecessor Frank Shakespeare. Under Keogh Voice of America began to reflect the

views of Kissinger’s détente. When the program department planned a series of ten-minute

excerpts and summaries from Solzhenitzyn’s Gulag Archipelago, they were cancelled on the claim

that they amounted to “advocacy journalism.” Responding to criticism that the radio services had

“gone soft,” Keogh explained, “The Voice of America is not an international NBC or CBS. Détente

212

Fulbright, who argued before the Senate in 1972 that the “radios should be given an opportunity

to take their rightful place in the graveyard of cold-war relics.”

Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, the long time head of the Polish desk of RFE, recalled that

Brzezinski’s role was crucial in saving the radio services when they came under attack in the

early 1970s.

Whenever we had problems of surviving I called Brzezinski and he immediately used his

influence. Brzezinski understood that the competition of the Cold War was not just a race of arms

but an ideological conflict and that the main instrument of this ideological conflict was Radio

Free Europe on the American end. He consistently protected us and used all the influence he

could. He was one of the few who played a tremendous role in protecting Radio Free Europe,

against hostile Senators, some ultra-liberal elements, and Henry Kissinger, who considered that

broadcasting to foreign countries over the heads of the government was a manipulation of

détente.

Nowak-Jezioranski also knew that he was fighting a problem of perception rather than

reality. Indeed RFE would never fully recover from the charge that it was responsible for stoking

false hopes to the Hungarian opposition in 1956. Some journalists had even coined the term

“Radio Free Europe Syndrome” to describe the American tendency to encourage rebellion in

has changed what we must do in USIA. Our program managers must be sensitive to U.S. policy

as enunciated by the President and the Secretary of State. That policy is that we do not interfere

in the internal affairs of other countries. We’re not in the business of trying to provoke

revolutions and uprisings.” See “Muted Voice of American,” Time (December 16, 1974), p. 85.

Bernard Gwertzman, “Senate Panel Rebuffs Nixon on Radio Free Europe,” The New York Times

(July 22, 1971). Brzezinski’s views were no doubt reflected in the comments of a RFE staff

member who had become frustrated with Fulbright’s repeated accusations that RFE was “anti-

détente.” “It depends on how you understand détente” argued RFE’s Lucjan Perzanowski. “If

you mean a better relationship between governments while borders remain practically closed,

censorship fully in effect and contacts between people unfree, then Senator Fulbright’s criticism

has some justification. But I understand détente as a long-range process, involving the people at

large. If nothing is done to keep the Western side alive, then this real détente will die. Radio Free

Europe and Radio Liberty are factors in keeping real détente alive.” Henry Kamm, “Listening in

on Radio Free Europe-The Station That Fulbright Wants to Shut Down,” The New York Times

Magazine (March 26, 1972).

Nowak-Jezioranski could, however, take solace in the support he did have—and some

supporters would turn out to be more important than others. In November of 1974 he attended a

talk in West Germany by a Polish Cardinal named Karol Wojtyla in honor of a Nazi war victim.

At a reception afterward, Nowak introduced himself to the future Pope John Paul II who in turn

replied there was hardly a need for an introduction. “I recognize your voice,’ he told Nowak, “I

listen to you every morning as I shave.” Jonathon Kwitny, Man of the Century: The Life and Times of

Pope John Paul II (New York: 1998), p. 246-247.

213

Eastern Europe only to step back at the moment of truth. But such assessments overlooked the

fact that the tone of RFE had changed a great deal since 1956. Much of the changes were due to

the efforts of Brzezinski and Nowak-Jezioranski who in the late 1950s ensured that RFE tailor its

message to emphasize the idea of “evolution” rather than “revolution.”

Indeed, RFE had a vast audience in Poland. Bronislaw Geremek, who would become a

key adviser to Lech Walesa in Poland’s Solidarity movement, argued that RFE did more to tame

the appetite for revolution than to stoke it:

Without Radio Free Europe I couldn’t imagine the evolution of Poland in the ‘70s. I

couldn’t imagine the appearance of a democratic opposition or the underground publications.

When I came to the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 my first impression was that Radio Free Europe is

present here in Poland—you can see the workers having their radio with them and listening to

Radio Free Europe—and it was not only to get information—it was an expression of freedom-- to

have the possibility to listen the RFE in a free way—-the jamming was terrible but we could

always listen to RFE—we were informed. What Jan Nowak-Jezioranski assured was a kind of

political thinking---that was the difference between Poland and other countries in the region. I

think we owe that to Brzezinski’s activity with Jan Nowak-Jezioranski—that we should think in

terms of international strategy—we should take it step by step—we could contain more freedom,

and more freedom was better than no freedom. Sometimes we had the feeling ‘freedom or not’ as

woman cannot be ‘half pregnant’ and a country cannot be ‘half-free.’ But we understood—and I

think that was the result of Radio Free Europe’s activity in Poland—information and analysis.

And behind that was- of course-Brzezinski.

The events of 1980 were still far on the horizon in Eastern Europe. The question of the

1970s remained exactly what it had been in 1956 and 1968. What could be done to change the

situation inside what had implicitly, by word and deed, been accepted by Washington as the

Soviet sphere of influence? Brzezinski’s solution, as it had been since the mid-1960s, was to

encourage a European-wide conference in an effort to settle the outstanding issues of World War

II.

Interview with Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, CNN Cold War Series, Roll 10127 (February 16, 1997).

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (May 13, 2002).

214

This was hardly conventional wisdom. As one scholar has noted Brzezinski represented

“the lone voice in advocating new multilateral frameworks for addressing European security and

attenuating the division of the continent. Two years after the enunciation of the Brezhnev

Doctrine, Brzezinski again urged the creation of some permanent consultative mechanism, a joint

NATO-Warsaw Pact commission or a European security commission, to monitor eventual

security arrangements and perhaps even to initiate others.”

Brzezinski was the “lone voice” largely because his call for multilateral postwar

conference put him in rather unusual company. The Soviet leaders had begun calling for an all-

European conference on security and cooperation as early as 1954 in an attempt to consecrate the

postwar borders and forestall the West German entrance into the NATO alliance. The call for a

European-wide conference became a mantra for Soviet leaders in the late 1960s as a means to

split Western Europe from the United States while impeding further West European unity.

The United States was less willing to enter a conference that would in effect grant

Western acceptance of the Soviet conquest over Eastern Europe and the Baltic states of Latvia,

Estonia and Lithuania. Yet there were always some in the U.S., Brzezinski foremost among them,

who maintained that the Western powers refusal to formally recognize the borders only

strengthened Soviet control over the region. Brzezinski believed a European conference was

essential to open up the region that had been hermetically sealed since the Soviet invasion of

Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Brzezinski found little encouragement from the White House. Indeed Nixon and

Kissinger saw little merit in undertaking a multilateral European framework while the fruits of

détente looked so promising. Brzezinski noted in 1970 that this was short-term thinking. “We

Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges; p. 308.

John J. Maresca, To Helsinki: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 1973-1975

(Durham, NC 1985), pp. 3-7.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Meeting Moscow’s Limited Co-existence,” The New Leader, vol. 51 no. 24

(December 16, 1968), pp. 11-13.

215

should think of it as a process, the purpose of which is to explore and only eventually resolve the

various outstanding legacies of World War II but we will not be able to do so if the West—and

particularly the United States—keeps shrinking away from the challenge on the jejune argument

that we can’t enter a conference unless we know in advance what its outcome will be.”

By 1972, however, the United States’ opposition to what became formally known as the

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) had softened for a number of

important reasons. The Soviets agreed to include both the United States and Canada in the

European conference and agreed to NATO’s demand for parallel talks on the reduction of

conventional military forces (MBFR) in Central Europe. Meanwhile the West had exacted a four-

power agreement on Berlin. As Kissinger aide, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, would note of the CSCE,

“we sold it for the German-Soviet treaty, we sold it for the Berlin agreement, and we sold it again

for the opening of the MBFR.”

Deliberations on the CSCE began in Helsinki on November 22, 1972. Few observers, even

Zbigniew Brzezinski, would predict how instrumental the conference would be in changing the

political dynamics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Though history would remember

the CSCE for its final “Basket III” declaration on human rights, the United States initially sough

to downplay the issue that could raise problems with Moscow. Indeed Kissinger was known to

view lofty issues such as human rights as a political nuisance in the balance of power game he

had constructed with Moscow. In less formal terms, Kissinger, would dismiss the CSCE process

as a conference about “a bunch of crappy issues.”

In reality the issue of human rights would have far more support from the Western

European delegations. The United States representation, reflecting the views of Kissinger,

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Détente in the ‘70s,” The New Republic (January 3, 1970), p. 18.

Quoted in “A Star-Studded Summit Spectacular,” Time (August 4, 1975), p. 22.

For an early look at the CSCE’s impact on Eastern Europe see Adam Bromke, “The CSCE and

Eastern Europe,” The World Today vol. 29 no. 5. (May 1973), pp. 202-203.

Flora Lewis, “European Parley: End Is in Sight,” The New York Times (July 1, 1975).

216

continuously stressed the need for greater “realism” and sought to “reign in” the Western

Europeans from raising the delicate issue of human rights. At the same time the Soviet Union

used the early deliberations to stress the sections pertaining to “the inviolability of frontiers” and

the “non-intervention in internal affairs.”

There was still little progress on considerations of human rights when the first round of

CSCE talks ended in Geneva early December 1973. By then the West Europeans expressed

frustration about the lack of support from the United States in advocating the so-called “Basket

III” human rights concerns. The head of the U.S. delegation would never personally participate in

the Basket III negotiations for fear of confronting the Soviets on such a sensitive issue. “We were

the big hitter on the NATO team, but we couldn’t come to the plate,” recalled one frustrated U.S.

diplomat involved in the negotiations.

Nevertheless the Soviet delegation’s efforts to paper over the issue of human rights were

impeded by a number of widely publicized incidents. In August of 1973, the noted Soviet

dissident Andrei Sakharov commemorated the fifth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of

Czechoslovakia with an emotional warning against over-selling the virtues of détente. Sakharov,

sounding much like Brzezinski, noted:

Détente without democratization [in the Soviet Union], détente in which the West in

effect accepts the Soviet rules of the game, would be dangerous, it would not really solve any of

the world’s problems and would simply mean capitulating in the face of real or exaggerated

Soviet power. It would mean trading with the Soviet Union, buying its gas and oil, while

ignoring other aspects. I think such a development would be dangerous because it would

contaminate the whole world with the anti-democratic peculiarities of Soviet society, it would

enable the Soviet Union to bypass problems it cannot resolve on its own and to concentrate on

accumulating still further strength. As a result, the world would become helpless before this

uncontrollable bureaucratic machine. I think that if détente were to proceed totally without

This included a sustained attack from Moscow’s delegation on Radio Liberty and Radio Free

Europe on the claim that they amounted to interference in the internal affairs of the communist

states. The Soviets urged the CSCE to adopt language banning these stations and the

“misinformation” they were spreading throughout the Soviet bloc. The Soviet attack was pointed

particularly at West Germany, from where RFE transmitted its broadcasts. Maresca, p. 52.

Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of

Communism (Princeton, 2001), p. 75.

217

qualifications, on Soviet terms, it would pose a serious threat to the world as a whole. It would

mean cultivating a closed country where anything that happens may be shielded from outside

eyes, a country wearing a mask that hides it true face.

In late 1973 the Soviet Union’s other most prominent dissident entered the news when

Soviet authorities arrested Alexander Solzhenitzyn after a copy of The Gulag Archipelago, an

intense three-volume expose of the horrors of Soviet labor camps, was smuggled out of the Soviet

Union and published in the West.

In February of 1974 the Soviet leadership solved its problem

by expelling Solzhenitzyn from the Soviet Union. The tempestuous Russian would eventually

settle in the small town of Vermont where he would become a vocal critic of the Nixon-Kissinger

version of détente.

At the same time Nixon and Kissinger continued to view the domestic orientation of the

Soviet Union as off limits. At a NATO meeting in June 1974, Kissinger urged the West Europeans

to be more flexible on pressing issues of human rights at the CSCE, noting that the Soviet system

had survived for fifty years and “would not be changed if Western newspapers were put on sale

in a few kiosks in Moscow.”

President Nixon’s public pronouncements on the human rights issue took a similar line.

Nixon, in a prominent speech in June 1974, denounced “eloquent speeches” and “appeals” from

Hedrick Smith, The Russians, p. 594.

Alexander Solzhenitzyn, The Gulag Archipelago (New York, 1974). According to Solzenitsyn’s

biographer the decision-making process leading to the writer’s exile sheds light on how the

Soviet politburo operated at the time. “At a two-hour meeting of the Politburo on 7 January,

Brezhnev described The Gulag Archipelago, which he admitted no one had yet read, as a

‘contemptuous anti-Soviet lampoon.’ The author had encroached on everything they held sacred,

so they had every right to imprison him. Podgorny and Kosygin spoke in favor of a trial and an

internal sentence, the latter mentioning Verkhoyansk as a suitable place, since it would be too

cold for foreign reporters to go there. We shouldn’t be afraid of severe measures, Kosygin went

on; after all, “Let’s take England: hundreds of people are done away with there.” Andropov: ‘I

think Solzhenitsyn should be deported without his consent. At one time Trotsky was expelled

and nobody asked for his consent.’ Brezhnev, after saying the author had already served a

sentence for ‘gross violations of Soviet law’(!) instructed the KGB and Prosecutor’s Office to

develop a procedure to bring him to trial.” D.M. Thomas, Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His

Life (New York, 1998), p. 420.

Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, p. 78.

218

those urging the United States to utilize its influence on behalf of human rights in other countries,

including the Soviet Union. “We would not welcome the intervention of other countries in our

domestic affairs and we cannot expect them to be cooperative when we seek to intervene directly

in theirs.”

Brzezinski, commenting midway through the CSCE deliberations, was among the many

political observers who thought Nixon and Kissinger were going to unnecessary lengths to

mollify Moscow on issues of human rights;

While the Soviet side has continued to proclaim domestically that the ideological conflict

must go on unabated and that therefore severe restrictions of basic human rights are justified, the

U.S. side has been relatively inactive at the East-West European Conference now in progress,

where the West Europeans have been assertively demanding freer East-West contacts, and it has

been quietly reducing the effectiveness of both Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which for

less than 15 cents per head per year have become the most significant U.S. levers for freer

communications--and thus for social change--in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Nixon’s apparent disregard for Eastern Europe was seen when the site of Yalta was

selected for his last summit with Brezhnev. Nixon, of all people, knew the symbolic power of

Yalta. He was among the most vocal of the Republican voices making political capital by

charging that Franklin Roosevelt had betrayed Eastern Europe at Yalta in the closing months of

The New York Times (June 6, 1974), p. 16.

Even Hans Morganthau, long recognized as the most prominent academic advocate of

“realism,” began to question the validity of détente. Writing in 1973 Morganthau noted, “as long

as the Soviet Union remains outside such a system, at best indifferent and at worst hostile to it,

the rest of the world has a vital interest in the character of the Soviet government and of its

domestic policies. If the Kremlin abated its present totalitarian practices by allowing its people a

modicum of freedom of expression and movement, it would be taking the first step toward

joining and in a sense re-creating a system that would itself be a manifestation of détente and

provide the moral framework for the balance of power. Thus our interest in the totalitarian

excesses of the Soviet government is not unwarranted meddling in the affairs of another

sovereign nation in a misguided spirit of liberal reform. Nor does it solely express a humanitarian

concern or serve to placate public opinion at home. Foremost, it is at the service of that basic

interest which the Untied States and the Soviet Union have in common: survival in the nuclear

age through a viable balance of power and genuine détente. Hans J. Morgenthau, “Missing: A

Moral Consensus-The Danger of Détente,” The New Leader (October 1, 1973), pp. 5-7.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Deceptive Structure of Peace,” Foreign Policy vol. 14, (Spring 1974),

p. 42.

219

World War II.

Now under increasing pressure from the Watergate scandal, Nixon used the

summit to put his personal stamp on détente by stressing the importance of his special

relationship with Brezhnev. Détente had all been possible, Nixon insisted in a speech (perhaps

directed as much at his domestic pursuers as to his Soviet hosts) “because of a personal

relationship that was established between the General Secretary and the President of the United

States….because of our personal relationship, there is no question about our will to keep these

agreements and to make more.”

Reporters at the time took note that Nixon had a choice regarding the site of the summit,

specifically Sochi on the east coast of the Black Sea, or Pitsunda, east of Sochi. Nixon staffers

explained rather defensively that the Yalta site was more “practical” considering the large White

House staff and hundreds of news reporters that were accompanying the United States president.

It was also suggested that Nixon did not want to be “rude” since Brezhnev had voiced his

preference for the Yalta site to show off his version of the Nixon compound he had visited the

year before at San Clemente. Nixon officials remained sensitive to the issue of “Yalta.” In

apparent deference to such sensitivities, Soviet newsmen were instructed by Soviet authorities

not to use the term “Yalta” in their stories. A plan to have the mayor of Yalta give a press briefing

to the visiting American press was also canceled to conform to Nixon’s efforts to have history

record the summit as “Oreanda” rather than “Yalta.” See Murrey Marder “An Irony of Détente

Takes Nixon to Yalta,” The Washington Post (July 1, 1974). Also William Safire, “Ghosts of Yalta,”

The New York Times (July 1, 1974).

“Reunion at the Summit,” Newsweek (July 8, 1974), p. 18. Nixon would further show his

appreciation by presenting Brezhnev with a silver Chevrolet Monte Carlo to go with the Cadillac

and the Lincoln Continental he had bestowed on the Soviet leader at previous summits. There

was indeed something of an “Animal Farm” effect that had dramatically afflicted the communist

leaderships by the 1970s. The most familiar term applied to the ruling elite of a communist party

state was the “new class” which was the title of a book authored by Milovan Djilas in 1955. Djilas,

a former communist vice-president of Yugoslavia, argued that communist party states were ruled

by a “new class” of party bureaucrats that had secured all power to themselves. Communism,

rather than destroying the class system, had merely substituted a new elite whose power was

defined not by direct ownership of the means of production, as it was under capitalism, but by its

control of and access to special privileges that emanated from its monopoly of power. Djilas’

description of the lifestyle of the new party elite, the access to special stores, cars, vacation villas,

was in sharp contrast to the modest life of the workers in whose name they claimed to rule.

Milovan Djilas, The New Class (New York, 1967). Brezhnev used several luxurious dachas,

including a “hunting lodge” near Moscow and a summer place on the Black Sea. Kissinger

recalled that at one point Brezhnev was showing off his rather expansive hunting lodge (which

included a movie theatre) and asking his American guests to estimate how much it would cost in

the United States. When Kissinger estimated $400,000 Brezhnev’s face grew distraught. Aide

Helmut Sonnenfeldt quickly came to rescue by suggesting it was worth closer to $2 million. The

leader of the world’s workers beamed with pride. “The Cautious Bully,” Newsweek (November

22, 1982), p. 48.

220

Despite such cordiality, there were some awkward moments at the summit.

The major

U.S. television networks had planned to feature stories on Soviet dissidents, including a report by

ABC on Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, who had marked Nixon’s arrival in Moscow with a

hunger strike in protest of the Soviet treatment of political prisoners. The report had scarcely

begun when the production went blank on the word “Sakharov.” Soviet officials later

apologized, insisting, rather implausibly, that the blackout was a spontaneous gesture of

“outrage” by their “television engineers.”

The Soviets would also use the Yalta summit to protest the continued West European

focus on human rights then occurring at the CSCE negotiations. Kissinger, after assuring the

Soviet leadership, would soon approve a preliminary CSCE summit communiqué that

significantly downplayed the human rights provisions being pushed by the West European

delegations. The draft was seen as rather friendly to Soviet interests. As one British diplomat

Perhaps the most significant event at the Yalta summit was Brezhnev’s attempt to codify a

U.S.-Soviet alliance against China. Kissinger was shocked that Nixon actually considered the

offer from the Soviets which would in effect formalize a de facto U.S.-Soviet condominium

arrangement against China. Kissinger would later note that Brezhnev was obsessed with

isolating China and noted the possibility that the entire Soviet policy of détente might have been

rooted in an attempt to give the Soviets a free hand to attack China. Kissinger referred to the

incident in his memoirs: “A year earlier I would not have given the exchange a second thought. I

would have assumed that Nixon was engaged in one of his complex maneuvers to gain time and

was using the prospect of the nonaggression treaty as an inducement for Brezhnev to concede on

more immediate matters. Based on the unhappy experience with the Agreement on the

Prevention of Nuclear War, I would probably have judged the strategy too risky, but I would

have been confident that I could convince Nixon that it was too dangerous to flirt thus with

condominium: It had the clear implication that the United States was giving the Soviet Union a

free hand to attack China. Now as I watched the tormented, physically suffering President

discipline every ounce of his strength to get through the week, I was not so sure that Nixon

would be able to handle the forces he was unleashing. He seemed to me to be risking either our

Soviet or our Chinese anchor or both for a marginal tactical success. I told (Brent) Scowcroft that I

would not carry out this order and I would resign if Nixon insisted on it. Nixon never returned to

the subject and the Soviets never raised it again because I told Dobrynin that it was not a useful

line to pursue.” Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, (Boston: 1982), pp. 1,173-1,174.

“A Summit that Never Peaked,” Newsweek (July 15, 1974), p. 32.

221

noted after viewing Kissinger’s advance copy, “At first glance the section on the CSCE reads like

a Soviet draft.”

As mentioned, this would be Nixon’s last summit. In August 1974 the “smoking gun’

appeared which revealed that Nixon had deceived the American public about his direct role in

the Watergate scandal. Nixon, faced with almost certain impeachment by the House and

conviction in the Senate, chose to resign from office.

President Gerald Ford’s reassuring personal style would serve the nation well in the

aftermath of such a polarizing crisis.

Yet the new chief executive knew little about foreign affairs.

Few were thus surprised when he announced that Henry Kissinger would stay on board as his

primary foreign policy adviser.

Yet Ford created an immediate controversy within his own party when he chose Nelson

Rockefeller, Kissinger’s long-time patron and personification of the liberal wing of the GOP, as

his Vice President. It was, by most accounts, a reasonable choice considering Rockefeller’s long

executive experience as governor of New York. Yet the decision would enrage the right-wing of

the GOP and led many conservatives to quietly shift their allegiances to Ronald Reagan who

would challenge Ford for the GOP nomination in 1976.

By 1974 the shine was also finally coming off détente. Opposition to détente especially

characterized the increasingly disenchanted right wing of the Republican party, which had never

warmed to the rationale of détente in the first place. Indeed Soviet assertiveness around the

world seemed to contradict Kissinger’s claim that détente was simply another form of

“containment.”

Daniel, The Helsinki Effect, p. 79.

Richard Viguerie, a conservative activist would later point to this event as the singular trigger

of the “Reagan Revolution” within the Republican Party. Jules Witcover would note the irony

that many right-wingers in the GOP had secretly backed Rockefeller over George Bush who was

thought to be Ford’s other finalist for the vice-presidential slot. “Everyone knowledgeable in

Republican politics considered Bush incompetent to be President. One of the best-kept secrets

among conservatives was the way many of them lined up behind Rockefeller as the better

alternative, for the sake of the country.” Jules Witcover, Marathon, p. 534.

222

In April of 1975, the North Vietnamese mounted a full-scale offensive against the South.

U.S. television viewers watched the surreal scene as South Vietnamese officials, together with the

American embassy staff, desperately attempted to flee the advancing communist forces. North

Vietnamese forces quickly occupied the capital, renamed it Ho Chi Minh City, and began the

unification of Vietnam under the harsh rule of Hanoi. The final humiliation in Vietnam was

aggravated by more cocksure Soviet boasts that the economic downturn in the West represented

a general “crisis of capitalism” that opened up chances for communist gains, not only in

fomenting “national liberation” struggles in developing world, but also in Portugal, Spain, Italy,

and France.

In hindsight, 1975 would mark the nadir of America’s postwar prestige. Nevertheless

Brzezinski was determined to keep the apparently dead issue of “peaceful engagement” toward

Eastern Europe alive in the public debate. In 1975 Charles Gati, former Brzezinski assistant and

scholar on Eastern European affairs, contributed a controversial article to Foreign Policy magazine

arguing that Eastern Europe had been eclipsed by the policies of détente with Moscow.

“I got a lot of reaction to that piece,” recalled Gati, “including from the Nixon-Kissinger

crowd. They didn’t like it. I wrote it first when I was Columbia, not knowing who I was writing it

for and I showed it to Zbig who was at that time, with Samuel Huntington, one of the two editors

at Foreign Policy magazine. Zbig said we would publish it. He loved it, I think because that was

the sort of thing he would’ve written. But the managing editor was Dick Holbrooke who told me

‘It’s very well written but I would never publish it. I just disagree with you so much. But since

Zbig says, he is the editor, we’re going to run it.’”

Of particular sensitivity was Gati’s critique of the soft line being taken by the U.S.

delegation at the CSCE:

There was something pathetic about American diplomats who, at such international

forums as the European Security Conference, feel obliged to tell their Western European

Malcolm Browne, “Soviet Sees Gains in Woes of West,” The New York Times (July 13, 1975).

Interview, Washington, DC (September 13, 2001).

223

colleagues to go easy on the Russians on this or similar issues. Détente need not suffer if we were

to compete peacefully for political influence in the Soviet sphere; it is, after all, as legitimate as is

the right of the Soviet Union to compete with us peacefully in our sphere. For that matter, détente

need not suffer a mortal blow if we were to counter the Russian’s bold assertions about our

imperial ventures by pointing out quietly but publicly what everyone knows but has been afraid

to say: that, with the passing of the Portuguese empire, the Soviet Union is the only old-fashioned

colonial power left in the world today.

By this time criticism was also mounting on Kissinger’s apparent disregard for human

rights. The most tangible effort was seen in the Jackson-Vanik Trade bill linked the passage of

Most Favored Trade (MFN) status for the Soviet Union to its policies of Jewish emigration.

Kissinger saw this insertion of domestic politics as a dire threat to the entire edifice of his version

of détente with the Soviet Union. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in

September of 1974, Kissinger remained adamant that the United States must not make domestic

considerations an element of détente. “The United States must realize its limited ability to change

conditions in the East and to combine détente with increasing pressure on the Soviets would be

disastrous.”

Despite Kissinger’s objections the tenor of the CSCE process began to change in the

spring of 1975. The Soviets were calling to conclude the process by summer. The Twenty-Fifth

Party Congress had been scheduled for the spring of 1976, and a successful conclusion to the

Helsinki process was essential to demonstrate the personal success of the Brezhnev in pursuing

the policy of détente. The Soviet Union also planned to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary

of World War II to portray that war as a colossal Soviet victory and to reestablish Soviet

Charles Gati, “The Forgotten Region,” Foreign Policy no. 19 (Summer 1975), p. ?

Though Brzezinski clearly preferred the stick to the carrot regarding trade with the Soviet

Union, he took the middle ground on Jackson-Vanik with the view that U.S.-USSR trade

arrangements were inherently beneficial to the Soviet Union since its centralized economy was

controlled by the state. America's relatively free market system made it more difficult to infuse a

sense of national purpose into business transactions. Long wary of incentive free trade with

Moscow, Brzezinski suggested that Congress might consider a compromise solution “of granting

Moscow MFN for a two-year trial period which would automatically terminate at the end of that

time and its renewal would require affirmative legislative action to permit Congress a fresh

determination based on observation of Soviet behavior during the interim.” Zbigniew Brzezinski,

"The Economics of Detente-A U.S. Portfolio in the USSR?," The New Leader (August 5, 1974), p. 7.

224

leadership of the European communist movement by convening a conference of European

communist parties.

Kissinger, in an attempt to deflect charges that he was callous to the plight of Soviet

dissidents, took a firmer line in the negotiations. Despite his apparent disregard for the

importance of the CSCE process, Kissinger was instrumental in successfully concluding the CSCE

process in the spring of 1975. He made it clear to Gromyko that the Soviet Union would have to

grant further concessions on human rights if the West was to accept the final draft. Kissinger’s

newfound firmness, combined with Moscow’s clear desire to conclude the conference were

enough to conclude the process. In May of 1975 Kissinger met with Foreign Minister Gromyko in

Vienna where the Soviets agreed to a trade-off in compromises over Baskets One and Three.

Some high-level Soviet officials expressed concerns that the Basket Three sections would

set a dangerous precedent. Yet Brezhnev and Gromyko prevailed with the argument that they

could sign the accord and simply ignore the clauses they objected to. “We are masters in our own

house,” said Brezhnev rather bluntly, “and we shall decide what we implement and what we

ignore.”

It was, no doubt, a reasonable argument so long as Kissinger was directing the foreign

policy of the United States.

Maresca, p. 55.

“A Star-Studded Summit Spectacular,” Time (August 4, 1975), p. 21. The Helsinki declaration

took almost two years to produce. The completed document, known as the “Final Act” contained

five parts. These included a preamble stating the conference’s general goals (of peace, security,

justice and cooperation) and four major sections that would become famously known as

“baskets.” The area of greatest Soviet interest was Basket One, which covered the inviolability of

frontiers, peaceful settlement of international disputes, non-intervention in internal affairs, the

right of self-determination of peoples and other articles of cooperation and good faith. Basket

Two, which was of particular interest to the Eastern bloc and some smaller Western European

nations, covers agreements regarding economic, scientific and environmental cooperation. Basket

Three was the major focus of Brzezinski, for it dealt with issues long implicit in the process of

peaceful engagement. These included increased human contacts between East and West,

including the flow of information, the right of travel, improved working conditions for journalists

and cooperation in matters of culture and education. The Fourth, basket involved follow-up

arrangements—this meant the signature nations would meet in 1977 to see how the agreements

were being observed.

225

Indeed, the Soviet concessions on Basket III did seem rather too good to be true to some

on the U.S. delegation. Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, at the time the beleaguered head of Radio Free

Europe, was among those who argued that the issue was resolved more in spite of Kissinger than

because of him. “I remember I talked to George Vest—from the State Department—he was under

Kissinger at the delegation—and he said that they already realized the advantage would be in

Basket III—and he said we, against Kissinger, made it a condition that the Soviets accept Basket

III or we will not sign it—and Russia accepted it believing that it would be meaningless.”

Indeed as soon as the Helsinki “Final Act” was announced in June of 1975 the Soviet

Union began an intense public relations campaign to emphasize the section of the document that

endorsed the postwar frontiers in Europe. This would enrage anti-détente forces in the United

States who immediately charged that Helsinki was nothing more than another Yalta.

It was significant then that Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had devoted an entire career to

undoing the results of Yalta, was one of the few public supporters of the Helsinki Final Act.

Indeed, in May of 1975 Brzezinski gave a hopeful speech on the future of Eastern Europe.

“History teaches us,” Brzezinski declared rather presciently, “ that the worst possible way of

predicting the future is viewing it as a continuation of the present. History is full of dramatic

gaps and sudden changes.”

Brzezinski would indeed have reasons to be optimistic about the Helsinki Accords. The

Final Act, he believed, had codified two of the most essential aspects of his “peaceful

Interview, Annandale, Virginia (August 16, 1999).

Brzezinski concluded that a relatively independent Poland was an attainable goal and implied

that the United States could play a key role in facilitating its realization. In outlining the possible

future of Poland Brzezinski viewed a return to the pre-1939 independence as unlikely “except in

the case of complete Soviet collapse.” He also ruled out the possible absorption of Poland by the

Soviet Union, except in the case of a “major weakening of the West and particularly, by American

disengagement from Europe." Brzezinski stressed the likelihood of a relative independence that

could result from evolutionary processes in Russia and a "Western policy which would

encourage closer relations between Eastern and West Europe without precipitating

counterveiling Soviet responses." Piotor Wandycz, The United States and Poland (Cambridge, MA,

1980), p. 409. See also The Editors of Kultura, “The Meaning of Brzezinski,” The National Review

(May 27, 1977), pp. ?

226

engagement” program he had first outlined in the late 1950s. First, the Helsinki Accords finally

acknowledged the long disputed territorial status quo in Europe. This, as Brzezinski often

argued, was necessary to debunk the Soviet claim that it was Eastern Europe’s only protection

against the threat of West German revanchism. More importantly, Brzezinski argued that the

Helsinki Accords legitimized Western influence in the domestic affairs of the Soviet Union and

Eastern European states.

Brzezinski at this time was often demonized within his own Democratic Party as a

reflexive Cold Warrior. Yet Brzezinski’s expertise on the nuances of Eastern Europe and his long-

term strategy toward the region clearly led him to view Helsinki in a much more positive light

than did the more ideologically rigid hard right of the Republican Party which in years hence

would so often be credited with single-handedly defeating the Soviet empire. Paul Henze, who

directed Radio Free Europe under Brzezinski in the Carter Administration, believed Brzezinski’s

expertise on the nuances of Eastern Europe was behind his lonely support for the Helsinki

Accords when so many hardliners in the West viewed it as a capitulation to the Soviet Union:

This was one of the things that enormously appealed to Brzezinski about Radio Free

Europe from the beginning. That is you get into the system and you capitalize on things that the

system says it stands for but obviously doesn’t—that are fraudulent. In agreeing to the whole

Helsinki system the Soviet Union obviously was taking a risk on being able to continue to distort

and misrepresent it—and Brzezinski seized on that very rapidly—and the concept of human

rights Brzezinski saw as the kind of concept which no one could really object to—but which

could be utilized—exploited--to the advantage of spreading freedom not only in Eastern Europe

but in other places as well.

As Brzezinski would later note, “The fundamental difference between Yalta and Helsinki was

that Helsinki focused on the tangible and the achievable; Yalta was rhetorically on the high

ground but in effect it was a testimony to Western weakness and shallowness. Roosevelt, for

example, began his negotiations regarding the future of Poland by telling Stalin that he cared

neither for existing Polish frontiers nor for, in effect, an independent Polish government. Hardly

the best way to obtain a satisfactory bargain when dealing with what in any case was a ruthless

and brutal dictator. Roosevelt did not succeed in ingratiating himself with Stalin; he simply

earned Stalin’s quiet contempt.” See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “On Anniversaries in 1985,” Problems

of Communism (March-April 1985), p. 88.

Interview, Washington, DC (July 17, 1999).

227

Few agreed with Brzezinski’s initial interpretation of Helsinki. In late June Alexander

Solzhenitzyn was invited to address a gala Washington dinner, hosted by the AFL-CIO, in his

honor. Kissinger advised President Ford to avoid the dinner since Solzhenitzyn’s speech was

likely to include his familiar criticisms of détente.

Ford, heeding Kissinger’s advice, stayed away

from the dinner.

100

Ford’s apparent snub of Solzhenitzyn would provide political red meat for Ronald

Reagan’s right-wing challenge to Ford in the 1976 election.

101

Two conservative Senators, Jesse

Helms of North Carolina, and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, had written Ford in advance,

asking that he formally receive the Russian novelist. (The arch-conservative Helms met with

Solzhenitzyn privately--he was not really considered a “friend of labor” and was not on the guest

list of the AFL-CIO dinner). Upon hearing Ford’s decision not to attend the dinner Helms

stormed on the Senate floor, “I suggest that this is a sad day for our country, if the United States

of America must tremble in cowering timidity for fear of offending Communists unless the

President refuses to see a dedicated exponent of freedom.”

102

100

As Kissinger had surmised, Solzenitsyn’s speech was a pointed attack on détente.

Solzhenitzyn, in an emotive speech dramatized with wild gestulations, ridiculed the West for

assisting the Soviet Union by sending it food and modern technology. He argued that for détente

to be genuine it must be designed not only to prevent war, but also to prohibit “violence against

fellow countrymen.” Above all, Solzhenitzyn demanded that détente should “not be based on

smiles or verbal concessions” but on firm foundations in which the Soviet Union would be

‘controlled’ by public opinion, a free press, or a legitimate legislature. Bernard Gwertzman,

“Détente Scored By Solzhenitsyn,” The New York Times (July 1, 1975).

101

Ford’s advisers would indeed have trouble explaining why Ford had refused to meet with

the Nobel Prize winning author. Their explanations only made the situation worse. After initially

raising questions about Solzhenitzyn’s “mental stability” White House aides suggested that

Solzhenitsyn was attempting to promote the sale of his books and that the President Ford should

not be party to such “commercial promotions.” They then claimed that President Ford did not

like meetings “empty of substance”—a remark that sounded hollow when reporters noted that

Ford had recently met with a “cotton queen” and managed to find time to confer with Pele, the

Brazilian soccer star who had recently signed to play with the New York Cosmos of the new

North American soccer league. Phillip Shabecoff, “Ford Avoided Visit By Solzhenitsyn,” The New

York Times (July 3, 1975).

102

“What Price Détente,” Newsweek (July 28, 1975), p. 15. Kissinger later defended his views on

the visit at a speech in Minneapolis, again noting that there was “no alternative” to détente. “If I

understand the message of Solzenitsyn, it is not only that détente is a threat, but that the United

228

Ford, wary of the looming thunder from the right, quickly announced that he would be

“pleased” to meet with Solzhenitzyn. But the Russian author would only create even more

problems for Ford with his emotional declaration that the Helsinki Accords amounted to the

“enslavement” of Eastern Europe.

In a telephone conversation from the home of Aleksandra Tolstoy, the only surviving

daughter of Leo Tolstoy, Solzhenitzyn took aim at the Helsinki Final Act that Ford was about to

sign. “Since I left Washington for the second time,” remarked Solzhenitzyn, “there have been

many reports in the press concerning the White House change of intention and now the desire to

see me. Among the somewhat contradictory explanations as to why this meeting did not take

place earlier, it was stated that President Ford would prefer only meetings that were ‘substantive’

rather than ‘symbolic.’ I entirely share this view. Nobody needs symbolic meetings. The

President will shortly be leaving for Europe to sign the betrayal of Eastern Europe, to

acknowledge officially its slavery forever. Had I the hope of dissuading him from signing this

treaty I myself would seek such a meeting. However, there is not such hope. If the President

considers the 30-year raging of worldwide totalitarianism as an example of an ‘era of peace’ what

will the basis be for a conversation?”

103

There were the magic words—the “betrayal of Eastern Europe.” The remarks set off a

political firestorm in Washington. Solzhenitzyn’s direct attack on the Helsinki Accords revived

the controversy surrounding the original Yalta agreement—more hostile critics considered it

another Munich. Critics from the Republican right stepped up their often over-stated arguments

that Ford and Kissinger had simply handed the Soviets their thirty-year ambition of Western

acquiescence to Soviet domination of Eastern Europe while the West received only vague

States should pursue and aggressive policy to overthrow the Soviet Union. Now I believe that

Solzhenitsyn is a man whose suffering entitles him to be heard and who has stood with great

anguish for his views. But I do believe that if his views became the national policy of the United

States, we would be in a period—we would be confronting a considerable threat of military

conflict.” “Kissinger Sees Perils in Solzhenitzyn’s Views,” The New York Times (July 17, 1975).

103

Bernard Gwertzman, “Solzhenitsyn Says Ford Joins in Eastern Europe’s ‘Betrayal’,” The New

York Times (June 22, 1975).

229

assurances with respect human rights—provisions, it was argued, that were already included in

their constitutions. The Democratic presidential candidates—including two of Jimmy Carter’s

main rivals—sought to make political capital out of the affair and the souring of détente. Senator

Henry Jackson, long the most vocal critic of détente among Democratic politicians, seized the

opportunity to denounce the Helsinki Accords and meet with Solzhenitzyn—bestowing the

Russian author with a very public Russian style bear hug. Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, also

critical of détente, publicly urged Ford to cancel his trip to Helsinki because of Soviet financial

support for the Portuguese Communists.

104

Solzenitzyn’s remarks set off a barrage of anti-Helsinki sentiments. The New York Times

and The Washington Post, both known generally to be pro-detente, argued respectively that the

CSCE “should not have happened” and that the summit was “unnecessary.”

105

The widely

respected New York Times columnist James Reston, long the voice of the U.S. foreign policy

establishment, summed up the objections to Ford’s signing of the Helsinki Final Act in a column

bluntly titled “Is Ford Really Serious?” “President Ford,” noted Reston, “ has gone along with

this one-sided game apparently in the belief that if he agrees that the frontiers of Eastern Europe

are ‘inviolable’ the Soviet Union will agree that human rights and internal affairs are also

104

“What Price Détente,” Newsweek (July 28, 1975), p. 15.

105

Ford, never known for his silver tongue, did his best to assuage his critics, only to be again

undercut by Kissinger’s apparent deference to Soviet sensitivities. The day before Ford’s

scheduled departure to Helsinki he was to meet with American ethnic leaders in an attempt to

ease their concerns. Ford’s speech (which were cleared in advance by Kissinger’s assistant Brent

Scowcroft) originally was to proclaim “the United States has never recognized the Soviet

incorporation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and is not going to do so in Helsinki.” It was a

rather standard reiteration of longstanding U.S. policy. Yet Kissinger, viewing it as a provocative

slap at the Soviets, launched a tirade at Scowcroft and other speechwriters in the hallway just

outside the Oval Office. “You will pay for this!” he was heard to say. “I tell you, heads will roll!”

Though the offending sentence was removed from Ford’s departure remarks at Andrew’s Air

Force Base, it was included in the text given to reporters. This would lead to still more media

stories suggesting that Kissinger was manipulating his gullible but well-meaning boss into still

another one-sided deal favoring Moscow. Issacson, Kissinger, p. 661. For Kissinger reflections on

the Helsinki process some years later see Kissinger, Years of Renewal, (New York, 1999), p. 646.

230

inviolable. But the compromise, which should probably have been arranged before Helsinki, now

has to be tested after Brezhnev had gotten the border agreements he wanted most.”

106

“The Final Act” was signed at Helsinki on August 1, 1975, the largest European summit

since the 1815 Congress of Vienna (a point that didn’t help Kissinger’s cause with his more

historically minded critics). The 35 representatives sat shoulder to shoulder at a row of tables

under the television lights of Finlandia House. For a silent seventeen minutes each man in turn

put his signature to a separate page of the 2-inch think, green-leather bound document.

107

The Helsinki Final Act was not a binding treaty and was thus largely dependent on how

it was interpreted by the various signatories. In his speech at Helsinki the visibly ailing Leonid

Brezhnev gave a perfunctory mention to the provisions for “exchanges between individuals” and

that the Soviet Union would “translate into life” the Helsinki agreement. The Soviet leader, who

had been slurring some of his speech, raised his voice and sharply enunciated his words when he

added that the “main conclusion” of the conference was that no one should try to dictate to

others how “they ought to manage their internal affairs.”

108

Ford’s speech at Helsinki would prophetically note, “History will judge this conference

not by what we say here today, but what we do tomorrow, not by the promises we make, but by

the promises we keep.”

109

Indeed both Ford and Kissinger would in later years protest the fact

that the administration’s critics misunderstood Helsinki. This claim undoubtedly has some truth

to it. Yet for the remainder of their term in office Ford and Kissinger would say virtually nothing

about Helsinki or the human rights aspects that Brzezinski saw as an opportunity to put the

106

The Wall Street Journal wrote a hard-hitting anti-Helsinki editorial simply entitled “Jerry Don’t

Go.” "Jerry Don't Go," The Wall Street Journal (July 28, 1975). James Reston, “Is Ford Really

Serious?,” The New York Times (August 3, 1975).

107

“Ford’s Big Gamble on Détente,” Newsweek (August 4, 1975), p. 16

108

James F. Clarity, “Soviet Wary of the Internal Effects of Détente Abroad,” The New York Times

(August 2, 1975).

109

“Summit at Helsinki,” Newsweek (August 11, 1975), p. 16.

231

Soviet Union on defensive.

110

Indeed the term “Basket III” would gain currency in the United

States only when prominent dissidents took it as a rallying call—and when Brzezinski began to

advise Jimmy Carter to focus on it in 1976 presidential campaign.

111

Indeed the Soviets seemed to win the early spinning wars. The day after the Helsinki

summit, the Soviet Communist daily Pravda was devoted to the CSCE, including the full text of

the Final Act, banner headlines, and photos of Brezhnev at the signing ceremony. The Soviet

Politburo then announced triumphantly, “The all-European conference is the culmination of

everything positive that has been done thus far on our continent to bring about the changeover

from ‘cold war’ to détente and the genuine implementation of the principles of peaceful

coexistence.”

112

The nascent opposition groups, faced with such triumphant interpretations by their

official media, had little choice but to interpret Helsinki as another Yalta. But as word spread

about the actual content of the Helsinki Final Act (partly through Western radio broadcasts such

as the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), opposition groups throughout Eastern

110

See “A Year After Helsinki: Despite Moscow’s Promises, No Greater Freedom for East

Europe,” U.S. News and World Report (August 9, 1976).

111

See Elizabeth Drew, “A Reporter at Large: Human Rights,” The New Yorker (July 18, 1977), p.

37.

112

Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol. 27 no. 31 (August 27, 1975): 14-15. The hard line regime

in Czechoslovakia was even effusive in its commentary on the CSCE—portraying the Final Act as

not only as a way to expand economic contacts with the West but also its acceptance as a

“normal” European state, which it had been denied since 1968. The Czech party daily Rude Pravo

provided extensive coverage of the Helsinki summit and Gustav Husak’s speech at the ceremony

was widely hyped by the official media. A week after the summit, the Czech government

announced that it would comply with all provisions of the Helsinki Act. This confidence, it

appeared, reached the point where the Czech government issued special postage stamps in honor

of the CSCE. Vladmir V. Kusin, From Dubeck to Charter 77: A Study in “Normalization” in

Czechoslovakia (New York, 1978), p. 295. Nevertheless the Warsaw Pact nations remained sensitive

to the longer-term effects of the Final Act. In Czechoslovakia, thousands of copies of the Helsinki

Final Act were published, but never distributed. In Poland Moscow ordered the five hundred

copies of the Final Act published by the government, together with the Gierek’s summit speech,

be removed from circulation. They would henceforth be kept in storage except for propaganda

use abroad. Romuald Spasowski, The Liberation of One (New York, 1986), pp. 548-49.

232

Europe and the Soviet Union began to view Helsinki as an opportunity to challenge the

repressive regimes under which they lived.

In Poland the opposition was buoyed by Zbigniew Brzezinski’s prominent defense of the

Final Act. Bronilsaw Geremek recalled those days immediately after the signing the Helsinki

Final Act:

To say very frankly we had some doubts about the Helsinki process. It was thus

extremely important to us that Zbigniew Brzezinski was involved in the process—and he

supported the Third Basket. I have no doubt the Third Basket had the revolutionary role in the

implosion of the Soviet empire. The dissidents, until the third basket, had this feeling of being

marginal—and had no legal reference. With the Helsinki agreement—and the third basket—

everybody could say ‘you did sign it’---if you signed the agreement--and so now we are asking

about freedom of information, freedom of expression, freedom of travels and so on.

113

Needless to say, Ford’s opponents on the right, especially Ronald Reagan, did not

interpret Helsinki in this respect. The fall-out from the “sell out” at Helsinki was only part of a

larger pattern of discontent that emerged from the right wing of the GOP. By 1975 objections to

Kissinger’s détente were being voiced from within the Ford administration itself. Kissinger’s

most prominent in-house critic was Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, an outspoken

intellectual rival who began to garner headlines with his public concerns about the growing

Soviet military threat and the need for the U.S. to take a harder line in the SALT negotiations.

Ford’s more prescient advisers worried that Schlesinger’s views were adding fuel to the

possibility of a hard line primary challenge from Ronald Reagan.

To Brzezinski, one of the keys to bolster Carter’s foreign policy credentials was to take on

the myth that had come to surround Henry Kissinger. On October 28, 1975 Brzezinski sent Carter

the following memo”

Dear Jimmy: One thought occurs to me: at some point it will be necessary for someone to

take the Kissinger foreign policy head-on. Blaming its shortcomings on Nixon or on Ford will not

do, while Kissinger is likely to become one of the major pillars of the Republican pitch for re-

election. Accordingly, Kissinger’s foreign policy ought to be attacked directly, and his personal

113

Interview, May 13, 2002, (Warsaw, Poland).

233

role in shaping it and giving it its somewhat dubious moral-political outlook ought to be the

major focus of such a speech. Moreover, this should be done fairly soon and not during the actual

Presidential campaign, for at that time the credibility of some of the criticisms is going to be

necessarily reduced. Finally, given the fascination of the mass media with Kissinger, an attack

directly on his foreign policy is likely to provoke a great deal of attention. Best Regards, Zbigniew

Brzezinski. P.S. Let me know when you are in NYC.

114

Carter, however, was beaten to the punch as he considered taking up this strategy. In the

autumn of 1975 Ford’s advisers began to attribute his declining polls numbers to the appearance

of “internal anarchy” at the White House. In order to correct this perception Ford fired Alexander

Haig as his chief of staff and replaced him with Donald Rumsfeld, an ambitious young Illinois

congressman. One of Rumsfeld’s first goals as chief of staff was to show that it was the president,

rather than Kissinger, who was running U.S. foreign policy. Rumsfeld told Ford that his stature

was being damaged by the perception that he was delegating the major foreign policy decisions

to Kissinger while leaving himself with ceremonial tasks such as “ meeting with the Sunflower

Queen and receiving the Thanksgiving turkey.”

115

In early November of 1975 Rumsfeld was at the center of a major cabinet shakeup

designed in part to “downgrade” Kissinger in an effort to appease the GOP right wing. The

complicated game of musical chairs began suddenly in late October when Vice President

Rockefeller “voluntarily” announced that he would not be Ford’s running mate in 1976. Ford

then fired the outspoken Schlesinger as Defense Secretary and replaced him with Rumsfeld.

Richard Cheney, then a 34-year old Rumsfeld aide, stepped in as Ford’s Chief of Staff. CIA

director William Colby, who was being widely criticized by the right-wing for being overly

cooperative with in the congressional investigations of the CIA, was replaced by George Bush,

114

Memo, Brzezinski to Carter (October 28, 1975), Personal Archives of Zbigniew Brzezinski,

Washington, DC.

115

Issacson, p. 605.

234

who was recalled from Beijing where he was serving as the first U.S. representative to the

People’s Republic of China.

116

Ford’s rather elaborate attempt to mollify the right wing would prove unsuccessful. In

November 1975 Ronald Reagan appeared before the National Press Club to announce that he

would challenge Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination. The closing months of 1975 contained

even more bad news for Kissinger. In November 1975, the Soviet backed Popular Movement for

the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) came to power in Angola. It marked the first time that Soviet

backed military forces (in the form of tanks, planes and rocket launchers and the arrival of 12,000

Cuban combat troops) had intervened on such a scale in Africa. The boldness of the Soviet

involvement in Angola came as a shock to U.S. officials. The Ford administration turned to

Congress to request additional aid for its allies in Angola. Both the Senate and the House, coming

off a decade in Vietnam, voted against allocating more resources for what seemed to be another

an equally lost cause.

Ronald Reagan, now actively campaigning in New Hampshire, rallied his conservative

forces with the call that “It’s time to straighten up and eyeball it with Russia, and the time to start

is in Angola.”

117

Brzezinski, now more directly advising Carter’s presidential campaign, took a

more cautious tone, noting that the “sweeping generalizations made by the Administration,

about a ‘generation of peace’ were wrong and misleading. Détente is going to be a mixed

relationship with elements of both conflict and cooperation.”

118

The victory of Soviet arms in Angola would, in hindsight, represent the most optimistic

point in the Soviet role in the world. In March 1976 Brezhnev used the Twenty-Fifth Party

Congress to reaffirm his leadership of the Party and to proclaim the recent string of Soviet foreign

118

Ibid, p. 24.

116

Some political observers would note that by bringing Bush back to run the CIA, Rumsfeld

had eliminated another political rival, as the president had to make a pledge that Bush would

stay out of politics if confirmed. See "Ford's Costly Purge," Time (November 17, 1975).

117

“Angola: Détente Under Fire,” Newsweek (January 19, 1976), p. 21.

235

policy successes. Brezhnev’s five-hour keynote address, heard by some 5,000 Soviet delegates and

hundreds of foreign guests, including Fidel Castro and North Vietnam’s Le Duan, extolled the

benefits of détente, listing the recent string of Soviet foreign policy victories--in Vietnam, Laos,

Cambodia, and Angola, treaties of friendship and cooperation with Iraq and India, as well as the

normalization of relations with West Germany. Summing it up, Brezhnev concluded,

optimistically that the “international position of the Soviet Union has never been more

stable.”

119

Brzezinski thought otherwise. As the Soviet Union boasted of its own version of détente

and its new role as a global superpower, Brzezinski saw opportunities to exploit Moscow’s

weaknesses in a place few thought the Soviets were vulnerable. In late January 1976 Brzezinski

submitted a memo to the Carter campaign suggesting that "only a more comprehensive and a

more reciprocal détente can enhance peace and promote change within the Communist

system”…”The abandonment of the policy of benign neglect toward Eastern Europe is desirable,

for the United States ought to be at least as interested in Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union is in

Latin America."

120

Yet in 1976, at the height of America’s “crisis of confidence,” the Helsinki Final Act was

increasingly being berated by the GOP right wing as a Soviet triumph along the lines of Yalta.

Indeed as Brzezinski had long noted the hard right wing rarely moved beyond rhetoric in

expressing its outrage toward the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Brzezinski believed that

the nascent campaign of Jimmy Carter could move beyond rhetoric and utilize the Helsinki Final

Act to accelerate the process that would finally end the Cold War division of Europe. Brzezinski’s

role in advising the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter would be instrumental in changing

119

Joseph L. Nogge and Robert H. Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II (New

York, 1985), p. 283. See also “Tough Talk on Détente from Moscow,” Time (March 8, 1976), p. 32-

33.

120

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 7.

236

the interpretation of Helsinki from a Yalta-like “sell out” to a rallying call for the emerging civil

societies the would one day lead the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe.

237

CHAPTER SIX: CAMPAIGN ‘76

Zbigniew Brzezinski assumed command of the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter’s

campaign in late 1975. Henceforth Carter made it clear that any memo pertaining to foreign

policy first had to first pass through Brzezinski. Any staff member who tried to short circuit the

system was invariably met with a hand wave from Carter with instructions to “clear it with

Zbig.”’

Brzezinski’s most immediate task was to convince the nation and the foreign policy

establishment that a former one-term governor from Georgia was capable of running the foreign

affairs of the world’s most powerful nation.

In the early stages of the campaign, Carter’s deliberately “populist” approach to foreign

policy often came across as naïve to news reporters who had become accustomed to listening to

Henry Kissinger explain U.S. foreign policy for the past seven years. Indeed Carter’s early stump

speeches on foreign policy often involved little more than a robotic listing all of the nations he

had visited in connection with Georgia’s trade missions. In doing so Carter would invariably

recite the name of the country in addition to the city. “I’ve been in Paris, France, Bonn, Germany,

Brussels, Belgium, Tokyo, Japan, Sao Paulo, Brazil….”

The speech was designed to point out that Carter as far more than a provincial governor.

Yet by the middle of 1975 it had produced the opposite effect. According to journalist Jules

Witcover, Carter’s pitch came across “like a Georgia country boy mentioning far off places of his

dreams. One could never be certain whether Carter did this guilelessly, or whether it was a clever

way of reminding listeners that for all his world travels he was essentially a Georgia country

boy.”

Witcover would find out just how mechanical the speech was when he got a chance to

speak with Carter informally at a candidate’s dinner in New Hampshire. Witcover noted that

Robert Sheer, “In Search of Brzezinski,” The Washington Post (February 6, 1977).

Jules Witcover, Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-76 (New York, 1977), pp. 123-124.

238

George Wallace was about to embark on his first trip to Europe, and then jocularly suggested that

Carter, as the self-proclaimed “anti-Wallace candidate,” might have to follow suit. “No,”

interrupted an unsmiling Carter, “in the last two years, I’ve been to Paris, France, Bonn,

Germany, Brussels, Belgium….”

Brzezinski understood that while Carter’s trade missions might be enough campaigning

against the likes of Birch Bayh and George Wallace, he would require a more comprehensive

foreign policy if he hoped to present a viable alternative to the grand design of Henry Kissinger.

By January of 1976 Carter had taken full advantage of Brzezinski’s previous allowances to

“plagiarize freely.” For the remainder of the campaign the bulk of his foreign policy speeches

were lifted almost verbatim from Brzezinski’s scholarly articles and campaign memos.

If there was one Democratic strategist who was familiar with Kissinger’s strengths and

vulnerabilities it was certainly Zbigniew Brzezinski. Carter’s stump speeches began to attack

Ibid. p. 124. Nevertheless Witcover recalled that Carter seemed quite worldly compared to

George Wallace’s six-country, two-week tour of Europe that took place in October 1975. “Aboard

a chartered British jet, Wallace traveled to meet British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the

Tory leader Margaret Thatcher, Belgian Prime Minister Leo Tindemans, Italian President

Giovanni Leone and Premier Aldo Moro, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher

and French Minister of Industry Michel d’Ornano—but he was pointedly snubbed by West

German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and Pope Paul

VI. It was perhaps the strangest overseas odyssey made by a prominent American politician. He

permitted no reporters to accompany him—begging, without justification, lack of space on his

plane. But he did find space, however, for a number of old cronies, including two men linked to

the John Birch Society who at first were billed as ‘foreign-policy advisers’ but later, when their

identities became known, as just old friends along for the ride. Throughout, Wallace was on his

best behavior, careful not to make a slip that would cause him to be embarrassed. ‘I hope I don’t

commit any ‘foxpaws’ in Europe’ he was overheard saying to a friend as he left a Brussels hotel.

And he tried hard to be a gracious visitor—as in Belgium, which he described as ‘this fine small

country, which has sent a number of people to Alabama.’ During and after the trip Wallace

declined to discuss the substance of any of his talks in detail. ‘What’s good for Western Europe is

good for the United States and vice versa,’ he said repeatedly to questions. He acknowledged at

one point that his talks were “mainly courtesy calls” and that a major reason he was in Europe

was simply to be able to say he had been there. The surprising thing was how little Wallace

seemed to enjoy the experience. When he got back home, I went down to Montgomery to

interview him, and I asked how Europe impressed him. ‘I’ve seen Europe on television,’ he told

me. ‘You can learn as much about going abroad by watching and reading news, and reading

books and stories and publications, as you can be seeing some concrete walls, a few automobiles

in traffic jams and some scenery.’” Witcover, Marathon pp. 180-181.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981

(New York, 1983), p. 5.

239

Kissinger’s worldview from both conservative and liberal angles. In the same speech Carter

denounced the “Nixon-Ford-Kissinger obsession with power blocs and spheres of influence,” for

allowing the Soviets to get the best of détente, for being inattentive to the rising turmoil in the

developing world, for alienating the traditional allies in Western Europe and Japan, and for

neglecting the issue of human rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Indeed by the early

spring Carter was hitting his mark. As one Kissinger biographer would note, “Hearing

Brzezinski's snide words slung at him each day, not with a slightly embittered Polish accent but a

smiling Georgia accent, drove Kissinger to near distraction."

Jimmy Carter emerged from national obscurity in January 1976 with a surprising win in

the Iowa caucus. Carter’s follow up victory in the New Hampshire primary a few weeks later

gave the once unknown candidate the unlikely status of “front-runner” in a rapidly thinning field

of candidates. Carter’s victory over George Wallace in the March Florida primary marked a

turning point in the campaign. It proved that a racial moderate could win in the South, while

partially negating the GOP “southern strategy” that had been so successful in the previous two

elections. Carter’s victory also made him more appealing the suspicious northern liberals if only

because he had finally removed the stain of Wallace’s racist legacy from the Democratic Party.

Brzezinski’s strategy also made it clear that Jimmy Carter was not another “McGovern”

that Republican operatives could pigeonhole as a liberal weak on issues of national security.

Carter’s triumph in Florida also allowed him to focus more closely on the general election and a

Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York, 1992), p. 700.

Carter’s victory over Wallace in Florida would have a dramatic impact on the upcoming

Republican primary in Texas. With Wallace out of the race Ronald Reagan, then campaigning

against President Ford in the Texas primary, moved in on Southern Democratic voters. The

Reagan campaign unleashed a barrage of radio and television spots that read, “I’ve always been a

Democrat, all my life. A conservative Democrat. As much as I hate to admit it, George Wallace

can’t be nominated. Ronald Reagan can. He’s right on the issues. So for the first time in my life

I’m gonna vote in the Republican primary. I’m gonna vote for Ronald Reagan.” And as the

commercial went out over the Texas airwaves, Reagan took to reciting Wallace’s old conservative

themes as his aides passed out fliers that said: “Democrats: you will not be committing a major

indiscretion if you vote, this year, in the Republican primary.” On the flier was a caricature of an

elephant saying, “I’m for Reagan! And a donkey adding “Me too!” Witcover, Marathon, p. 447.

240

presumed showdown with President Ford. Brzezinski, aware of the increasing press scrutiny,

prepared Carter for his first major foreign policy address to be delivered in mid-March before the

Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

Brzezinski’s 4,000-word speech would attempt to

juxtapose Carter’s liberal internationalism from George McGovern’s neo-isolationism, Kissinger’s

amoral emphasis on balance of power diplomacy, and Ronald Reagan’s anti-détente rhetoric that

rejected any form of engagement with the Soviet Union.

Carter, in a speech covered widely by the press, charged that Kissinger was simply

“giving up too much and asking for too little,” in dealing with the Soviet Union. At the same time

Carter accused Kissinger of betraying the trust of the American people by conducting U.S.

foreign policy “exclusively, personally and in secret.” “For too long,” Carter noted in a jibe at

Kissinger’s academic links to Metternich, “our policy has been maneuver and manipulation,

which may have worked in 1815 or even 1945, but has a much less significant role in today’s

world, where there are increasing mutual interests of all nations, such as protecting natural

resources and stopping pollution and international terrorism.”

Carter took on the hard right anti-détente sentiment with equal force, denouncing the

“strident and bellicose voices” that favored a return to the days of the cold war with the Soviet

Union. Carter stressed the nation must not dwell on the failures in Vietnam but look to reassert

U.S. leadership in the world even if “we have learned that we cannot and should not try to

intervene militarily in the internal affairs of other countries unless our own nation is directly

endangered.” “In every foreign venture that has failed,” Carter noted, “whether it was Vietnam,

Cambodia, Chile, Pakistan, Angola or even in the excesses of the CIA—our Government forged

See Joel D. Weisman, “Carter Joins Crowd, Denounces Kissinger,” The Washington Post (March

16, 1976).

Christopher Lydon, “Carter, Outlining Foreign Policy Views, Urges Wider Discussion,” The

New York Times (March 16, 1976).

241

ahead without consulting the American people, and did things that were contrary to our basic

character.”

Brzezinski’s attempt to portray Carter as a centrist seeking only a more “reciprocal”

détente often required the use of subtle nuances to distinguish the Democratic candidate from

Kissinger. Ronald Reagan, then campaigning against President Ford in bitterly contested

primaries, had no such concerns. After declaring his candidacy in November Reagan’s campaign

had not caught fire. This changed when in January Reagan found a very tangible symbol to

demonstrate America’s precipitous decline. While campaigning in Sun City, Florida, Reagan

charged that Ford was secretly negotiating to “give away” the Panama Canal. The issue hit a

chord with Reagan’s conservative faithful. Henceforth Reagan’s objections to the “give away”

drew rapturous applause wherever he campaigned. “The Panama Canal issue had nothing to do

with the canal,” one Reagan adviser would later admit. “It said more about the American

people’s feelings about where the country was, and what it was powerless to do, and their

frustration about the incomprehensivity of foreign policy over the last couple of decades.”

Such was the political atmosphere in late March when Washington Post columnists

Rowland Evans and Robert Novak released a controversial column alleging that Eastern Europe

had been formally sacrificed by the Ford Administration for the greater good of détente with

Brzezinski’s efforts to show Carter’s more optimistic view were assisted upon the release of a

book by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt claiming Kissinger had once stated that the historical forces

favored the Soviet “Sparta” to the American “Athens.”

The revelation created a stir in the press

that put Kissinger increasingly on the defensive. “One hears rumors of gloomy private

ruminations by Secretary Kissinger,” noted the Washington Post editorial page, “that the East-

West rivalry rematches an effete Athens (the forces of freedom) and a vigorous and disciplined

Sparta (the Soviet Union), with which the faltering Athenians must make the best deal they can.”

All of this was bad news for President Ford. Indeed Reagan, who had based his campaign largely

as a referendum on Kissinger, used Zumwalt’s charges to ratchet up his campaign against

détente. See Drew Middleton, “Zumwalt, in Book, Says Kissinger Sees a Lack of U.S. Stamina,”

The New York Times (March 17, 1976).

Witcover, Marathon, pp. 428-429.

242

Moscow.

The column charged that Kissinger-aide Helmut Sonnenfeldt had introduced a new

“doctrine” at a December 1975 meeting of U.S. diplomats in London that had in effect abandoned

Eastern Europe to an “organic” relationship with the Soviet Union. Sonnenfeldt, known to White

House insiders as “Kissinger’s Kissinger” for their similar world views, would attempt to explain

that an “organic” relationship was preferable to one based strictly on force. But such semantic

hair splitting was a hard sell coming so soon after the similar controversy regarding the Helsinki

Accords. Indeed the issue of the “Sonnenfeldt Doctrine” provided additional fuel for the

suddenly insurgent Reagan campaign.

In the wake of the Sonnenfeldt revelations Reagan sought a half-hour slot on prime time

national television to broaden his attacks on detente. When all three networks rejected this

unusual request, Reagan appealed directly to the three network board chairmen, asking for

The official transcripts released two weeks later indicated that Evans and Nowak had slightly

distorted Sonnenfeldt's comments. They inserted two key words that gave the impression that

Sonnenfeldt had called for a "permanent organic union." The central theme was that nothing

could prevent the Soviet Union’s emergence as an imperial “superpower.” The U.S. task,

according to Sonnenfeldt, required “managing or domesticating” this power. Sonnenfeldt had

indeed addressed the meeting of American ambassadors in London on December 13-14. Asked

by the chair, Assistant Secretary of State Arthur Hartman, to discuss East European policy,

Sonnenfeldt spoke briefly and without notes. A two-hour discussion followed. Though no

transcript or official minutes were kept of the London meeting, some of the twenty-eight

ambassadors took notes. To anyone not present at the “brain-storming” session, the text looked

in form like an address by one speaker—Sonnenfeldt—rather than a compilation of loosely

connected thoughts discussed in a seminar. According to Sonnenfeldt’s later recollections, he

used in this ‘brain-storming” session basic concepts and some of the same language he had using

since 1968. Sonnenfeldt said that he had endorsed a more “organic” relationship between Eastern

Europe and the Soviet Union, by which he meant a more ‘natural” relationship. Clarifying the

meaning of “organic” in a colloquy with Ambassador Elliot Richardson, Sonnenfeldt had looked

forward to the “Finlandization” of Eastern Europe. According to Sonnenfeldt, his hope for the

“Finlandization” of Eastern Europe, a phrase that clarified his meaning, was absent from the

summary because the American ambassador to Finland objected to the term. See Leo P. Ribuffo,

“Is Poland a Soviet Satellite? Gerald Ford, the Sonnenfeldt Doctrine, and the Election of 1976,

Diplomatic History, (1988). pp. 392-393. See also "Summary of Remarks by Sonnenfeldt," The New

York Times (April 6, 1977). See Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, "A Soviet-East Europe Organic

Union," The Washington Post (March 22, 1976). For a view suggesting the authenticity of the report

sees C.L. Sulzberger, "Mini-Metternich in a Fog," The New York Times (March 27, 1976). See Dusko

Doder, “Sonnenfeldt Report a Shock to East Europe,” The Washington Post (March 26, 1976). Jim

Hoagland, “On Separating Spheres,” The Washington Post (March 31, 1976).

243

reconsideration “in the interest of fairness and justice as well as the people’s right to know.” NBC

was the only network that agreed to sell Reagan the television time.

Reagan, in a message that would one day become so familiar to the American public,

castigated the Ford-Kissinger foreign policy as “weak” and lacking in sufficient military

preparedness. “I believe in the peace of which Mr. Ford spoke as much as any man,” Reagan said.

“But peace does not come from weakness or from retreat. It comes from restoration of American

military superiority.” Reagan, in rhetoric reminiscent a young Richard Nixon’s attacks on

Franklin Roosevelt’s “betrayal” of Eastern Europe at Yalta, lambasted the Helsinki Accords as a

“stamp of approval on Russia’s enslavement of the captive nations” and the “Sonnenfeldt

Doctrine” as a policy demanding that the Eastern European nations “give up any claim of

national sovereignty and simply become part of the Soviet Union.”

Reagan’s televised speech was seen by an estimated 15 million people and would jump-

start a remarkable string of primary victories at the expense of a sitting president.

Ford, facing

NBC issued a statement that noted that ordinarily the network “would not sell national

network time to a candidate this early while the state primaries are still in progress.” However, in

view of the unique situation of the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, where

Gov. Reagan is one of two major candidates and opposes an incumbent President, NBC feels that

an exception to its general policy is warranted.” Lou Cannon and John Carmody “Reagan Gets

Half-Hour for Speech on TV,” The Washington Post (March 30, 1976).

Lou Cannon, “Reagan in National TV Talk, Attacks Ford Foreign Policy,” The Washington Post

(April 1, 1976). Kissinger quickly refuted Reagan’s charges in a speech in Boston. This led to

complaints from the Reagan campaign to the Federal Election Commission that Kissinger was

violating the tradition that secretaries of state stay out of domestic politics. Reagan’s lawyer

charged,” If an incumbent is to be able to use individuals like Dr. Kissinger, paid for by the

public, for campaign purposes, while these individual expenses are not charged against the

incumbent’s campaign limits, then the limitations in the law are a mere mockery,” Kissinger, in

turn, insisted, “I’m not engaging in political stumping and am not engaged in partisan activities. I

explain the foreign policy of the United States. But when over a period of several weeks rather

extreme charges are made, then I feel I have the obligation to put before the public what the

foreign policy of this country is.” Lou Cannon, “Speech Buoys Reagan Aides,” The Washington

Post (April 2, 1976).

Wayne King, “Reagan Predicts First-Ballot Victory,” The New York Times (May 7, 1976). Indeed,

Regan’s surge had led odds--makers had place the former California governor as the favorite not

only to unseat a sitting president, but to prevail in the general election in the fall. “Reagan Now

Favored by London Bookmaker,” The New York Times (May 7, 1976). The tenor of the right-wing

led to press speculation that a Reagan victory might prompt Kissinger to cross party lines to

244

intense pressure from within his own party to dump Kissinger, chose instead to outlaw the term

“détente” from his campaign.

But Ford’s semantic and cosmetic changes would do little to

convince Reagan’s conservative faithful. Brzezinski’s long-time charges that Kissinger had

engaged in a “benign neglect” toward Eastern Europe were undertaken in less polite language by

Reagan’s hard-line supporters. An editorial in the conservative St. Louis Globe-Democrat, to cite

one example, endorsed Reagan while referring to Sonnenfeldt’s remarks as “insulting,” “asinine”

and an “abject sell-out.” “It is now clear,” opined the editorial, “that Ronald Reagan was well

justified in censuring Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s chief adviser, Helmut Sonnenfeldt,

for the latter’s incredibly pro-Soviet policy statement proposing that East Europe slave states

develop ‘a more natural and organic’ relationship with the Soviet Union.”

Charles Gati, who had recently written a controversial article describing Eastern Europe

as the “forgotten region,” believed there was a touch of hypocrisy coming form the right-wing

that had long rejected anything to do with Brzezinski’s ideas of peaceful engagement. “I don’t

think there was a ‘Sonnenfeldt Doctrine,’” Gati noted years later. “I think that was ridiculous. He

simply reflected the Kissingerian-Nixonian mood of the moment, which is to say—not quite

forget Eastern Europe—but don’t push that issue right now at a time when America is so weak.

It’s an understandable policy. I did not agree with it. I don’t agree with it now. But it was an

avoid what he regarded as an extreme platform—much as he had done in 1964 when he voted for

Johnson instead of Goldwater. “He seems confident,” noted the New York Times’ Bernard

Gwertzman, “that Mr. Ford will finally turn back Ronald Reagan, whose election he feels would

be disastrous for the United States. Mr. Kissinger’s own answer is that in the case of a Reagan

victory in Kansas City, he would stick it out and do his best to keep relations with other countries

on an even keel. What he does not add, but which most of his aides believe, is that Mr. Kissinger

would then be privately rooting for a Carter victory in November.” Bernard Gwertzman,

“Kissinger: His Future is a Puzzle,” The New York Times, (June 27, 1976).

Phillip Shabecoff, “White House Denies Aim of Easing Kissinger Out,” The New York Times

(April 6, 1976).

St. Louis Globe Democrat (April 15, 1976).

245

understandable policy and I think that Sonnenfeldt himself got a bum rap from the Republican

right which actually wanted to do even less in Eastern Europe.”

The Carter campaign, albeit more subtly, would also benefit by the fall-out over the

Sonnenfeldt Doctrine. “There is no doubt that Evans and Novak pumped it up,” Brzezinski

would later note. “Sticking Sonnenfeldt’s name on it was kind of a gimmick. But yes, in a larger

sense it did reflect this notion of condominium. That is ‘we keep what we have---you keep what

you have---you’re going up historically, we’re going down, so it’s a good deal for us in effect, our

country is divided, demoralized by the Vietnamese war---we can’t do better than that so let’s

settle for what we can.’ So it enabled Carter to seize the optimistic vision and to deny it to his

opponent and to make himself look as a man of the future and a man of American optimism

versus American, and maybe even European pessimism.”

If Kissinger had problems with the Republican right, Brzezinski faced the equally

delicate task of keeping Carter from straying too far toward the McGovern wing of the

Democratic Party. Though Carter was running well, some of Brzezinski’s old friends had grown

concerned that Carter’s foreign policy statements were leaning too far to the left. In early 1976 a

newly formed anti-détente lobby emerged in an effort to revive the old “Committee on the

Present Danger.” The group was particularly concerned over the ongoing SALT II negotiations

Interview, Washington, DC (September 13, 2001). This point is also made by Stephen S.

Rosenfeld, "The Sonnenfeldt Doctrine: There is Not One Now and Never Was One," The

Washington Post (April 2, 1976).

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000). Brzezinski would also note that the Sonnenfeldt

Doctrine had international ramifications, including an opportunity to forge a closer relationship

with China, which denounced the Sonnenfeldt Doctrine as a “further development of the

appeasement policy the United States has followed toward the Soviet Union.” The New York Times

(April 21, 1976). In the midst of the campaign, Brzezinski urged the United States to take a greater

interest in China and the idea of fostering a polycentric communist world. “It should be desirable

for the United States to maintain and expand its relationships with China and with Eastern

Europe. A polycentric Communist world is a necessary component of a more pluralist world, and

polycentrism in Communism is a precondition also for the very gradual evolution of Communist

regimes into more cooperative members of the international community. Accordingly, we should

reiterate our continued interest in the independence of such states as Yugoslavia or Rumania, and

we should avoid any hints that the United States favors dividing the world into exclusive spheres

of influence.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Comments on East-West Relations,” Survey (Fall 1976), p. 24.

246

and emphasized the urgency to strengthen the U.S. military for any potential conflict with the

Soviet Union.

In the spring of 1976 Eugene Rostow wrote Brzezinski urging him to sign on with the

group while voicing his concerns that Carter was leaning too far to accommodate the McGovern

wing of the Democratic Party. “Dear Zbig,” wrote Rostow, “I enclose the most recent version of

the Policy Statement our bipartisan Committee proposes to issue shortly. I cannot detect a note in

it which should cause you, or Governor Carter, to hesitate. I therefore urge you to join.”

Brzezinski response to Rostow at once demonstrated his faith in Carter as well as his belief that a

more engaged “reciprocal” détente would be more beneficial in the long term than the simple

hard line anti-détente policy Reagan was proposing at the time:

Dear Gene: On ruminating further about your Policy Statement, I have concluded that I

cannot sign it. Even though I am not an ‘official’ spokesman for Carter, it seems to me quite

inevitable that my signing it would identify Carter with the statement, and that would be the

general interpretation put on this by the press. Since he is obviously not in the position to go

around signing statements of this sort, leaving aside entirely the question of merit, I really feel

that it would be quite improper for me to do so. Given your experience in these matters, I think

you will understand my position, even though I realize that you will be disappointed. With

reference to your letter of April 30, I very much welcome the points you make in it. I think—and

therefore I agree with you—that it would be a major mistake for Carter to slide towards the

McGovern position, and I am hopeful that he will not. In fact, as of now, I feel quite confident

that he will not. His own instincts are certainly quite sound and balanced, and I think that the

public has already perceived him as being such. That is why, among other reasons, he has been

so successful.

A predecessor Committee on the Present Danger had been created in 1950 to mobilize public

support for an American arms buildup and vigorous prosecution of the Cold War, at that time

with tacit support from the U.S. government. It closed in 1952. This new group included

seasoned veterans of foreign policy, including Paul Nitze, Dean Rusk, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt,

Richard Allen, Clare Booth Luce, Douglas Dillon, Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO, Norman

Podhoretz, David Packard, Max Kampelman, Henry Fowler, and a number of others. A number

of the members of the new committee had been associated with the neo-conservative “Committee

for Democratic Majority” which had begun to oppose American détente with the Soviet Union

after the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973. See Samuel F. Wells Jr., “Sounding the Tocsin: NSC-68

and the Soviet Threat,” International Security, vol. 4 (Fall 1979), pp. 141-51. For a discussion on the

origins of both committees see Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet

Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC, 1985), p. 596.

Personal Archives, office of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center of Strategic and International Studies,

(Washington DC).

247

Brzezinski’s determination not to let Carter become “another McGovern” was not looked

upon so favorably, however, by those who thought McGovern was where the party should be

heading.

The idea of an unknown Southern governor emerging out of nowhere to take the

nomination caused concern for many liberal Democrats who traced their social-consciousness to

McGovern’s heroic 1972 campaign. Prominent northern liberals remained suspicious about

Carter for a number of reasons. These would include his southern background, his vagueness on

traditional core liberal issues, his rather “non-progressive” status as an unapologetic born-again

Christian, and, to be sure, his close association with Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose legacy with the

1968 Humphrey campaign and criticisms of the Soviet Union had made him an anathema to the

left-wing of the Democratic Party since the late 1960s.

This liberal skepticism toward Carter was seen in the highly publicized resignation of

speechwriter Bob Shrum from the Carter campaign. The 32-year old Shrum had been one of the

bright and idealistic wonder kids that brought so much energy to McGovern’s 1972 campaign.

Upon his appointment to the Carter campaign it was widely suspected Carter had taken Shrum

on to serve as a bridge to Northern liberals who remained suspicious of Carter. After only nine

days on the campaign Shrum, as one insider put it, became convinced that Carter “for all his

avowals of truth telling” was “a liar and a deceiver.” Shrum’s letter of resignation was made

public and created talk that Carter had become unacceptable to the party’s more noteworthy

liberals. “You may wish to keep your options open,” Shrum wrote Carter, “Within reason that is

understandable. But an election is the only option the people have. After carefully reflecting on

what I have seen and heard here, I do not know what you would do as President. I share the

perception that simple measures will not answer our problems; but it seems to me that your

issues strategy is not a response to complexity, but an attempt to conceal your true positions. I am

not sure what you truly believe in, other than yourself. I have examined my reactions closely. I

have attempted to justify a different conclusion. But I cannot rationalize one. Therefore, I must

resign.” Witcover, p. 339.

Brzezinski often noted how Carter dealt with condescending attitudes throughout his

campaign due largely to his southern origins. This was apparent in early August when Warren

Beatty hosted a reception for Carter at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Several well-known stars

attended the event from the entertainment industry--including Diana Ross, James Caan, Paul

Simon, Carroll O’Connor, Sidney Potier, and George Pepard. A question and answer session

followed, during which Tony Randall asked Carter if he would support a national opera or

national theater. Carter said he had never been asked that question before. ‘You’ve never met

with people of this level,’ replied Randall. ‘That’s why I’m the nominee,” Carter replied. Near the

end of the session Carter’s tone turned serious. “In the county where I farm, we don’t have a

doctor, we don’t have a dentist, we don’t have a pharmacist, we don’t have a registered nurse;

and people who live there who are very poor have no access to health care. We found in Georgia

through a three-year study that poor women, who are mostly black, in rural areas have twenty

times more cervical cancer than white women in urban counties, just because they haven’t seen a

doctor, because the disease has gone so far that it can’t be corrected. There’s a need for public

248

These latent suspicions toward Carter spurred two late breaking challenges that were

widely seen as “Stop Carter” ploys. The declared challenges came from Senator Frank Church of

Idaho and California governor Jerry Brown.

But it was the verbal hedging from Hubert

Humphrey who caused the biggest stir among Democrats searching for a familiar face.

Humphrey, sensing the party’s unease with Carter, endorsed Brown as a “viable alternative” to

Carter. At the same time he note coyly that the race “was a long way from being over, and I am a

long way from being out.”

President Ford was among the many begging to predict that

Humphrey would eventually emerge at the Democratic nominee at a deadlocked convention.

Jimmy Carter seemed unscathed by these late challenges. The day after winning the

Pennsylvania primary in late April Carter offered this rather concise assessment of the race. “If

Humphrey gets in I’ll beat him. If he stays out, I’ll be the nominee.”

And he would be. Carter, despite stumbling in a few late primaries, picked up enough

delegates to wrap up the nomination by late June. Brzezinski understood that Carter would now

face an increasing press scrutiny on every foreign policy statement that emerged from the

officials—Presidents, governors, congressmen and others—to bypass the lobbyists and the special

interest groups and our own circle of friends who are very fortunate, and try to understand those

who are dependent on government to give them a decent life. That is what I hope to do….So I say

public servants, like me and Jerry Brown and others, have a special responsibility to bypass the

big shots, including you and people like you, and like I was, and to make a concerted effort to

understand people who are poor, black, speak a foreign language, who are not well educated,

who are inarticulate, who are timid, who have some monumental problem, and at the same time

to run the government in a competent way—well-organized, efficient, manageable—so that those

services which are so badly needed can be delivered.” Jimmy Carter, A Government As Good as

Its People,” (New York, 1977), pp. 135-137.

Carter’s image with more liberal Democrats was also strained by the publicity stemming from

an off-hand campaign remark suggesting he was not opposed to retaining the “ethnic purity” of

some neighborhoods. Carter’s comments led to a barrage of criticism from prominent black

leaders whose support had become something of a bell- weather for acceptance from the

McGovern wing of the Democratic Party. Jessie Jackson referred to Carter’s statements as “a

throwback to Hitlerian racism.” Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, referred to Carter as a

“Frankenstein monster with a Southern drawl.” Burton Kaufman Jr., The Presidency of James Earl

Carter (Lawrence, KS, 1993), pp. 13-14.

“Humphrey Terms Brown a ‘New Dimension’ in Race,” The New York Times (May 7, 1976).

“Ford See Wisconsin Vote as Kissinger Endorsement,” The New York Times (April 8, 1976).

Witcover, p. 329.

249

campaign. In late June he began preparing Carter for his biggest foreign policy speech of the

campaign. On June 23, 1976 Carter appeared before the Foreign Policy Association in New York

in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Before a packed house of national

correspondents Carter offered another pointed attack on Kissinger’s foreign policy.

The line picked up most enthusiastically by the press, as Brzezinski knew it would, was

Carter’s reference to Kissinger as a “Lone Ranger” caught up in a “one-man policy of

international adventure.”

There were also more significant ideas in the speech that Brzezinski

sought to associate Carter with. “The time has come for a new architectural effort,” Carter said

“with a growing cooperation among the industrial democracies its cornerstone, and with peace

and justice its constant goals.” This, Carter noted, would evolve into a more productive and

effective approach to “international tensions, food shortages, overpopulation, poverty, the arms

race, and allocation of resources.”

Though the words were Carter’s, it was no secret that the ideas had come from his primary

adviser on foreign affairs. “Mr. Carter’s speech” The New York Times reported the next day “was

the product of his student group on foreign policy but it was essentially the creation of Zbigniew

Brzezinski, the 48-year old Columbia University professor who has been advising Mr. Carter on

foreign policy for several months.” James T. Wooten, “Carter Pledges an Open Foreign Policy,”

The New York Times (June 24, 1976).

Brzezinski would later note that the personal attack on Kissinger came largely from Carter

himself. Yet he was hardly tone deaf to the gesture of taking on Kissinger. As he noted in his

memoirs “the American press is not likely to give a serious speech much coverage unless there is

some newsworthy twist to it which satisfies its taste for personal color.” James Reston, long the

establishment voice of the New York Times, noted the Kissinger reference but also endorsed the

centrist path that Brzezinski was leading Carter. “Jimmy Carter,” noted Reston, “who is not

usually a frivolous man, poked fun at Henry Kissinger the other day as ‘the Lone Ranger’ of

American foreign policy. ‘Hi Ho, Silver!’ Carter said in effect. But the important thing about the

Governor’s latest speech is not that he differed with so many of Mr. Kissinger’s policies but

agreed with so many of them. Mr. Carter is clearly playing politics with foreign policy, poking

fun at Kissinger and Ford, and watching very carefully Mr. Ford’s struggles with the nationalistic

and jingoistic Republican isolationists; but like Eisenhower and even Dewey, he is sticking to the

Atlantic Alliance, the United Nations, and a new and closer consultative agreement with the

Western Europeans and Japan. Dwight Eisenhower, in his struggle for the Republican

nomination against Robert Taft in 1952, stuck to the principle of the Western alliance and

prevailed over Taft after a battle not unlike the Ford-Reagan conflict this year.” James Reston, “Hi

Ho Silver,” The New York Times (June 25, 1976)

Wooten, “Carter Pledges an Open Foreign Policy.”

250

Perhaps most importantly, Brzezinski sought to stress that in contrast to Kissinger, a

Carter presidency would not be indifferent to human rights, whatever the ideology involved.

“Many of us have protested the violation of human rights in Russia, and justly so,” Carter noted.

“But such violations are not limited to any one country or one ideology.” He said he “deplored

the recent bloodshed in South Africa,” and traced its roots to the “long season of racial

inequities” there.

Nevertheless, Carter made it clear that he was not prepared to settle for the

“quiet diplomacy” approach toward issues human rights in the Soviet Union. “We respect the

independence of all nations,” Carter said, “but by our example, by our utterances and by the

various forms of economic and political persuasion available to us, we can quite surely lessen the

injustice in this world.”

Brzezinski was pleased with Carter’s speech, which he believed gave him momentum

going into the Democratic convention.

The day after Carter’s speech in New York, events

began to unravel in Poland. On June 24, 1976, Polish Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz went

The GOP right had become especially critical of Kissinger’s trip to Africa in May 1976 that

focused on negotiating an end to white minority rule in Rhodesia. Representative Robert H.

Michel, of Illinois, the House minority whip, suggested, in disturbing candor, that Kissinger’s trip

to Africa was especially “ill-timed” because it had a “devastating effect” on Southern states. “It

was a too inflaming kind of trip,” he said. “It aroused people’s emotions.” House Minority

Leader, John J. Rhodes of Arizona publicly criticized Kissinger’s trip to Africa and added that

“the true greatness of Henry A. Kissinger is that when it comes time to step down he’ll be the

first to know this.” Bernard Gwertzman “G.O.P. Leaders Tell Ford He’s Harmed as Criticism of

Kissinger’s Moves Rises,” The New York Times (May 7, 1976).

Wooten, “Carter Pledges an Open Foreign Policy.”

In the days after Carter’s New York speech Brzezinski would travel to Israel. His widely

publicized beliefs that Israel must be more flexible on the questions of the lands occupied since

the 1967 Six Day War had made him suspect in the eyes of pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. Thus

while in Israel Brzezinski engaged in discussions with the Israeli leadership in preparation for the

possibility of a Carter presidency. Brzezinski’s trip coincided with the hijacking of an airliner that

was taken to Uganda. Brzezinski recalled in his memoirs; “I met for dinner with Defense

Minister, Shimon Peres. Dinner was a private, hospitable affair at his house, despite the

enormous tension that was in the air: as we dined the lives of some 100 Israeli hostages were

being threatened by reckless kidnappers at an airport in distant Uganda. The terrorists were

making demands on the Israeli government which it was apparently getting ready to accept. I

will never forget the stunned and suspicious look on Peres’ face when I said to him ‘Why don’t

you send some commandos down to Uganda and storm the damn airport terminal?’ The very

next morning I heard on the air the triumphant announcement of the success of the Entebbe

raid.” Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 84.

251

before parliament to announce a substantial rise in the price of food. The price of meat was to rise

by an average of nearly 70% and butter by more than half. According even to official calculations,

the increased food bill would add 16% to the cost of living index.

Brzezinski understood that the events in Poland were the early stages of a system decay

he had predicted as early as the 1950s. Indeed the government decision to increase food prices, as

it had been in December 1970, was a last ditch measure to compensate for the vast government

subsidies that kept the price of food artificially low. Poland’s economic crisis of 1976 had made it

clear that Gierek’s reliance on Western capital to finance his “economic miracle” was in reality

built on a house of cards.

The economic recession in the West had slowed the once generous

influx of Western capital to the Polish economy. And, as Brzezinski would often note, capital and

technology that had flowed in Poland in the early 1970s could not be simply grafted on to a

political and economic structure riddled with ideological rigidity and bureaucratic ossification.

The Polish government, as it recalled from the December 1970 riots, was operating on

dangerous territory. The price of food was not an abstract ideological question to be debated

among intellectuals. It impacted people’s daily lives and was bound to draw a hostile reaction

from the public, a fact that seemed oblivious to some members of the government. As one

government spokesman insisted, the price increases were necessary to prevent the rise of a black

market and make people “spend less on food.” “We don’t expect applause. “ he explained, “but

we do expect people’s understanding.”

Such arguments fell on deaf ears. On June 25, workers at the Ursus tractor plant outside

Warsaw stormed out of the factory and began tearing up the strategic international railway that

“Poland Announces Big Food-Price Rise,” The New York Times (June 25, 1976).

For an overview of Poland’s continuing economic dilemma in the 1970s, see Zbigniew

Fallenbuchl, “Poland’s Economic Crisis,” Problems of Communism, vol. 21(March-April 1982), pp.

1-21. Pedro Ramet, “Closing the Credit Gap—Poland’s Economic Dilemma,” The New Leader

(May 5, 1980). For a look at the economic problems of Eastern Europe as a region, see Jan Vanous,

“East European Slowdown,” Problems of Communism (July-August 1982), pp. 1-19.

“Poland Announces Big Food-Price Rise,” The New York Times (June 25, 1976).

252

linked Warsaw with Berlin and Moscow.

In Radom, an industrial city to the south of Warsaw,

workers from the General Walter Armament Works, walked out of their jobs signing patriotic

and revolutionary songs. They then marched directly to the regional Communist Party

headquarters where they stood outside demanding to know the salary of the party officials. It

was then that things began to get out of hand. A man wearing an old pair of overalls demanded

to know the price of party secretary’s rather well tailored suit. The crowd moved in to strip the

party official of his trousers and stormed the Party headquarters to raid the well-stocked food

supplies. The crowd proceeded to set fire to the building before carrying the riot to the city

center.

The government seemed stunned by the public response. During the unrest Prime

Minister Jaroszewicz appeared on television to announce the government would rescind the

price hikes. But the authorities were also determined to reassert their control over such public

displays of insubordination. Bolstered by security reinforcements summoned from throughout

the country, Polish security services engaged in brutal reprisals against the striking workers,

many of whom were forced to run the “gauntlet” of policemen armed with rubber truncheons. In

the ensuing weeks two perfunctory trials were held in Radom and Ursus. Those workers found

guilty were sentenced to long prison sentences. At the same time many workers, even those in

cities where no disorders had taken place, were fired from their jobs and assured they would

have a great deal of trouble finding new ones.

“Poland Cancels Food Price Rises After Disorders,” The New York Times (June 26, 1976).

Of particular concern to Moscow was that Poland’s economic problems were present to a

degree throughout the region. News of the unrest had spread within hours to East Germany

through West German radio and television. East German leaders were deeply concerned lest the

disaffection in Poland spread across the boundary. Casting aside the usual precaution of omitting

mention of controversial developments in other Communist countries, the East Germans took

pains to let their own people know the Polish price increases were off. Without mentioning the

disorders in Poland, Neues Duetschland, the East German party newspaper, printed the text of the

television statement by Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz canceling the planned price hikes. “East

Germans Concerned,” The New York Times (June 27, 1976).

Daniel Singer, The Road to Gdansk: Poland and the USSR (New York, 1982), pp. 183-185.

253

The aftermath of the riots would provide a turning point for the Polish intellectuals who

still felt a residual guilt for failing to support the worker strikes in December 1970. In September

1976 a group known as Worker’s Defense Committee (KOR) was formalized in an effort to

provide the workers with financial and legal assistance. They would also seek to inform the

public about the acts of police brutality committed against the workers at the times of their arrest.

“I remember attending a trial in 1976 that implicated some Ursus workers,” recalled Adam

Michnik, “I heard the condemnations, I saw the wives crying, and I shook with rage. I felt that it

would inadmissible to drop these people. And I started writing a protest letter on the part of the

intellectuals right after.”

The formation of KOR was the first indication that the Polish

opposition had been united as never before. It was an ominous sign for a government already

burdened with a failing ideology and a severe economic crisis.

The disturbances in Poland came at a particularly troubling time for Leonid Brezhnev.

The next week the European Communist Parties had been scheduled to meet in East Berlin. The

meeting had long been sought by Brezhnev in an effort to reestablish Moscow’s role as the

undisputed leader of the world socialist movement. The Soviet delegation would find out in East

Berlin that things just weren’t like they used to be.

The West European communist parties, once slavishly loyal to the dictates of Moscow,

had taken measures to distance themselves from the Soviet model in the wake of the Soviet

invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. This more moderate brand of West European communism

came to be known as “Eurocommunism” to distinguish it from the more centralized and

oppressive version practiced in the Soviet Union. The West European Communist Parties had

Adam Michnik, Letters From Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and Perspectives (Berkeley, 1998),

p. 53.

On this point see Adam Bromke, “New Juncture in Poland,” Problems of Communism, vol. 25

(September-October, 1976), pp. 1-17. See also Bromke, “The Opposition in Poland,” Problems of

Communism, vol. 27, (September-October, 1978), pp. 37-51.

254

decoupled themselves so successfully from Moscow that Washington feared that they would

come to power legally in Western Europe through the democratic process.

The significance of the rise of “Eurocommunism” became an issue of some controversy

between Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski in the U.S. presidential campaign of 1976. In a

debate largely conducted through the media, Kissinger saw Eurocommunism as further evidence

of the political malaise that had inflicted the West Europeans. Brzezinski, whose academic work

had long been premised by the opportunities provided by the emergence of a polycentric

communist world, took a far less alarmist view, with the argument that the more moderate

“Eurocommunism” could be helpful in the long run by driving still another wedge between the

Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Brzezinski realized that the West European communist parties had been among the most

critical of Moscow’s attempt to reinstate its hard line after 1968 and believed the contagion of

“Eurocommunism” would over time spill over into Eastern Europe and eventually even the

Soviet Union.

Brzezinski agreed that while the United States should not favor the

See “And Quietly the Med Flows Red,” Time (October 14, 1974).

“Communist Role in Italy: Kissinger vs. 3 Dissenters,” The New York Times (April 14, 1976).

Brzezinski inserted a line in Carter’s June 23 speech in New York that indicated this view. Carter

noted that while most Americans “might not welcome” the rise to power in other democracies of

parties or leaders whose ideologies seem incompatible “we must learn to live with diversity and

to cooperate” as long as such parties and leaders “respect the democratic processes, uphold

existing international commitments and are not subservient to external political direction.”

Wooten, “Carter Pledges an Open Foreign Policy.” For a skeptical look at Brzezinski’s apparent

“support” for “Eurocommunism, “ see Walter Laqueur, “’Eurocommunism’ and Its Friends,”

Commentary vol. 62 no. 2 (August 1976) p. 28.

Since the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the “Eurocommunist” movement, together

with the Communist-led trade unions of Italy and France, had provided a good deal of moral and

political support for exiled Marxists from Czechoslovakia and other dissident movements such as

Poland’s KOR that emerged in Eastern Europe in the 1970s. The West European Communist

parties became especially vocal in 1969 and 1970 during the early phases of Gustav Husak’s hard

line process of “normalization.” The French and Italian Communist parties in particular exerted

substantial pressure on Husak’s leadership in the early 1970s in an effort to moderate the trials

that were being prepared for the supporters of Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring. The change in

the political attitude among West European Communist Parties was seen most dramatically in

the French Communist party (PCF) that had historically been among the most reflexively pro-

Soviet parties in Europe. When a hard-line representative of the Czechoslovak party, Presidium

255

“Eurocommunists” coming to power, but if the phenomenon meant “moving toward de-

Stalinization and then to de-Leninization, it is something we should welcome. In the long run, it

will affect Soviet control but it’s a slow process.”

The Soviets, as Brzezinski long realized, were far more concerned about criticism from

fellow communist parties than right-wing bluster from the United States.

This was evident in a

number of hostile accusations from Moscow that Zbigniew Brzezinski had personally “invented”

the concept of “Eurocommuism.” As one scholar would later note this accusation represented a

“remarkable, if inadvertent” tribute to Brzezinski’s ability “to influence ideological development

in the Communist world.”

Such was the state of European communist movement as Brezhnev prepared to travel to

the Berlin Conference. Brezhnev had planned to travel to Berlin by train, but was forced to fly

member Vasil Balak, failed to mention the PCF among the Communist parties “guilty” of

criticizing the process of “normalization,” the PCF leadership sent a protest, demanding to be

included among the heretics. See Jiri Valenta, “Eurocommunism in Eastern Europe: Promise or

Threat,” in Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone and Andrew Gyorgy ed. Communism in Eastern Europe

(Bloomington, 1979), p. 297.

Quoted in Time (December 27, 1976). Brzezinski’s controversial views on the long-term utility

of Eurocommunism would be vindicated by years end. Henceforth the West European

communist parties became even more vocal in denouncing the political repression in the Soviet

Union and Eastern Europe communist parties. Those more outspoken parties, particularly in

Spain and Italy, would also begin to provide active support to Charter 77 movement in

Czechoslovakia and KOR in Poland. Moscow was apoplectic in its objections to the more

moderate brand of communism emerging in Western Europe. The Soviet ideologist Mikhail

Suslov branded the Eurocommunist support for Western-type political and civil freedoms as

“slanderous” of “real socialism” and berated the attempt to “wash out the revolutionary essence

of Marxist-Leninist teaching and substitute bourgeois liberalism for Marxism.” Pravda, (March 18,

1976). Bulgarian party leader Todor Zhivkov attacked Eurocommunism as a “bourgeois tool”

that was attempting to subvert the Communist movement. Todor Zhivkov, “Unity in the

Communist Movement,” World Marxist Review 19 (December, 1976), pp. 3ff.

This more pluralistic socialism in some West European Communist parties since the late 1960s

had greatly irritated Soviet leaders. As early as 1967, Brezhnev was reported by an eye-witness to

have said in a private conversation “K’chortu {to the devil} with those parties that set themselves

up as our mentors!” Erwin Weit, At the Red Summit: Interpreter Behind the Iron Curtain, (New York,

1973), p. 138. At the historical Cierna meeting in 1968, Dubcek had warned Brezhnev that West

European Communist parties would likely condemn a hard-line policy against the reforms in

Czechoslovakia. To this Brezhnev replied, “Whoever dares to do that, we have the means of

reducing to grouplets.” Jiri Valenta, “Eurocommunism and the USSR,” p. 110.

Vernon V. Aspaturian, “Conceptualizing Eurocommunism,” in Vernon V. Aspaturian, et al.

Eurocommunism Between East and West (Bloomington, 1980), p. 5.

256

since the Polish rail lines remained in disrepair following the worker riots of the previous week.

It would prove a bad omen. Throughout the conference the Soviet delegation sat sullenly as a

parade of speakers stepped to the podium to stake their independent course from the dictates of

Moscow. “For years,” declared Spain’s party leader Santiago Carillo, “Moscow was our Rome.

The Great October Revolution was our Christmas. But today we have grown up.”

As the

conference came to an end, the 29 European Communists parties produced an unprecedented

document endorsing the right of each party to go its own way—in effect validating Tito’s once

heretical “separate paths” to socialism.

The East Berlin Conference of Communist Parties ended just as Jimmy Carter was

preparing to travel to New York to accept the nomination at the Democratic National

Convention. For the first time in over a decade, the Democrats entered a convention unified

behind their candidate.

Much of this unity came from Brzezinski’s ability to keep Carter

acceptable to both wings of the party. In this respect the issue of human rights would, at least for

a time, unite the disparate factions of the Democratic Party. To the “McGovernite” liberals, the

focus on human rights was a way of condemning the abuses of right wing governments long

supported by the United States as a bulwark against communism. To more hawkish Democrats

human rights was designed to turn the ideological offensive on the Soviet Union at a time when

military containment had been discredited in Vietnam. As Carter's chief speechwriter Patrick

Anderson would note, human rights was "a no-lose issue" as "liberals liked human rights because

Carrillo elaborated his views in a later interview. “And why not make a comparison with

Luther? Nowadays he wouldn’t be burned by the Inquisition. Heretics usually turn out to be all

right. They are ahead of their time, but after all they are right. We want Communists to be

heretics. When we become conservatives, we are no longer right.” Flora Lewis, “Spanish Red

Likens Revolt Against Soviet to Luther’s,” The New York Times (July 7, 1976). Carillo’s analogy to

Luther was one long made by Brzezinski to demonstrate the fissures in the world communist

movement in the early 1960s. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Deviation Control: A Study in the

Dynamics of Doctrinal Conflict,” The American Political Science Review vol. LVI no. 1, (March,

1962), pp. 5-22.

Flora Lewis, “A Communist Milestone: East Berlin Conference Affirms the End of Doctrine of

a Monolithic Movement,” The New York Times (July 1, 1976). David Shipler, “European Reds Back

Autonomy for Each Party,” The New York Times (July 1, 1976). “The Last Summit: No Past or

Future,” Time (July 12, 1976). p. 24.

257

it involved political freedom and getting liberals out of jail in dictatorships, and conservatives

liked it because it involved criticisms of Russia.”

At this point Soviet and East European dissidents began to place their hopes on Jimmy

Carter’s promise that he intended to make the United States once more “a beacon of light for

human rights throughout the world.” In the midst of the Democratic convention Brzezinski

received a letter from Ludmilla Thorne, the president of Helsinki Watch, a group that had

recently emerged in the Soviet Union to monitor the agreements contained in the Helsinki Final

Act. Thorne was seeking Brzezinski’s assistance in helping Vladimir Bukovsky, a prominent

Soviet dissident who had spent the previous ten years in and out of Soviet labor camps. In the

early 1970s Bukovsky had been arrested by Soviet authorities after sending abroad official

documents demonstrating that Soviet authorities were placing dissidents into mental hospitals.

For his efforts Bukovsky was charged with “actions aimed at undermining Soviet rule” and

sentenced to five years in a labor camp. In this regard, Throne wrote the following.

Dear Professor Brzezinski: I am taking the liberty of writing you on behalf of Vladimir

Bukovsky and sending you some materials regarding his case. As you probably know, Bukovsky

is one of the most outstanding human beings in the Russian democratic movement, but

unfortunately, at the present time he is near death. This morning his mother called me from

Moscow relating her son’s critical condition. Amnesty International and numerous other

organizations and individuals have been doing everything possible to secure medical assistance

for Bukovsky and hopefully, his release. Last week 37 outstanding Americans signed a telegram

to Leonid Brezhnev (attached) and tomorrow there is going to be a demonstration for Bukovsky

in front of the U.N. But I believe the man who could be most helpful to Bukovsky is Jimmy

Carter. The Soviet authorities would pay heed to Mr. Carter’s request to free Vladimir Bukovsky

See Joshua Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade: Jimmy Carter and the Dilemmas of Human Rights

Policy (Lanham, Md., 1986), p. 3. Ford, through his association with Kissinger, continued to

suffer from the impression that he was indifferent to the plight of Soviet dissidents. In June

Veniamin G. Levich, a physical chemist and corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of

Sciences, castigated Ford in an open letter to the United States President. “Why have those who

have been waiting for long agonizing years in this country for their legitimate rights to be

implemented never sensed any moral support either from you, Mr. President, or from any one of

your Administration?” Mr. Levich then took issue with Kissinger’s contentions that “quiet

diplomacy,” was the best path to pursue such questions. “No one sensible,” declared Levich,

“can deny that there is certainly plenty of scope for this sort of diplomacy. In this case, however,

the voice of quiet diplomacy was so quiet that hardly anyone could hear it.” “A Soviet Scientist is

Critical of Ford on Human Rights,” The New York Times (June 26, 1976).

“Soviet Union: Intolerance,” Newsweek (January 17, 1972), p. 39. See also Andrei Sakharov,

Memoirs (New York, 1990), p. 334.

258

and it would also be to Mr. Carter’s credit to take an interest in the plight of Vladimir Bukovsky,

a Russian young man who represents all of the fine ideals in which we all believe.

Brzezinski responded by sending out a memo to the Carter campaign staff. “The

enclosed letter and enclosure about Bukovsky speaks for itself. It seems to me that one way of

dramatizing Carter’s commitment to human rights would be to insert into his speech a direct

appeal on Bukovsky’s behalf. A human touch of this sort would give much more meaning and

vitality to his statement and it would certainly dramatize Carter’s commitment.”

The Democratic Convention in New York provided an enormous lift for Carter. With

sizable support in the South he balanced the ticket by selecting Senator Walter Mondale of

Minnesota, a respected liberal senator from Minnesota, who had also been one of Brzezinski’s

original selections to join the Trilateral Commission in 1973. Carter, who entered the convention

with a sizable lead over Ford, left New York with an even bigger one.

In the summer of 1976, however, the historical legacy of the Helsinki Accords was still

very much in question. On August 1, the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki

Accords, Ford and Kissinger had taken few efforts to emphasize the human rights aspects

contained in Basket III. Indeed the Soviet leadership remained confident enough to

commemorate the one-year anniversary of Helsinki as a ringing triumph for Soviet diplomacy.

At the same time, conservative Republicans such as Ronald Reagan continued to berate the

Helsinki Final Act as a Yalta-like sell out of Eastern Europe.

Brzezinski thought Reagan’s wholesale repudiation of the Helsinki Final Act was as

counterproductive as the Ford-Kissinger preference for simply ignoring it. By late summer

Brzezinski advised Carter to focus on the fact that the Warsaw Pact nations were still not abiding

Personal Archives, office of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center of Strategic and International Studies,

(Washington DC).

See “A Year After Helsinki: Despite Moscow’s Promises, No Greater Freedom for East

Europe,” U.S. News and World Report (August 9, 1976). See also “Taking the Measure of

Helsinki,” Time (August 9, 1976).

259

by the "Basket III" aspects they had signed onto at Helsinki. It would be a turning point in the

public viewing of Helsinki.

Brzezinski understood that subtle changes were then taking place in Eastern Europe.

Since 1968 many dissidents in the east had given up on enlightened reform “from above” and

turned to something called “anti-politics.” This involved focusing on living as much as possible

outside the official structures sponsored by the communist government and simply asking the

communist regimes to abide by their own constitutions--and the agreements they had signed at

Helsinki.

Years later Brzezinski would explain his belief that Helsinki could become an effective

issue for Carter to distinguish him both from Kissinger’s pessimism and Reagan’s attempt to

revive the Cold War rhetoric of the 1950s:

I really felt these systems were in decay and artificial. I was quite convinced they hadn’t

taken root in the soil so to speak—so that the appearance of these dissident movements seemed

to me to be a confirmation of the proposition of putting an emphasis in a positive way on the

Basket III of the Helsinki Accords was a good strategy. It gave us (the Carter campaign) a real

opportunity to press them at the point of greater vulnerability to them, and to do it in a manner

which at the same time didn’t make us look as if we were just some sort of crude anti-

communists interested in inflaming or re-flaming the Cold War. Carter was killing the Soviets

with kindness because he was talking about engagement, human rights, disarmament--but the

Soviets knew what he was talking about it--- or at least they knew what I was thinking about.

Carter was still running well ahead of Ford as the campaign entered its home stretch. On

Labor Day Morning, Jimmy Carter stood on the front porch of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s

summer retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia. From a podium bearing the famous Yalta portrait of

FDR (probably not Brzezinski’s choice) he promised to restore “strength and hope to an afflicted

nation,” while depicting Ford as a “latter-day Herbert Hoover”— a decent man paralyzed by

inaction when the nation required dynamic changes.

The Ford campaign would have a more difficult task. Ford, after finally outlasting

Reagan at a raucous convention, entered the fall campaign as a severely wounded candidate. As

Interview, Washington, DC (March 29, 2000).

Witcover, Marathon, p. 582.

260

White House pollster Robert Teeter observed, Reagan’s hard-line campaign had moved beyond

ideology to effectively present Ford as an “error-prone loser.” Before the Republican convention

in August, Ford’s campaign manager Stuart Spencer and chief of staff Richard Cheney walked

into the Oval Office and presented the president with a notebook outlining the fall campaign

strategy. Spencer then provided Ford with an unusually blunt yet friendly summation. “Mr.

President, as a campaigner you’re no fucking good!” Ford had little choice but to laugh and

reluctantly agreed with the assessment. In a final, and ultimately prophetic, warning, Spencer

warned Ford that he was a “cooked goose” if he made any serious errors from here on out on the

campaign trail.

Ford went into Labor Day Ford weekend trailing Carter in most polls by up to twenty

points. But the Ford campaign still had a few things going for it. First among them was the fact

that Jimmy Carter remained an unknown quantity to most Americans. In September Ford’s

advisers insisted that Ford begin to depict Carter as “An unknown. A man whose thirst for

power dominates. Who doesn’t know why he wants the presidency or what he will do with it.

Inexperienced. Arrogant (deceitful). Devious and highly partisan (a function of uncontrolled

ambition). As liberal, well to the left of center and a part of the old-line Democratic Party.”

Though the characterization may have stretched credulity, it would prove to be an

effective strategy. In September Ford’s speeches began to hammer away at Carter’s “vagueness”

and lack of experience—primarily in foreign affairs. “The American people,” Ford began to

Ibid, p. 563-564. Ford’s advisers, realizing Ford’s lack of dynamism, opted to have Ford

campaign in major cities via the format of a television talk show. The “host” selected to chat with

the President was Joe Garagiola, an affable former big-league catcher whose television career

rested not on politics, but on his self-deprecating wit regarding his mediocrity at the plate and his

seemingly endless anecdotes about boyhood chum Yogi Berra. Garagiola sat with Ford in a

relaxed setting tossing up easy questions at the President that avoided messy things like Helsinki.

Garigiola, with prominent local Republicans sitting in, would ask “How many world leaders

have you dealt with?” Ford, in his affable manner, would reply “One hundred twenty-four

leaders of countries around the world, Joe.” It was a hokey, but effective pitch. By the end of the

campaign upward to a million viewers watched at “The Joe and Jerry Show” in each of the major

industrial states.

Witcover, p. 569.

261

declare day after day, “don’t want a person whose name they didn’t know a year and half ago

running American foreign policy.”

Ford’s attacks were hitting their mark. Carter’s poll

numbers took an additional hit after a particularly ill-timed interview with Playboy magazine and

his surprisingly lackluster performance in the first televised debate with Ford.

As the race moved into October Carter’s once commanding lead in the polls had

evaporated to make the race a virtual dead heat. This would add importance to the second

presidential debate that would deal exclusively with issues of foreign policy. Ford’s surging

campaign had reason to be confident. Not only was the president climbing in the polls, a debate

on foreign policy was thought to work to the advantage to an incumbent, who if only by nature

of the office, would invariably present a more “statesmanlike” presence.

According to adviser Doug Bailey, Ford entered the second debate with a briefing paper

urging him to stress two “incontrovertible facts”—“the country was at peace, and Jimmy Carter

had no practical experience in formulating or conducting either foreign or defense policy.” No

matter what questions were asked, and no matter how Carter chose to reply, Ford was to

reiterate those two simple points.

After engaging in a series of mock debates with Henry

Witcover, p. 575.

Late in the campaign Carter would dodge a scare provided by the rather bizarre campaign of

Eugene McCarthy whose campaign in 1968 had split the Democratic Party and in all likelihood

had deprived Hubert Humphrey the election to Richard Nixon. In the fall of 1976 the U.S.

Supreme Court rejected a request from McCarthy to set aside an order by New York’s state’s

highest court keeping his name off the presidential ballot. Most political commentators did not

take McCarthy’s campaign seriously yet the Carter’s strategists did not dismiss it cavalierly. They

had been concerned that McCarthy might, as he had in 1968 (like Ralph Nader would do to Al

Gore twenty-four years later) drain off significant segments of New York’s liberal Democratic

vote, possibility tilting the state, and with it, the entire election to Ford. Carter’s supporters had

been in the forefront of the legal battle in New York to bar McCarthy from the ballot. Sam Brown,

state treasurer of Colorado, the youth coordinator for McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign,

was persuaded to write to former McCarthy supporters, urging them to back Carter. For his

troubles, Brown received a visit later from a McCarthy coordinator in Colorado, who gave him a

present—thirty pieces of “silver”—three dollars in dimes—and a note that said, “In case Carter

forgot.” Witcover, Marathon, p. 672.

262

Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, it was also believed that Ford was ready for any questions that

might emerge dealing with Eastern Europe. “He knew the subject very well,” one adviser said.

With the election on the line Carter summoned Brzezinski to the St. Francis Hotel in San

Francisco to prepare for the foreign policy debate with Ford.

Brzezinski told Carter that as the

challenger he must immediately take the offensive for the major purpose of the debate was to

leave the impression that Ford had provided no foreign policy leadership. "Only by putting Ford

on the defensive,” Brzezinski insisted, could Carter “shatter the advantage of presidential

incumbency." Brzezinski then warned Carter that Ford would almost certainly attempt to portray

him as a foreign policy “liberal” naïve to the dangers of the Soviet threat. To counter that charge

Brzezinski handed Carter a lengthy memo listing points of Republican weakness toward

Moscow. This list included Ford’s failure to take advantage of the opportunities that had been

provided by the Helsinki Final Act. Brzezinski’s debate memo harkened back to the articles he

had written in the 1950s stressing the advantages of peacefully engaging Eastern Europe:

On October 7, the day of the debate, Ford adviser Stu Spencer spoke with a group of reporters

in Washington. He conceded that if Ford hoped to win in November he would have to win at

least five of the eight largest industrial states. All could be decided by the shift of a few

percentage points—and were states where millions of voters were of Eastern European—and

German—origin. The Eastern European voting bloc was largely Catholic, urban and blue-collar.

They had traditionally voted Democratic until the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party drove

them into the undecided category. Indeed, Ford’s pollsters showed that he had gained ground by

emphasizing his rigid opposition to abortion and by playing on suspicions of Carter’s born-again

Baptist evangelism. “The Blooper Heard Round the World,” Time (October 18, 1976), p. 13.

Carter’s gesture would further elevate Brzezinski’s profile with the national media. This

included a not entirely flattering profile by Leslie Gelb in the New York Times, which noted

Brzezinski was, like Kissinger, “deeply suspicious of Soviet leaders. But for Mr. Brzezinski, this

attitude is more instinctive—a product of his strong Roman Catholic beliefs, his upper-class East

European background, and his training as a specialist in Soviet affairs. For Mr. Kissinger, the

suspiciousness derives more from his reading of power politics.” The article concluded “Soviet

diplomats are worried about the prospect of Mr. Brzezinski’s holding a key post in a Carter

administration. This prospect is said to be one of the main reasons for Moscow’s continuing the

talks on strategic arms limitation in this election year.” Leslie H. Gelb, “Brzezinski Viewed as Key

Adviser to Carter,” The New York Times (October 6, 1976). The tenor of the article foreshadowed

the problems Brzezinski would encounter with the Carter State Department. Following Carter’s

victory in November Leslie Gelb would be appointed to a position under Secretary of State Cyrus

Vance from where he would become one of Brzezinski’s most vocal critics. After leaving office

Gelb’s criticisms went public. See Leslie Gelb, “The Vance Legacy,” The New Republic vol. 182, no.

19 (May 10, 1980) Also “Muskie and Brzezinski: The Struggle Over Foreign Policy,” The New York

Times Magazine (July 20, 1980).

263

Do not attack the Agreement as a whole. The so-called ‘Basket III’ gives us the right---for

the first time—to insist on respect for human rights without this constituting interference in the

internal affairs of communist states. Accordingly, this is a considerable asset for us, and you

should hammer away at the proposition that the Republicans have been indifferent to this

opportunity. The Helsinki Agreement also provides for the permanence of existing borders in

Europe, and this happens to be in our interest. Insecurity about borders tended to drive the East

Europeans (notably the Czechs and Poles--into Soviet hands). Thus, it is not in your interest to

suggest that it would have better if we had not accepted the existing borders.

Brzezinski’s memo also prepared a dummy answer for Carter to address any question

pertaining to Eastern Europe, a question he warned was likely to come from panelist Max

Frankel, a former Moscow correspondent from the New York Times:

I reject the notion that Eastern Europe should cultivate organic links with the Soviet

Union and I want to make it plain that the American interest in Eastern Europe is neither anti-

Soviet nor motivated by Cold War concerns. It is derived from my longer-range view that it is in

our collective interest to promote closer East-West cooperative ties, and I will use all of the

resources at my disposal to patiently promote such ties. We have ways of speaking directly to the

East Europeans (through the Radio), we can promote closer social and economic ties with them,

we can insist that the Helsinki Agreement be scrupulously observed in all of its aspects, and we

can do all of that in the context of trying to improve our relations with the Soviet Union as well.

The memo continued.

I believe that it is in the interest of Europe as a whole and also of American-Soviet

relations for Eastern Europe to become more involved in closer East-West cooperative

arrangements. This is not an effort to turn the region against the Soviet Union but at the same

time we must recognize that the East Europeans are entitled to shape their national destinies on

their own, free from foreign intervention such as transpired in Czechoslovakia less than ten years

ago. We are also aware that the Rumanians and the Yugoslavs are uncertain about their future.

We also know that the Poles or the Hungarians or the Czechs would like to have greater freedom.

All of that together makes Eastern Europe a zone of potential instability. In my view, American-

Soviet relations will become better and East-West relations will become more cooperative as

Eastern Europe itself becomes more engaged in all-European undertakings—be it in economic

cooperation or transport networks and particularly free movement of peoples. I would hope that

in time the Soviet leaders would come to recognize that this is not an effort to detach the region

from the Soviet Union or to turn it against the Soviet Union. But we live in an age in which

exclusive spheres of influence not longer have any historical justification and the Soviets cannot

consider Eastern Europe to be their exclusive sphere of influence.

“Points to Bear in Mind on East-West Relations,” Memo dated October 1976----Written by

Zbigniew Brzezinski for Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, Personal Archives, Office of

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center of Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC.

Ibid.

264

Brzezinski was in attendance that night at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts as Jimmy

Carter prepared to square off with Gerald Ford in what would become among the most

memorable debates in presidential history. Carter, taking the cue from Brzezinski’s memo,

immediately took to the offensive while focusing heavily on the issue of Basket III, which was

still a rather strange term for American viewers.

The debate continued back and forth, with Carter performing much better than had been

anticipated. The debate then turned to Eastern Europe. As Brzezinski had suggested, debate

panelist Max Frankel challenged Ford to defend his policy of détente:

Mr. President. I’d like to explore a little more deeply our relationship with the Russians.

They used to brag back in Khrushchev’s day that because of their greater patience and because of

our greed for business deals that they would sooner or later get the better of us. Is it possible that

despite some setbacks in the Middle East, they’ve proved their point? Our allies in France and

Italy are now flirting with communism. We’ve recognized the permanent Communist regime in

East Germany. We’ve virtually signed in Helsinki an agreement that the Russians have

dominance in Eastern Europe. We’ve bailed out Soviet agriculture with our huge grain sales.

We’ve given them large loans, access to our best technology and if the Senate hadn’t interfered

with the Jackson Amendment, maybe you would have given them even larger loans. Is that what

you call a two way street of traffic in Europe?

Ford, who had prepared specifically for just such a question, appeared especially eager to

meet Frankel’s challenge:

In the case of Helsinki, thirty-five nations signed an agreement, including the Secretary of

State for the Vatican. I can’t under any circumstances believe that His Holiness the Pope would

agree, by signing that agreement, that the thirty-five nations have turned over to the Warsaw

Pact nations the domination of Eastern Europe. It just isn’t true. And if Mr. Carter alleges that His

Holiness by signing that has done [so], he is totally inaccurate. And what has been accomplished

by the Helsinki Agreement? Number one, we have an agreement where they notify us and we

notify them of any military maneuvers that are to be undertaken. They have done it. And in both

Carter’s new angle of attack on Helsinki was significant. The political journalist Elizabeth

Drew would later report that it was in San Francisco that Carter first heard of Basket III “a term”

she noted “that in the course of the debate he dropped on what must have been a puzzled nation

as if he had been familiar with it for some time.” See Elizabeth Drew, “A Reporter at Large:

Human Rights,” The New Yorker (July 18, 1977), p. 37.

See "Transcript of Foreign Affairs Debate Between Ford and Carter," The New York Times

(October 7, 1976).

265

cases where they’ve done so there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never

will be under a Ford administration.

It was a statement so stunning that one reporter claimed to hear an “audible intake of

air” as Ford’s response settled in on the theatre. Brent Scowcroft, watching horrified just off the

stage, was said to have “gone white.” Indeed as moderator Pauline Frederick turned to question

Carter Frankel interrupted in apparent disbelief:

“I’m sorry, could I just follow? Did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not

using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there,

and making sure with their troops that it’s a Communist zone, whereas on our side of the line the

Italians and the French are still flirting with---“

Ford testily cut Frankel off with a “clarification” that would only dig his hole deeper. “I

don’t believe Mr. Frankel,” said Ford, now emphasizing his point with a firm karate chop across

his chest, “that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don’t

believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don’t believe

the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of these countries is

independent, autonomous, it has its own territorial integrity and the United States does not

concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”

The debate proved a turning point in the campaign. Republican hopes of highlighting

Carter's foreign policy “inexperience” were dashed when they had to explain why their

candidate seemed oblivious to perhaps the most fundamental truth of the Cold War. Ford was

leaving the theatre to go to a rally downtown when Kissinger called. According to one insider

Ibid. Questioner Max Frankel later realized that the framework of Ford's answer (excluding his

argument that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe) was virtually identical to the

view expressed by Kissinger in a previous interview. On that occasion Kissinger defended the

Helsinki Agreement with the logic that the United States would not agree to anything that was

not already a fact of life, observing that the Pope would not have agreed to authorize the Helsinki

Accord unless that was the case. Frankel believed that Ford's debate claim was a bungled

interpretation of a Kissinger briefing. Witcover, Marathon, p. 638.

"Transcript of Foreign Affairs Debate Between Ford and Carter.”

266

“Kissinger told Ford he’d done a great job and he never mentioned Eastern Europe. Then he

called Scowcroft just yelling and screaming about it.”

The job of clarifying what Ford really meant was left to Ford’s other advisers. The first

reporter asked Brent Scowcroft “Are there any troops in Poland? “Yes,” came the defensive reply.

“How many, would you say?” said the reporter. Scowcroft offered, “Off-hand, I don’t recall.

There are four divisions. I’m not sure, but a substantial number.” The reporter countered, “Do

you think that would imply some Soviet dominance of Poland?” And so it went.

Ford’s gaffe was more than Brzezinski could have hoped for. “We wanted to make

Basket III, in effect Basket I,” Brzezinski recalled, “To make it the focus--and it did catch on

because it was responsive to basic American feelings. And then Ford played in to that with his

silly statements in San Francisco.”

Yet Brzezinski, who had as much emotional connection to

Eastern Europe as anybody, warned the Carter campaign to avoid overplaying the issue. The day

after the debate he circulated a memo among the Carter campaign staff.

In general I would be careful not to overplay this subject. Carter should speak more out

of sorrow than anger; we regret that the President is either ignorant of an important problem in

international affairs or is indifferent (perhaps under Kissinger’s and Sonnenfeldt’s influence) to

The quick press reaction, in fact, was blamed later by a number of Ford’s key aides for shaping

public opinion about Ford’s remarks. According to Nessen and Duval, a Teeter poll taken right

after the debate had Ford “winning” by 11 percentage points; but in successive polls thoughout

the next day as the press and television reaction spread, he fell progressively behind, until finally

the surveys had him “losing” the debate by an incredible 45 points. “What that meant to me,”

Nessen said afterward, “was that the average guy in his living room watching the debate did not

perceive it to be a monumental mistake. After twenty-four hours of being told it was a bad

mistake, the public changed their minds.” Witcover, Marathon, p. 641.

The Ford campaign would never fully recover. Ford's blunder was a major liability in the last

month of the campaign, particularly with voters of Eastern European disent in key Midwestern

states. Polish-American Congress leader Aloysius Mazewski hinted at the potential political

damage, remarking "Our people do usually vote Democratic, but we were aware that many of

them were not enthusiastic about Carter and were going to vote for President Ford-I think many

of them will go back to the Democratic side now." Victor Viksnins, chairman of the Captive

Nations Committee appeared to speak for all concerned "there are no free countries in Eastern

Europe and the President should be the first to know that." See Seth King, "Ethnic Groups Score

Ford's Views on Soviet Role in Eastern Europe," The New York Times (October 8, 1976).

Interview, Washington DC, (March 29, 2000).

267

the fate of a large number of people who have kin in this country. Emphasis should be put on the

fact that already back in March (March 16

in Chicago) Carter addressed himself to the question

of Eastern Europe, and warned of the Soviet threat to Yugoslavia, Rumania, Poland, etc. There is

good language in that speech, and surfacing it again would show that he is not merely exploiting

Ford’s mistake but speaking out of conviction.

The temptation to exploit Ford’s misstatement would prove too great, however. Carter,

campaigning the next night in Salt Lake City, noted that the Soviet Union still had combat tank

divisions in Poland, occupation forces in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and troops in East

Germany. “Did Mr. Ford not see those tanks when he visited Poland last year,” Carter asked

rhetorically. “A new Berlin Wall is being built at this very moment between East Germany and

the West,” Carter continued in a remark later made more famous by Ronald Reagan, “If the

people there are free, let them tear down the wall and we will observe the exodus from East

Germany.”

Carter pledged the next night at a dinner of Polish-American leaders in Chicago,

“It’s time we had a President who understands the facts about Eastern Europe, who will speak

up for freedom throughout the world.” Carter then picked up his campaign in Cleveland,

Indianapolis, and Chicago, all cities with large East European émigré populations. While in

Cleveland, Carter refuted Ford's claim that he is the most experienced of the candidates, noting

sarcastically "if we had wanted experience, we would have kept Richard Nixon. At least other

Presidents knew whose tanks were in Poland."

In November of 1976 Jimmy Carter would defeat Gerald Ford in one of the closet

elections in American history. In the ensuing weeks there was much speculation about the type of

foreign policy Carter would employ. Carter had privately consulted Henry Kissinger before the

election for advice on choosing his successor. Kissinger’s advice was rather limited, but he did

Campaign Memo from Brzezinski to Carter staffers---- October 8, 1976, “Items to Bear in Mind

Regarding Eastern Europe,” Personal archives of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington DC.

See James Naughton, "Carter Assails Ford on 'Serious Blunder'-Says Remark on Russians Not

Dominating Eastern Europe Shows 'Insensitivity' on Issue," The New York Times (October 8, 1977).

Ibid.

268

suggest that Carter avoid Zbigniew Brzezinski as Secretary of State as he was “excessively

emotional and not able to think impassively in the long term.”

Brzezinski, though perhaps disagreeing Kissinger’s analysis, was in fact more interested

in a different post. On December 18, 1976 President-elect Carter introduced Brzezinski as his new

National Security Adviser. Standing in a muddy press field in Plains, Georgia, Brzezinski

introduced himself to the nation. After expressing his gratitude toward Carter and briefly

outlining the duties and concerns he would take into the job, Brzezinski faced the inevitable

question. “Mr. Brzezinski,” one reporter asked inevitably, “is Secretary Kissinger going to be a

tough act to follow?” Brzezinski replied “I will let you make that judgment a number of years

from now.”

Much of the press already had made that judgment. Kissinger, after eight years in the

White House, was still a living legend to many in the Washington press corps. Indeed, much of

the introductory press surrounding Brzezinski’s nomination focused on the fact that he did not

quite measure up to his predecessor—some were subtler than others. “The two men, in fact, have

many surface similarities,” noted the New York Times in its first profile on Brzezinski. “They are

Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents

(New York, 1995) p. 368. Kissinger may have been thinking in more personal terms. David

Halberstam recalled an occurrence shortly after Carter’s election when Kissinger was invited to a

dinner at Washington Post editor Katherine Graham’s in honor of Frank Wisner, who had just

been named ambassador to Zambia. Halberstam recalls, “During the festivities, Kissinger had

been extremely bothered by a photo on the mantel of a slim, handsome young man. ‘Kay,’ he

asked, ‘how could you do it to me?’ ‘Do what, Henry?’ she asked, genuinely puzzled. ‘Put up a

photo of Zbig, and so quickly, too.’ ‘Henry,’ she said, ‘that is a photo of Phil Graham’ (her late

husband). David Halberstam, “The New Establishment,” Vanity Fair vol. 57 no. 10, (October

1994), p. 256.

Brzezinski was also asked if he believed in the “policy of détente with the Soviet Union, and

on the same basis as we’ve seen in the Nixon-Ford Administrations?” Brzezinski replied “Well, I

don’t believe that in every respect that policy of détente in the future ought to be the same as it

was in the last eight years. As a broad proposition I would say that an accommodation, a gradual

accommodation between the United States and the Soviet Union is in the general interest of peace

and of humanity. But a détente to be enduring, to be accepted by the American people, has to be

a détente which is reciprocal and which progressively becomes more comprehensive. I believe

that this is the kind of détente that the American people want and this is the kind of a détente

which Governor Carter has indicated in the course of the campaign that he will pursue.”

“Transcript of Carter’s News Conference Introducing His Three New Appointees,” The New York

Times (December 17, 1976).

269

both foreign born: they both have foreign accents, with Mr. Kissinger’s more pronounced; each

turns a phrase well, with Mr. Kissinger the more witty; each has written numerous books and

essays, with Mr. Kissinger’s regarded by many as the more weighty and Mr. Brzezinski’s the

more numerous. Moreover while both men possess strong egos, Mr. Kissinger seems to take

himself less seriously in public than does Mr. Brzezinski. But this may simply be the difference

between a man in power and one lacking it.”

The New Republic, in a more biting critique, editorialized:

In five books of his own and two more as major co-author, in a fat file of articles and

commentaries, Brzezinski shows himself to be adept at that prodigal, often exhausting use of

language that frequently passes for scholarly achievement. Yet for all its size, there is something

inescapably shapeless about the total product. The early scholarship on Soviet affairs will stand

no comparison with his Harvard rival, Adam Ulam, or his sponsor (Merle) Fainsod. Awaiting

almost every book was a timely irrelevance, a shallowness and obsolescence obscured in the

popular reception only because, as always, journalism and government lag so consistently behind

the realities of foreign affairs….What is so striking now about his work is not so much the

misconceptions as the conscious, ceaseless reach for novelty, the seeming search for a new vogue,

the use of writing less for ideas than for attention.

Even Brzezinski’s longtime acquaintances, perhaps with a taste of envy, also began to

criticize Brzezinski. “Maybe the thing I am most mad at in the case of Zbig,” noted Stanley

Hoffman in an article appearing shortly after Carter’s inaugural, “he was a man who could have

been an absolutely first-rate scholar. He had it in him. His first books were very good books. And

to me he has a little bit prostituted that talent in order to get power.”

Brzezinski had never wanted simply to be an academic, however. His intent since he

entered Harvard in 1950 had been to influence policy. For the previous two decades Brzezinski

had been on the fringes of power seeking to affect his policy of peaceful engagement toward

Eastern Europe. Now he would have the opportunity to implement policy more directly.

“Zbigniew Brzezinski,” The New York Times (December 19, 1976).

“Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski: Born to Skim,” The New Republic (January 1 & 8, 1977), pp. 7-

Robert Sheer, “In Search of Brzezinski,” The Washington Post (February 6, 1977).

270

Kissinger, earlier in the campaign, had warned Soviet ambassador Dobrynin that Carter had the

“disposition of a Baptist preacher,” and might “indulge himself in moralizing over human rights

without realizing how this would be seen as interference by the Soviet Union.”

Brzezinski in

turn believed that Kissinger had long been too deferential to Soviet sensitivities on such matters.

He also knew the power Basket III had over the nascent opposition groups in Eastern Europe.

Though Ford’s debate gaffe on Eastern Europe would receive a great deal of attention,

Carter’s emphasis on human rights and Basket III helped transform the perception of Helsinki

from a Yalta-like sell out to a rallying call for Soviet and Eastern Europe’s opposition movements.

Indeed the Carter transition would see dramatic new developments taking place in

Czechoslovakia.

On January 1, 1977, some 243 individuals signed a 3,000-word petition protesting the

repressive nature of the government-- specifically violations of the freedom of expression, and

the right to an education, of freedom of information, and of religious convictions. The emergence

of what became known as the “Charter 77” movement helped to dilute the myth that the regime

had won the passive acceptance of the entire populace in the aftermath of 1968 and that the ideals

of the Prague Spring were still alive in the country. Although Charter 77 did not refer specifically

to the events of 1968, it was a reminder of the hope and aspirations cut short by the Soviet

invasion.

The Polish opposition was also gathering strength with its nascent alliance of workers

and intellectuals that had emerged with the founding of KOR in the fall of 1976. On January 8 a

group of 172 Polish dissidents appealed to the Polish Parliament to investigate charges of alleged

Kissinger noted “The first year under Jimmy Carter might seem more difficult than it had been

under Ford, not because of any bias against the Soviet Union but because Carter lacked

experience in international affairs and tended to oversimplify them. He figured it would take

Carter four to six months to get a grip on foreign policy in general and Soviet relations in

particular. Nevertheless, Kissinger could not foresee any significant differences in Carter’s policy,

although he would seem more dynamic and self-directing than Ford.”

Anatoly Dobrynin, In

Confidence, p. 368.

Otto Ulc, “One Decade of Post-Invasion Czechoslovakia,” Survey vol. 24, no. 3 (1979), pp. 201-

213.

271

torture and police brutality. The committee charged that the police beat and tortured workers to

obtain confessions that they participated in the June riots and worker strikes.

In doing so both groups would be encouraged by the unprecedented support coming

forth from the incoming Carter Administration.

As one scholar observed, “In the eyes of the

Czechs and Slovaks, the Helsinki Final Act amounted to a post facto condemnation of the Soviet

invasion of their county; in the eyes of the Poles, the act reduced the chances of a Soviet invasion

of Poland. The Carter administration’s early pronouncements about human rights further

heartened both peoples.”

“Dissidents in Poland Urge Probe of Brutality Charge,” The Washington Post (January 9, 1977).

Adam Bromke, “Czechoslovakia 1968—Poland 1978: A Dilemma for Moscow,” International

Journal (Autumn 1978), p. 22.

272

CHAPTER SEVEN: 1977: THE ROOTS OF A REVOLUTION

At 3 p.m. on January 20, 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski left the Presidential box for the White

House to begin his first day as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser. Nobody was

quite sure how an untested one-term governor would run the foreign policy of the United States.

Yet Brzezinski had provided some idea with his contribution to what would become one of the

more significant inaugural addresses in modern history. “Because we are free, we can never be

indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere,” President Carter declared. “We do not seek to

intimidate, but it is clear that a world which others can dominate with impunity would be

inhospitable to decency and a threat to the well-being of all people.”

It had been two decades since Brzezinski had articulated his policy of “peaceful

engagement” toward Eastern Europe. For twenty years it had been deflected by overt attempts

by the Soviet Union to circumvent it and later by the bilateral détente seen in the Nixon and Ford

Administration’s. Yet by 1977 the long-term dividends Brzezinski had envisioned in the late

1950s were beginning to show themselves.

The arrival of the Carter Administration seemed to have an immediate impact in Poland,

where Party leader Edward Gierek was burdened by a severe economic crisis and an opposition

emboldened partly by the Basket III sections of the Helsinki Accords. Indeed the day before

Carter’s inauguration the Polish government publicly announced it was taking a “softer line” on

its opposition groups.

Polish officials noted that they would now handle domestic critics by

“political means” rather than the mass arrests and heavy handed police harassment that had

marked the aftermath of the 1976 labor riots. This more moderate approach was, according to one

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981

(New York, 1983), p. 123.

273

observer, based on the belief that Poland’s political opposition contained a “small number of

individuals” that could be isolated by a campaign of “propaganda and personal defamation.”

Over the next two weeks Gierek offered clemency for most of the workers still

imprisoned for their part in the June 1976 factory riots that erupted in the wake of government

imposed food price increases. Gierek would also take a more moderate approach toward cultural

matters. In early March Andrzej Wajda’s film “The Man of Marble ” was released throughout

Poland. The controversial film, which examined the tragic fate of a hero-worker in the Stalinist

era, became the most widely talked about film in decades and played to packed houses for

months.

Gierek’s displays of tolerance, however, would only embolden the opposition that had

been inspired by the Helsinki Accords and the presence of Zbigniew Brzezinski in the White

House.

As Adam Michnik, a prominent member of the KOR opposition group, would later

note: “Kissinger had a vision like Metternich-- ‘we divide the world into spheres of influence and

we talk with governments’—and Ford continued this policy. But Brzezinski and Carter said

Flora Lewis, “Poland Softens Stand on Critics,” The New York Times (January 20, 1977). Gierek

desperately needed assistance to cope with the problems of a failing economy and mounting

political pressures from below. On November 9, 1976, a week after Carter’s election, the Polish

leader flew to Moscow where his moderate line was endorsed by the Kremlin. “One would not

know it from reading most American newspapers,” noted Tad Szulc, “but the Gierek-Brezhnev

meeting (their 23

) was regarded in Warsaw as the most important ever. To underscore Poland’s

national unity in dealing with the Russians, Mr. Gierek had taken along not only top party and

Government officials—but also parliamentary representatives of non-Communist groups. This

was unprecedented, and the point—not wasted on Mr. Brezhnev—was that Mr. Gierek went to

Moscow as a Polish leader, not simply as a Communist leader.” Tad Szulc, “’Fire Brigade Duty’

For Brezhnev,” The New York Times (December 17, 1976).

The film told the story of Agnieszka--a young contemporary film student who obsessively seeks

the elusive trail of Birkut, a “workers hero” whose work production became the subject of

national newsreel prominence then disappeared in the Stalinist purge atmosphere of the early

1950s. The film’s complex plot concludes with the young filmmaker being told she will not be

permitted to produce her movie, but with her father enjoining her to continued “finding out the

truth.” Wajda’s final group of scenes suggested that the worker-hero died in the 1970 Gdansk

riots. Such scenes were apparently thought to have been too relevant to the current situation and

did not pass the government censors. See Peter Osnos, “’Man of Marble’: Getting at Poland’s

Core,” The Washington Post (June 19, 1977).

Adam Bromke, “The Opposition in Poland,” Problems of Communism (September-October 1978),

p. 47.

274

‘there were not only governments but societies,’ who very often think different than the

government, but they are gagged. And Brzezinski understood what hardly anybody could

understand at that time in America; that an ideological confrontation with the Soviet bloc had to

be undertaken and the American slogan should be human rights.”

The power of the Helsinki Final Act was also on display that January when the “Charter

77” movement challenged the hard line Czech regime to abide by the guidelines of its own

constitution and the agreements it signed onto at Helsinki.

“Certainly Helsinki was at the

beginning of all this,” said Charter 77 spokesman Jan Patocka the very day Carter took office.

“We were waiting to see if the Helsinki principles would be implemented here, if they would

have the force of law. One had to do something as a citizen, as a human being, to insure that

these rights that were given to us would not remain a dead letter. The fundamental question now

is indeed whether this action will bring about more freedom or more repression.”

It would not take long to find out. In the ensuing weeks the Charter signatories would

come under relentless harassment by Czech authorities. Over the next week the party-controlled

press vilified the Chartists as “Zionists” and “cosmopolitans,” “enemies, traitors, vermin, scum,”

and “agents of imperialism.”

On January 14, 1977 Vaclav Havel, a noted playwright and

prominent Charter 77 spokesman, was arrested by the authorities, giving credence to

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (March 30, 2001).

The entire Charter 77 document was printed in the Western press in the weeks after is release.

See “Manifesto Charging Rights Violations in Czechoslovakia,” The New York Times (January 27,

1977).Among the most noteworthy signers were playwright Pavel Kohout, former Foreign

Minister Jiri Hajek, former Politburo member Frantisek Kriegel, former Party Secretary Zdenek

Mlynar, Student leader Jiri Mueller, Playwright Vaclac Havel and the widow and son of Rudolf

Slansky, the Czechoslovak Communist Party Secretary who was executed in 1952 at the height of

the Stalinist frenzy. Otto Ulc, “One Decade of Post-Invasion Czechoslovakia,” Survey vol. 24, no.

3 (1979), pp. 201-213.

Michael Getler, “Dissidents Challenge Prague—Tension Builds Following Demand for Freedom

and Democracy,” The Washington Post (January 21, 1977).

275

government warnings that “those who lie on the rails to stop the train of history must expect to

get their legs cut off.”

Charter 77 thus marked an immediate challenge to see if the Carter Administration was

going to move beyond the Nixon-Kissinger “code of détente” and support human rights in the

Warsaw Pact nations. Indeed former Communist Party Secretary Zdenek Mlynar, a long time

supporter of a more humane brand of socialism, observed that the Western democracies must

quickly decide whether they will allow “supporters of internationally accepted pacts on human

and civil rights in Czechoslovakia to be brutally suppressed for the second time in a decade.”

As one of the harshest critics of Lyndon Johnson’s hands off approach during the Prague

Spring of 1968, Brzezinski thought it vital that the United States speak out in support of the

Charter 77 movement.

On January 26, the Carter State Department, in a statement cleared

“Human Rights: Spirit of Helsinki, Where Are You,” Time (January 24, 1977). The treatment of

playwright Pavel Kohout (who had coined the term “Charter 77”) was typical of the tactics

employed by the Prague authorities. In late January Czech police vehicles stopped Kohout’s car

and, with guns drawn, ordered him and his wife out of their car. When Kouhout refused to get

out the police pried the door open with a crowbar. They then forcibly removed Kouhot before

pulling his wife out by her hair. They were then both taken in for questioning at Ruzyne. The

following day Kohout was driving his wife to a Prague hospital (she had been injured when

taken into custody) when two black cars again forced his car to stop after which a secret police

official waved a pistol in their faces. As Kohout emerged from his car, the police proceeded to

beat him while berating him as “writer” and a “swine!” He and his wife were then again taken in

for another day of interrogation. Thereafter a police car was parked in front of Kouhout’s

apartment and he was notified that he would have to give up his car “for inspection.” This loss

was imposed on other signers of Charter 77. Kohout’s phone, like those of virtually all the other

signers of the Charter, was cut off. Even the pay phone a few meters from his apartment building

was cut. When he did leave his house plain clothed policemen in three or four cars followed him

constantly. Shortly thereafter Czech officials began proceedings to evict him from his apartment.

Michael Getler, “Prague’s War of Nerves,” The Washington Post (January 22, 1977).

Michael Ketler, “Prague Goes Public on Arrests,” The Washington Post (January 18, 1977).

Malcolm Browne of the New York Times expressed the attitude that Brzezinski regarded as an

almost de facto recognition of the Brezhnev Doctrine. “There seems to be considerable agreement

between Communist leaders and non-Communists that the worst thing that could happen would

be another period of cultural, economic and political liberalization like the one in 1968 under

Alexander Dubcek. It was cut short by a Soviet-led military invasion followed by the installation

of Gustav Husak as the Czechoslovak leader. Under Mr. Husak, the country has been one of the

more orthodox Soviet allies and dissent has been crushed wherever it manifested itself. But Mr.

Husak has avoided sending large numbers of people to jail, preferring to rely on the threat of

imprisonment, harassment and economic incentives to keep them in line.” Malcomn W. Browne,

276

through Brzezinski, publicly reprimanded the Czechoslovakian government for its treatment of

the signatories of Charter 77. It would mark the first time a United States State Department had

publicly accused a government of failing to comply with the 1975 Helsinki Accords.

The Czech government immediately accused the Carter administration of breaking the

“code of détente” and interfering in its internal affairs. But by the end of January the Carter

Administration had made it clear that such abuses would no longer be overlooked in pursuit of

the “greater good” of stability and superpower détente. In February the Czech foreign minister

explained defensively that the regime had been only temporarily “distracted” by a handful of

“reactionaries”--but now had to proceed with the “further successes in the building of

socialism.”

The Carter Administration’s pronouncements in support of human rights would have

their greatest impact in the Soviet Union. The Soviet physicist and Nobel Prize winner Andre

Sakharov had been one of the more vocal critics of the Nixon-Kissinger détente. Yet Sakharov

“Prague Seems Unfazed by Criticism of its Human Rights Practices,” The New York Times

(January 28, 1977).

Carter State Department Spokesman Frederick Z. Brown read the following statement: “We

have noted that the signers of Charter 77 explicitly state that it is not a document of political

opposition. Some of the signers have reportedly been detained or harassed. As you know, the

Helsinki Final Act provides that in the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the

participating states will act in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter and of

the United Nations and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They will also fulfill

their obligations as set forth in the international declarations and agreements in this field,

including the international covenants on human rights, to which they may be bound.” See

Bernard Gwertzman, “U.S. Asserts Prague Violates Covenants about Human Rights,” The New

York Times (January 27, 1977).

“Dual Messages to Washington,” Time (February 14, 1977), p. 33. The Czech authorities did

move quickly to tighten control over Western journalists covering the activities of the Charter 77

dissidents. On February 8, 1977 the U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia issued a protest

regarding the detention of NBC correspondent Leslie Collitt who had been detained by East

German authorities, at Czech request, for more than seven hours in Dresden where East German

police confiscated Collitt’s notes concerning discussions with Czech dissidents. In a similar

incident New York Times reporter Paul Hoffman was removed from a Vienna-bound train by

Czechoslovakian police and held overnight at a border police station while his notes on Charter

77 members were confiscated. Such incidents were the beginnings of an organized campaign by

Czech authorities to reduce the contact between Western press outlets and dissidents. Murray

Seegar, “Prague Imposes Tougher Rules on West’s Reporters,” The Washington Post (April 11,

1977). See also “U.S. Protests to Czechs about Shadowing of Newsman,” The Washington Post

(January 21, 1977).

277

sensed a new era had arrived when he heard President Carter speak in support for human rights

in his inaugural address. Sakharov would note in his memoirs, “For the first time the head of a

great power had announced an unambiguous commitment to the international defense of human

rights.”

Sakharov was so inspired by Carter’s innagural address that he immediately sent a

personal letter to Carter. The letter arrived at the White House on January 28.

It was the first

difficult decision for a President that had been in office for a little over a week. Carter, on the

advice of Brzezinski, returned Sakharov’s letter, informing him that he “may rest assured that the

American people and our government will continue our firm commitment to promote respect for

human rights not only in our own country but also abroad.”

Carter’s letter hit the Soviets at a point of extreme sensitivity. Carter’s gesture to

Sakharov would produce the first great controversy in the Carter Administration’s human rights

campaign. After a week of palpable tension, Brezhnev responded with a hostile letter to Carter

warning the Soviet Union would not allow “interference in our internal affairs, whatever pseudo-

humanitarian slogans are used to present it.”

While Brzezinski had expected such a response from the Soviet Union, he was more

disturbed to find that many in the West looked upon the letter to Sakharov as a needless

provocation. Brzezinski made the point that American-Soviet relations had not been hurt by

Brezhnev’s direct contacts with pro-Soviet American activists Gus Hall and Angela Davis.

Brzezinski would later note:

Let’s put all this in its proper context. Shortly after the inauguration, the President

received a letter of congratulations from the Nobel Prize Winner—to which the President decided

See Michael Scammell, “The Prophet and the Wilderness: How the Idea of Human Rights

Crippled Communism,” The New Republic (February 25, 1991), p. 35.

Bernard Gwertzman, “Sakharov Sends Letter to Carter Urging Help on Rights in Soviet,” The

New York Times (January 29, 1977).

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 156.

Murrey Marder, “Carter Firm as Soviets Assail Support of Dissidents,” The Washington Post

(February 19, 1977).

278

to respond. If he had received a similar letter from a resident of say, Pinochet’s Chile, every

liberal in the world would have condemned him for not responding. It seemed the normal and

civil thing to write a polite answer, which the President did. Besides, not to have done so would

have been an act of cowardice, matching President Ford’s unwillingness to see Solzhenitsyn.

Nevertheless Brzezinski fully understood that Carter’s approach to human rights

entailed certain risks. In the ensuing weeks following the Sakharov affair the Soviet authorities

cracked down on the founders of the Helsinki Watch Group. In early February Alexander

Ginzburg, who had been administering a $365,000 fund set up by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to

assist political prisoners and their families, was seized from a public phone and hauled away to a

prison in the city of Kaluga, 90 miles southwest of Moscow. The next week police broke the door

and ransacked Yuri Orlov’s apartment, arresting him while confiscating documents he had

collected on Soviet mistreatment of political prisoners, religious groups, and ethnic minorities.

The intensified Soviet reaction led to new pressures on Carter to relax his stance on

human rights.

Professor Jerry Hough, a well-known Soviet specialist at Duke University,

argued that Carter risked raising false hopes with his new posture. “In the case of particular

individuals,” Hough argued, “the new policy may have an impact…but in terms of promoting

liberalization in the Soviet Union it will do no good…What happens when it doesn’t produce

anything productive?”

George Urban, “A Long Coverstation with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski,” Encounter (1981), p. 22.

“Dual Messages from Washington,” Time (February 14, 1977), p. 30.

“At the very least,” noted a cautionary article in Newsweek, “Carter’s letter will make it more

difficult for him to establish the kind of relationship with Brezhnev that aided Ford and Richard

Nixon in past negotiations. Carter’s approach also pointed up the drawbacks of a moralistic

foreign policy. Such a commitment to human rights inevitably spurs additional appeals for

intervention. Sakharov, in fact, immediately wrote Carter a second letter on behalf of five other

Soviet dissenters. Unless, the Administration is prepared to endorse all or most such causes, it

lays itself open to the charge that the U.S. is encouraging dissidents to speak out at great risk

without having the means—or the national will—to go to their aid.” “Carter Global Blitz,”

Newsweek (February 28, 1977), p. 17.

Robert G. Kaiser, “Rights Improvisation Strains Détente; ‘Grown Like Topsy…Feeding on

Itself,’” The Washington Post (February 27, 1977). In the late 1970s Jerry Hough became a darling

media figure in his attempts to “explain” the Soviet Union. He was also the prime example of

what Brzezinski thought had gone wrong with the field of Soviet studies in the 1960s. Hough

279

In late February Carter was scheduled to meet with Vladmir Bukovsky, a prominent

former dissident who had been released from the Soviet Union in late 1976 in exchange for a the

release of a Chilean communist prisoner. In late February Soviet officials began a shrill campaign

to dissuade Carter from meeting Bukovsky, deriding the former dissident as “scum” and an

“anti-Soviet criminal.”

Carter received Bukovsky at the White House on March 1 and assured

him that the United States’ support of human rights was “permanent.”

As Carter was greeting Bukovsky a group of dissenters gathered in the apartment of Yuri

Orlov, the recently arrested founder of Helsinki Watch, in an effort to show that they were no

longer afraid to gather publicly and speak out. Valentin Turchin, head of the Moscow chapter of

had been one of the most outspoken critics of Brzezinski’s totalitarian model using the tools of

social science theory to conclude that the Soviet Union was in fact a “pluralist” society. Hough’s

most controversial claim was that Stalin’s Five-Year Plan had democratic roots in a “cultural

revolution” by workers against holdover “bourgeois specialists,” which culminated in a massive

“upward social mobility.” In a 1979 article Hough took issue with Brzezinski’s claims made in the

1960s that the Soviet Union had “petrified.” Hough noted, “A judgment that the Soviet system

has petrified amounts to a prediction that the leadership cannot or will not cope with problems

that continually arise in any political system, and such predictions have been wrong in the past.

After Nikita Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964, for example, a number of observers (here Hough cites

Brzezinski and Robert Conquest) argued that a process of petrifaction had set in. Yet today we

can see that the post-Khrushchev leadership in its 15-year tenure has been able to bring about

economic growth, a rise in living standards, and an increase in national power while still

maintaining political stability.” Jerry H. Hough, “The Generation Gap and the Brezhnev

Succession,” Problems of Communism, vol. XXVIII, no. 4, (July-August, 1979), pp. 1-16. In 1979 the

same Jerry Hough was the controversial choice to “update” the late Merle Fainsod’s How Russia is

Ruled. Hough’s “revising” consisted of distorting the entire intent of Fainsod’s original work as

seen in the change of the original title to “How the Soviet Union is Governed.” While Fainsod’s

index provided over sixty references to forced labor camps, Hough’s revision gave not a single

one. While Fainsod spoke of millions of victims of Stalinism, Hough remarkably insisted the

figure was closer to ten-thousand. Robert Conquest recalls that Russian historian Stephen Cohen

approached him, “There’s somebody here who thinks Stalin only killed ten thousand people,”

said Cohen. Conquest was then referred to Jerry Hough. “Jerry, how many people did Stalin

kill?” Hough replied on cue. “Ten Thousand or so.” Robert Conquest, “Academe and the Soviet

Myth,” The National Interest, no. 31 (Spring, 1993), p. 93. Later estimates provided by the KGB

claimed that 36 million people fell victim to Stalin’s terror between 1927 and 1953. That figure

included those that were exiled and imprisoned. The figure did not include those who died from

hunger during the 1930s—a famine that Stalin deliberately created to break the will of the Soviet

peasantry. See Paul Quinn-Judge, “Soviets Raise Count on Stalin Victims,” The Christian Science

Monitor (January 30, 1989).

“Moscow Hints Carter Should Snub Bukovsky,” The Washington Post (February 25, 1977).

“Moscow’s Expert on U.S. Asserts Rights Issue May Cloud Arms Talk,” The New York Times

(March 17, 1977).

Peter Osnos, “Carter Praised by Dissidents in Moscow,” The Washington Post (March 1, 1977).

28 0

Amnesty International, suggested that Carter’s willingness to stand up to Soviet pressure and

meet with Bukovsky had “historic significance” as a reaffirmation of the United States’ support

for human rights.

Carter’s gesture was met less favorably closer to home, however. West German

Chancellor Helmut Schmidt would become the most hostile allied critic of what he derisively

termed Carter’s “missionary” foreign policy. Schmidt’s Ostpolitik was accompanied by an implicit

understanding that West Germany would not challenge the political or territorial status quo in

Eastern Europe-a scenario which one scholar would refer to as "tacit alliance" between Bonn and

Moscow.

Schmidt’s strategy was based on Bonn's belief that if Moscow viewed Eastern Europe

as unchallenged from the West, it would be relaxed enough to create an atmosphere where

Europe (and eventually Germany) could begin a gradual unification. Since a return to Cold War

tensions would disrupt this plan, détente could be sacrificed only under the most extreme

circumstances.

The week Carter greeted Bukovsky at the White House Schmidt had summarily rejected

a meeting with Andrei Amalrik, another former dissident, who wanted to discuss the repression

of Soviet intellectuals.

French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing would reject a similar request

from Amalrik with the explanation that France would continue its “pragmatic” policy of not

Ibid.

Schmidt who had found common cause with Kissinger’s version of detente—would become

contemptuously dismissive of Carter’s human rights campaign against the Soviet Union and

Eastern Europe. Schmidt had published a book in 1969 entitled The Balance of Power. German Peace

Policy and the Superpowers. Like Henry Kissinger he regarded the balance of power in Europe as

the key to the preservation of peace. At the same time, he viewed superpower détente as a

prerequisite for working incrementally to reduce the divisions separating Berlin and Germany.

Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent, (New York, 1993), p.

86.

For a look at West German policy toward Eastern Europe see Josef Joffe, "The View From Bonn:

The Tacit Alliance," in Lincoln Gordon ed., Eroding Empire: Western Relations with Eastern Europe

(Washington, DC 1987), pp. 129-187.

Peter Osnos, “Soviets Warn U.S. Acts on Dissidents Cold Affect Ties,” The Washington Post

(February 21, 1977).

28 1

defending political dissidents in other countries.

This sentiment was increasingly echoed in the

national press of the United States. “Mr. Carter’s position confuses the Europeans,” observed one

New York Times correspondent,“ partly because it calls up memories of the moral posturing of the

1950s when tough talk in the West was incapable of actually improving the lot of the millions

who lived behind the iron curtain.”

Brzezinski would argue that this argument overlooked the simple fact that it was not the

1950s, and it was not in the United States’ interest to conduct its foreign policy as if it were. At the

same time Secretary of State Vance had grown concerned that President Carter’s human rights

campaign was undercutting détente and complicating negotiations on a SALT agreement.

Vance traveled to Moscow in late March in hopes of making progress on a SALT

agreement that could be completed by October. The Soviet press, taking a cue from a recent

speech by Brezhnev, noted that normal relations were “unthinkable” if Washington continued to

criticize the Soviet Union on human rights.

Vance’s trip to Moscow would bring out into the open the nascent divisions between

Brzezinski and the State Department on how best to approach détente with Moscow. The Soviet

Jim Hoagland, “France Bars Comment on East Bloc Dissidents,” The Washington Post

(February 23, 1977).

Craig R. Whitney, “Carter Rights Stand Worries Europe,” The New York Times (March 5, 1977).

The divisions in the foreign policy of the Carter Administration were evident from the outset.

Brzezinski recalls that he was disturbed by Vance’s “ideologically one-sided slate of

appointments” to fill the lower-level echelons in the Carter State Department. Indeed more

conservative Democrats immediately raised concerns that Vance had leaned to far toward the

McGovern-wing in the “hard-line” vs. “soft-line” dispute that had divided the Democratic Party

since the late 1960s. This concern was amplified when Alan Baron, ex-aide to McGovern,

suggested publicly that the liberal Senator had “told friends that he considers the majority of

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s appointments to date to be ‘excellent’…quite close to those I

would have made myself.” See Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “A Complaint From the

Democratic Center,” The Washington Post, (January 27, 1977).

David K. Shipler, “Moscow Shows Caution Concerning Prospects of Vance Negotiations,” The

New York Times (March 27, 1977).

28 2

Union rejected outwardly the U.S. “deep cut” SALT proposals.

In an unusually tense press

conference Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko noted that Carter’s human rights policies

had not figured directly in the SALT negotiations but it had “poisoned the atmosphere.”

Carter, taking cues from Brzezinski, refused to back down on human rights. “We have no

evidence that this was the case. I will not modify my human rights statements in the future.”

This was hardly the prevailing view with Vance and the State Department bureaucracy.

From the spring of 1977 Brzezinski would come under a sustained attack from State Department

officials who regarded him as the key “obstacle” to a SALT agreement and the return to a more

stable détente. Upon his return to Washington Vance gave a prominent speech, arguing that

Carter’s human rights campaign should be conducted “less stridently” and should be applied to

other countries outside the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

He noted that the U.S. must take

a more “realistic” stand on human rights that was within “the limits of our power and of our

wisdom.” Vance concluded that questions regarding human rights in the Warsaw Pact countries

should be pushed through private diplomatic channels whenever that approach looked “more

promising.”

Murrey Marder, “Soviets Criticize U.S. on SALT, Human Rights,” The Washington Post (March

28, 1977).

Seyom Brown, Faces of Power (New York, 1983), p. 539.

Hedrick Smith, “Carter Warns He May Add Arms If Moscow Balks in Further Talks,” The New

York Times (March 31, 1977).

Some outsiders complained that Brzezinski was a bad influence on Carter. “Brzezinski, to use

Kissinger’s favorate cliché, is not a conceptual thinker,” said Harvard professor of government

Stanley Hoffman, “Brzezinski thinks he is, but I don’t believe it. He is an activist and a highly

tactical man. What is lacking in him is the one thing Kissinger had whatever his flaws—the

notion of an overall consistent strategy.” “Life at Brzezinski U,” Newsweek (May 9, 1977), p. 63.

Don Oberdorfer, “Vance: Avoid Arrogance on Human Rights,” The Washington Post (May 1,

1977). “My preference,” Vance insisted in his memoirs “in dealing with human rights issues was

to emphasize quiet diplomacy.” In the 520 pages of Vance’s 1983 memoirs he does not mention

the Charter 77 movement in Czechoslovakia. His singular reference to Poland was during a

whimsical visit with Gromyko in 1981 when the two were discussing things that “got in the way”

of SALT. Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices (New York, 1983). p. 46.

28 3

Thus began the philosophical differences that would divide the Carter foreign policy for

the remainder of its term. Brzezinski believed the United States must not let the Soviets hold

SALT hostage to the human rights campaign and believed the fastest way to lose this momentum

provided by the Helsinki Accords was to repeat the mistakes of Nixon and Kissinger and permit

the Warsaw Pact regimes to hide behind the cloak of “quiet diplomacy.”

Brzezinski argued that the State Department’s “fetishistic pre-occupations” with

obtaining a SALT agreement led the Soviet Union to believe that they could press the U.S. for

concessions while one-sidedly exploiting détente elsewhere. Brzezinski was particularly irked by

Vance’s statement that Carter and Brezhnev “have similar dreams and aspirations about the most

fundamental issues.” Brzezinski recalled in his memoirs that he “irritated” Carter by noting that

Vance’s statement simply ignored the “cumulative influence of history and ideology in shaping a

leader’s world outlook.”

“The Russians are realists,” Brzezinski replied at the time. “Obviously, from their point

of view, they would prefer to have accommodations with us on some issues and the freedom to

wage ideological competition, without us competing, on other issues. We are willing to

accommodate with them on specific issues, but we are not prepared to play possum in the

competition of ideas.”

Brzezinski was supported strongly by Andrei Sakharov who would repeatedly accuse the

Soviet leadership of backpedaling on SALT in an effort to blackmail the United States into

abandoning its stance on human rights. “Dissidents Appeal to Carter,” The New York Times

(March 17, 1977). Pavel Litvinov, a former dissident once imprisoned for his role in

demonstrating against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, reflected Brzezinski’s view on

SALT. “The Soviet government will try to show that Washington’s attitude is counterproductive

and respond harshly, but they will learn to live with it. They want a SALT agreement too. The

new American emphasis on human rights may not lead to internal liberalization but it is

definitely a containing factor in the long run. Already they must be tapping out the Carter

Administration’s message on the walls of their cells, passing it along to others.” Peter Osnos,

“Carter Praised by Dissidents in Moscow,” The Washington Post (March 1, 1977).

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 518.

“A Talk With Zbig,” Newsweek (May 9, 1977), p. 58. Brzezinski would later note that the Carter

human rights policy did have an impact with right-wing regimes. “Though it was difficult for all

of us to find the proper balance between human-rights imperatives and the uglier realties of

28 4

Upon returning from Moscow Vance appointed Columbia professor Marshall Shulman

as his top adviser on Soviet affairs. Though Shulman and Brzezinski had been professionally

cordial at Columbia, they diverged sharply in the Carter Administration on how to approach

relations with the Soviet Union.

Paul Henze, who worked under Brzezinski in the Carter

White House, recalled the atmosphere following Vance’s return from Moscow:

There was never an open slugging match between Vance and Brzezinski. The press

tended to exaggerate the tension in that relationship although I think that Vance very deeply

resented Brzezinski. Brzezinski’s problem was with a considerable range of other people, routine

foreign-service types, plus others who were very energetic in promoting themselves. And there

was a very fundamental cleavage between Brzezinski and Marshal Shulman whom Vance

brought in as his principle Soviet adviser. Shulman and his wife had had a lot of relationships

with Soviet dissidents and this was a very fashionable thing to be doing in the late 1960s and

‘70s—going to Moscow and meeting dissidents. But this was mostly sort of social set of

relationships. There was no real evidence of understanding of the essential evil of the Soviet

system as far a Shulman was concerned. He was continually in favor of very soft and

concessionary approaches toward the Soviet Union.

world politics, our human-rights policy did mean freedom for many individuals around the

world, particularly in Latin America. It dramatized the issue and gave major impetus to ongoing

human-rights efforts by various concerned organizations. It thus had an immediate impact. In

April 1977, the Peruvian government released over 300 political prisoners. In Argentina

‘disappearances’ dropped from the thousands to 500 in 1978, 44 in 1979, and even lower in 1980.

President Carter raised the case of Jacobo Timerman, the noted publisher, with President Videla

of Argentina and obtained his release. In Chile, ‘disappearances’ ended and President Pinochet

ultimately released most political prisoners. The pattern was repeated in Brazil. Our policy

contributed to the institutionalization of democracy in Peru and Ecuador. In Southeast Asia the

improvement in human-rights conditions was most notable in Indonesia. Over a period of eight

months in 1977-78, the government release 15,000 political prisoners and completed the release of

the remaining 20,000 over the next two years. In Africa, political prisoners were released in

Guinea, Niger, Rwanda, Swaziland, and the Sudan. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 129.

Shulman was far more sensitive than Brzezinski to Soviet concerns over U.S. encroachments

into Eastern Europe. Writing about Eastern Europe in 1973 Shulman noted, “The Soviet Union

seeks assurance that there will be no exacerbation of these difficulties from the West, and no

interference in the event of trouble. It clearly would like to avoid the embarrassment of another

Czechoslovakia, although there can be no doubt that the Soviet leadership is determined to

maintain the position to which it believes it requires for reasons of security and as a symbol of its

historical and ideological advance. Although the climate of détente creates complications for the

Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, as at home, it is also a necessary condition, the Soviets believe,

for Western acceptance of the status quo in what they regard as the Soviet sphere.” Marshall D.

Shulman, “Toward a Western Philosophy of Coexistence,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 52, no. 1, (October

1973). See also Marshall D. Shulman, “On Learning to Live With Authoritarian Regimes,” Foreign

Affairs, vol. 55, no. 2 (January 1977). Bernard Gwertzman, “How Shulman Views Soviet Motives

and Strategies,” The New York Times (April 16, 1978).

Interview, Washington, DC (July 13, 2000).

28 5

Nevertheless the State Department line was generally the one favored by the media. By

the spring of 1977 Brzezinski was feeling a sense of isolation within the administration. Jan

Nowak-Jezioranski, Brzezinski’s longtime friend from Radio Free Europe, had come to

Washington in 1977 to serve as an unofficial spokesman for the opposition in Poland.

Nowak-

Jezioranski recalled Brzezinski’s feeling of isolation upon his first visit to the White House in

early 1977. “I wouldn’t have recognized him. He was so tense. For the first time I saw that he

was not cheerful, not smiling, and noticeably tense. He was then very frank with me. He

essentially said ‘I am the target of the State Department, of Vance, and of the Vice President. If

not for Rosalyn I would be out. My main ally is Rosalyn Carter—and of course the President too.’

But he had tremendous courage of conviction---and in my opinion without Brzezinski the Carter

administration would have been an unmitigated disaster. Carter was a naïve man and would

have been manipulated by these liberal elements.”

Nowak-Jezioranski had gone to the White House in order to solicit Brzezinski’s support

to institutionalize an organization to provide material support for opposition movements in

Eastern Europe. Brzezinski assured his friend that while support would come from the White

House, it would be met with opposition from the State Department. This assessment would be

proven correct. “Opposition came immediately from the office of human rights in the State

Department,” recalled Nowak-Jezioranskil. “Why? Because this was an instrument to fight with

Russia and not with the dictatorships in Latin America. In fact, it was attacked from both sides,

from the extreme conservatives who didn’t want to undermine the dictatorships, and by liberal

elements who did not want to use it against communism.”

Two decades later President Bill Clinton would award Nowak-Jezioranski the Presidential

Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award—in the same ceremony honoring civil

rights champion Rosa Parks.

Interview, Annendale, Virginia (August 16, 1999).

Ibid.

28 6

Nevertheless Brzezinski had taken other measures to support the burgeoning opposition

movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. One of his first acts as National Security

Adviser was to push hard for a substantial increase in the power of the radio services. On March

22, 1977 President Carter formally requested an increase in funding that would double the

operations of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Carter’s plan called for the construction of

sixteen new 250-kilowatt transmitters, five for the Voice of America and eleven for Radio Free

Europe and Radio Liberty.

Perhaps as importantly Brzezinski took measures to remove the radio services from the

“excessive political control” of the State Department. Nowak-Jezioranski, who had fought a bitter

battle just to keep Radio Free Europe alive in the early 1970s, recalled the importance of the

gesture.

He told me his main objective was to restore the symmetry to the policy of détente. Not

to break the détente but to restore the balance. The Soviets were pursuing double track policy—

détente between the governments—but at the same time on the second track—to intensify the

effort of conquest from within. That is why Brzezinski thought the radios should not be

eliminated as a result of détente, but should be made stronger. Under Kissinger Radio Free

Europe and Radio Liberty were gradually--by ‘salami tactics’—being eliminated. It was a step-by-

step policy, to do it without any public attention without generating opposition from ethnic

groups. But it was obvious. I was at the same time trying to defend the Radios from the ultra-

liberal elements, like Senator McGovern, who simply wanted to get rid of it as the instrument—

and tried to stop the modernization of the transmitters. Brzezinski was the one who found in his

drawer the plans for modernization--that had been rejected by Kissinger—and he immediately

pushed for this project. There were even people inside the Carter administration who were trying

to torpedo it, but finally it was passed.

See David Binder, “Carter Requests Funds for Big Increase in Broadcasts to Soviet Bloc,” The

New York Times (March 23, 1977).

Interview, Annandale, Virginia (August 16, 1999). Brzezinski would nevertheless still face

pressure from elements in the U.S. Senate that continued to regard Radio Free Europe as a “Cold

War relic.” The rumor that Brzezinski supported the selection of William Griffith to a board

position of RFE drew a hostile response from the U.S. Senate. The objections to Griffith, who had

been the co-author of Brzezinski’s original 1961 Foreign Affairs article on “peaceful engagement,”

were based on the belief that his association with Radio Free Europe while it was funded by the

CIA would be looked upon with “disfavor” by the Soviet Union at a time when the United States

was preparing for the Belgrade Review of the 1975 Helsinki Accords. Citing those reasons

Senators George McGovern and Charles H. Percy moved quickly to block Griffith’s selection in

favor of former CBS President Frank Stanton whose record they noted was “free of any affiliation

either with the radios’ previous sponsorship or with the aggressive attitudes and purposes which

are generally associated with that sponsorship….It is most important that the board be led by a

28 7

Brzezinski’s approach in formulating the Carter Administration’s official policy toward

Eastern Europe would cause additional strains with the State Department. In April 1977 Vance

chaired the Policy Review Committee to formulate the administration’s formal policy toward the

Soviet bloc states. For two decades Brzezinski’s peaceful engagement had stressed the need to

differentiate the regimes in Eastern Europe in hopes of providing an incentive to gradually

moderate their domestic orientation. Brzezinski was irritated to find that the State Department

proposed an unconditional economic and political expansion of relations with all of the Soviet

bloc nations.

In the end the policy of “differentiation” would prevail. In early 1977 Brzezinski

prepared a classified Presidential Directive that outlined the formal U.S. policy toward Eastern

Europe. The directive stated 1) the U.S. should cultivate a closer relationship with Eastern Europe

for its own sake rather than as a by-product of détente with the Soviet Union; 2) the criteria for

favorable treatment would be formulated in terms of their domestic policies as well as foreign

policy independence from the USSR; 3) the administration should maintain regular contacts with

representatives of the “loyal opposition” in Eastern Europe; i.e. liberal intellectuals, artists and

church leaders, as well as with government officials.

Such an approach was met with resistance from some in the State Department which

viewed it as an anachronistic Cold War policy. As Brzezinski would later note:

I think what struck me initially was that the State Department didn’t have any concept of

this strategy. They just wanted to be nice to the East Europeans and the Russians period. In other

words a kind of, in my view, mindless détente—‘let’s be nice because it’s nice to be nice.’

Whereas my view was let’s be nice when it’s useful—but let’s also be somewhat manipulative,

because our purpose is twofold—one, to detach East Central Europe from the Soviets—and two,

to undermine the communist regimes—including in the Soviet Union. We didn’t say this

publicly—and the Russians probably read me sooner and better than the people over here.

I think

man whose reputation is one of dedication to communication and not to Cold War.” “2 Senators

Oppose Broadcasting Unit Nominee,” The Washington Post (March 13, 1977).

See Brzezinski, Power and Principle, pp. 296-297.

28 8

as far as this policy is concerned it clearly did work—we revitalized the radios, we opened up

contacts, we invited people over—we gave them more economic assistance—and we also

engaged in covert activity at the same time. I don’t think anybody really realized what we were

trying to do. But we were doing it.

Charter 77 was the primary example of the “loyal opposition” in Eastern Europe

Brzezinski’s policy sought to encourage. By the spring of 1977 Charter 77 had survived despite

the intensity of the initial government onslaught.

In those early months Charter 77 would

ironically draw its greatest moral and psychological support not from the Western democracies

but from the more moderate West European Communist Parties.

This idea was inherent in Brzezinski’s belief that the Western European communist

parties were an essential and positive force in the process of gradually removing European

communism from beneath the cult of Lenin’s dogmatic centralism. The Czech regime responded

to these events with a relentless attack on “Eurocommnism” which it termed a subversive plot

designed to undermine “real socialism” and return to power such “right-wing opportunists” and

“traitors” as Alexander Dubcek. Indeed, by the close of 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski was being

personally vilified by the official Czech press as the “spiritual father” of Eurocommunism.

Vaclav Havel was released from prison in May of 1977. By that time the number of

Charter signers had risen dramatically to number over 800. Havel recalls walking into a vastly

Interview, Washington, DC (March 11, 1999).

See Jiri Valenta, “Eurocommunism in Eastern Europe: Promise or Threat,” in Teresa

Rakowska-Harmstone and Andrew Gyorgy ed. Communism in Eastern Europe (Bloomington,

1979), p. 297.

See Jiri Valenta, “Eurocommunism and Czechoslovakia,” in Aspaturian et al, Eurocommunism

Between East and West, (Bloomington, 1980), p. 175. The survival of Charter 77 was assisted ably

by Radio Free Europe whose daily reports were serving as a transmission belt for exported

samizdat writings that flowed almost immediately back into Czechoslovakia. While the Polish

opposition movement relied on mass duplication to distribute samizdat material the Czechs and

Slovaks tended to limit themselves to single printing to avoid the harsh police crackdown. But

the main purpose of Charter 77 was less concerned with the physical distribution of these

materials to the public than with the transmission of protests and appeals to international

authorities. Thus the citation or reading of documents by Radio Free Europe or the Voice of

America would prove more valuable than mass duplication. See H. Gordon Skilling, Samizdat and

an Independent Society in Central and Eastern Europe (Columbus, 1989), p. 27.

28 9

changed situation than the one he had left in January. “The euphoria was intensified by the

discovery that things outside were completely different from the way I’d imagined they would

be. The Charter had not been destroyed; on the contrary, it was going through its heroic phase. I

was astonished at the scope of its work, at the response it had had, at the explosion of writing it

had inspired, at the marvelous atmosphere of solidarity in its midst. I had the intense feeling that,

during my few months in prison, history had taken a greater step forward than during the

preceding eight years.”

Brzezinski’s policy of “peaceful engagement” would have its greatest impact, however,

in his native Poland.

In the fall of 1976 Adam Michnik, a Jewish agnostic and a primary target

of the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign, wrote a widely circulated essay in late 1976 calling on the

Polish workers and left-leaning intellectuals to join in an unlikely alliance with the Catholic

Church.

It was not entirely evident that Poland’s traditionally conservative Church would be

interested in joining forces with a good many of Poland’s intellectuals who still referred to

themselves as “democratic socialists.”

Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace (New York, 1990), pp. 142-143. Havel would later connect

the survival of Charter 77 to the peaceful transformation of power in 1989. “There are some

things worth fighting for even if people have no hope of immediate success. We were considered

to be a small group of crazies by most of our fellow citizens—a group that keeps banging its head

against the wall. Nevertheless, we did it for years, actually decades, and in the end it showed that

when you’re doing the right thing it makes sense to do it. And sometimes it becomes reality,

which, in this case, it did. Sometimes it can’t be realized, but that’s the risk you take. You have to

take it. You can’t try to figure it out and do only the things you know will be successful in

advance. We wouldn’t get very far that way.” “Interview with Vaclav Havel,” Transcript from

CNN series, The Cold War.

When in 1976 when Gierek sought to court the Church as a means of legitimacy, the influential

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski responded with increased demands for not only for the church, but

for the human rights of all Poles. “It is the clergy’s duty to defend the workers’ interests,”

Wyszynski declared in September 1976 in an influential sermon delivered shortly after the

worker riots of the previous year, “against hasty and ill-considered government measures…it

was painful that workers should have to struggle for their rights against a workers’ government.”

Such language from the Church had a tremendous influence on the workers. Garton Ash,

Solidarity, p.

See Czeslaw Milosz, “Thinker On the Barricades—The Non-Violent Struggle of Adam

Michnik,” The New Republic (November 11, 1985), pp. 28-30.

29 0

Michnik understood, however, that the Church had changed a good deal around a more

progressive wing of Catholic writers from the Warsaw monthly Wiez edited by Tadeusz

Mazowiecki and the Krakow weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, to which Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the

future Pope John Paul II, was a frequent contributor. This unlikely alliance was put on display in

early 1977 when an unofficial lecture organized by Krakow students on “Orwell’s 1984 and

Poland today” was disrupted by Polish authorities. Wotlya promptly moved the discussion to the

safety of a Krakow church—and the lecture moved forth without disruption.

Gierek was now caught in a tightening vice. He was aware that the United States had

begun linking economic assistance to a moderate domestic stance. Yet hardline factions within

the Party were insisting that a crackdown was worth the risk of losing Western financial credits.

By April this hard line faction had gained the upper hand. In May the leadership of KOR

Garton Ash, Solidarity, p. 25. Indeed Orwell’s 1984 was among the most sought after samizdat

publications in Poland and made a profound impact on the intellectuals of Eastern Europe. At the

same time American critics of Brzezinski’s concept of “totalitarian” theory would dismiss

Orwell’s 1984 as a “crude and superficial analogy” that gained literary reputation at a time when

“American fears of totalitarianism had become obsessive. ” Les K. Adler and Thomas G.

Paterson, “Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image

of Totalitarianism, 1930s-1950s,” American Historical Review, vol. LXXV, (April, 1970), p. 1063. Yet

East European thinkers had a better view of the concept. According to one scholar noted at the

time, “they recognized themselves in Orwell’s book which, in the countries of ‘existing socialism’

is regarded not solely as a work of science fiction but as a description—often an incredibly

precise and pertinent one at that—of the real nature of Communist rule.” Rupnick, p. 268. In 1977

a member of a Polish provincial censorship bureau defected to Sweden. He took with him the

700-page book that detailed every concept and every word that was forbidden to appear in print

in Poland. Copies quickly made their way back to human-rights groups in Poland who began to

circulate them in samizdat form. Forbidden, it was revealed, was any mention of any Polish

writer who had defected to the West over the past 30 years. Also banned were small yet

embarrassing facts that the government might not have revealed—such as any export-import

trade figures or the fact that Czech rivers flowing into Poland were full of industrial waste. See

David A. Andelman, “Poles Talk of Human Rights—What Is and Isn’t Allowed,” The New York

Times (January 2, 1978). See also Jane Curry, The Black Book of Polish Censorship (?).

In mid-March 1977, Gierek received an open letter signed by some eight-hundred “workers”

and party activists demanding he initiate a harder line in domestic and foreign policy. Franciszek

Szlachcic, a former Politburo member who had lost his seat in 1975, was reported to have been an

organizer of this “letter” and to have been in contact with the Soviet embassy shortly before it

was issued. See Keith John Lepak, Prelude to Solidarity (New York, 1988), p. 249.

29 1

came under increased physical harassment and became the subject of an official media campaign

denouncing the group as “foreign agents” plotting to ensure Poland’s destruction.

The crackdown by the regime would soon backfire. On May 7, 1977, Stanislaw Pyjas, a 19

year-old student and prominent supporter of KOR, was found beaten to death in Krakow. In the

heightened political atmosphere few Poles were willing to believe the official explanation that

Pyjas’ had fallen after a night of drinking.

Wohchiech Jaruzelski, then the Polish Defense

Minister, later admitted Pyas’ death stemmed from a “state within a state” then operating within

the Polish security services:

At that time the Minister of Security showed this as an accident that was being used by

the opposition against the authorities to defame them. We had no reason to call this into

question—there were documents, declarations and evidence ‘proving’ it was an accident—and

that is how we saw that. Today, we know that behind this event stood special services that

misled us. I console myself with the thought that even in the special services of democratic

countries there appear things that, after several years, turn out to have been very bad. I wouldn’t

call what J. Edgar Hoover did as chief of the FBI ‘picking daisies.’

However the justification, the death of Pyjas would become a galvanizing symbol in the

struggle for human rights in Poland. The evening of Pyjas’ memorial mass witnessed 5,000 Poles

marching silently through downtown Krakow carrying candles and black flags. Polish Cardinal

Karol Wojtyla delivered a homily with the stunning accusation that Pyjas had “fallen victim to

the authorities hatred of the democracy movement among the students.”

The regime responded to these events with a severe crackdown. Eleven prominent

members of KOR, including Adam Michnik, were jailed in the aftermath of Pyjas’ funeral. But

slowly the united Polish opposition was discovering its own power. Shortly thereafter, in an

Ibid., p. 181.

Ibid., p. 169.

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (April 28, 2003).

Peter Osnos, “Current Unrest in Poland Reveals Rising Influence of Populace on Politics,” The

Washington Post ( June 3, 1977). The next week saw a further demonstration of the Church power

when 50,000 people came to see Wojtyla consecrate the church he had finally won for Nowa

Huta, a vast steelworks town built adjacent to Krakow after World War II as a means to promote

worker strength as opposed to that wielded by the city’s Catholic and intellectual circles.

29 2

event organized by Wojtyla, Tadeuz Mazowiecki stood outside Warsaw’s historic St. Martin’s

church and declared that eight individuals were inside on a hunger strike against the repressive

actions of the government.

News of the St. Martin’s hunger strike permeated quickly throughout Poland via Radio

Free Europe. Over the next eight days a growing crowd kept a 24-hour vigil outside the church

despite constant police efforts to disperse it. The eight-day hunger strike would have enormous

symbolic importance in that it provided the clearest indication that the opposition could take

assertive action against the government without reprisal.

If the Polish opposition found support from the United States, the West Germans

continued to see Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy as the largest obstacle threatening the

continued pursuit of détente.

On May 10, the day of Stanislaw Pyas’ funeral, President Carter

Jonathan Kwitny, Man of the Century: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II (New York, 1998). p.

274.

In his memoirs Brzezinski noted that the differences with Schmidt went beyond differences

over policy. “Carter’s initial attitude toward Schmidt was one of respect and even deference. He

knew that Schmidt had a better grasp of world economics, not to speak of the advantage of

having inherited from his predecessors a healthy domestic economy. I had known Schmidt for at

least a decade and a half prior to my going to the White House, and I had briefed Carter on

Schmidt, presenting the most attractive and favorable picture. Prior to our first meeting Carter

was eager to learn from, and to work closely with, the German Chancellor. That attitude was

unfortunately not reciprocated. Schmidt, almost from the very first encounter, adopted a

patronizing attitude, mixed with less than persuasive protestations of friendship. Invariably there

followed nasty behind the scenes gossip to sundry American and German journalists….Invidious

gossip and derogatory asides followed almost immediately and became the standard follow-up

to any personal meeting between the two men. At such meetings Schmidt volubly professed his

personal friendship. Then within a day or two would come reports on Schmidt’s expressed

contempt for the American President. There is no doubt in my mind that Schmidt’s conduct

contributed greatly to the deterioration in American-German relations in that it made it both

fashionable and legitimate in Germany to derogate the U.S. President in a manner unthinkable in

earlier times. Understandably, Carter developed a strong dislike for Schmidt, considering him to

be a bully and a hypocrite. I tried to get leading Germans to help muzzle the Chancellor, but to

no avail. I brought the matter up with Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, a thoughtful and

most responsible German statesman, and with Berndt von Staden, the diligent and discreet

German ambassador in Washington. At first Genscher laughed and said, ‘Well, he’s known in

Germany as ‘the Lip.’ He speaks the same way about other Cabinet members.’ I told Genscher

that this might be so, but that he was talking about the American President and it was having a

terrible effect on American-German relations. On more than one occasion Genscher assured me

that he would do what he could. So did von Staden. But if in fact there was nothing to be done

since the difficulty was rooted in Schmidt’s character. A revealing insight into the nature of that

29 3

and Brzezinski were in London attending an economic summit between the Western

industrialized democracies. According to Brzezinski Helmut Schmidt “lit in to him” and

informed that Radio Free Europe was a “cold war relic” was “contrary to détente,” and that he

would like to “get it out of Germany.”

Brzezinski, who had recently campaigned to empower the range and number of RFE

receivers, had a different point of view. “I told him that just bear in mind that Radio Free

Europe’s presence in Munich is an integral part of the American military presence in Germany---

and it’s directly related to our sense of security in Europe. And you can’t separate the two.”

For

the remainder of Carter’s term Schmidt would view Brzezinski as a major obstacle to East-West

relations. This would culminate in Schmidt’s private request that Carter fire Brzezinski in 1980.

If the West German politicians had trouble understanding Brzezinski, the dissidents in

Eastern Europe had trouble understanding the West Germans. Bronislaw Geremek, a noted

Polish intellectual and later a key adviser in the Solidarity movement, recalled the views of the

Polish opposition in the late 1970s:

personality came to me when, one once occasion, I was talking with him privately about sensitive

NATO affairs. We were having a perfectly good and normal discussion until two of Schmidt’s

aides entered the room. In an instant, he changed the tone of his voice and began to shout at me

and did not desist until I started replying in kind.” Brzezinski, Power and Principle, pp. 25-26.

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 293.

The revolutions of 1989 have reopened the question regarding the fundamental effectiveness,

if not morality inherent in Ostpolitik. Many regarded German reunification as a posthumous

triumph for Adenauer's idea that the attraction of a free and prosperous Western Europe would

eventually draw East Germany toward the West. Timothy Garton Ash comes down on leftist

West German politicians of the 1970s and 1980s, contending that they had been too

accommodating toward the East German Government while shunning grass-roots dissident

movements in Eastern Europe, especially Solidarity. Responding to the reasoning that Ostpolitik

was "democratic" since it had the public support of the West Germans, Ash retorted that a foreign

policy was "democratic" when it respects the wishes of the majority in the country affected as well.

"This is what has been wrong with Soviet policy toward Central Europe since 1944" and was an

"elementary principle almost lost in the German theology of détente." See Timothy Garton Ash

The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (New York, 1983). p. 324. Ash expands this argument in his 1993

work In Europe's Name, Germany and the Divided Continent. See also Ash, "Germany Unbound,"

The New York Review of Books (November 22, 1990).

29 4

Brzezinski was considered an aggressive anti-communist politician, so dangerous for the

peace in the world, by some Western politicians. But Brzezinski was a brother in our thinking in

all these illusions. The idea that one can have state-to-state relationships with communist

countries seemed to us to be unbelievably naïve. Brzezinski understood us, or we did understand

Brzezinski. This peace movement from our point of view was something that we couldn’t

understand. We couldn’t understand, at this time, why the young generation in the West didn’t

think that the people’s being deprived of their freedom—and asking for national independence---

asking out of the Warsaw Pact treaty—that should be an element in the peace movement.

Geremek’s friend Adam Michnik recalled that the disputes between Schmidt and

Brzezinski were rooted on how best to bring about change in the East. “Schmidt’s opinion was

that only by leading a permanent dialogue with the communist state government—Honnecker—

could make the Berlin Wall permeable. In this idea there was no place for opposition. Brzezinski’s

opinion was that the policy should be on two platforms. On one side you have to talk with

governments, trade and make them economically dependent, and on the other side to talk to the

democratic opposition and support it.”

Since the early 1960s Brzezinski had sought to engage in greater economic interaction

with the more moderate Soviet bloc states. Indeed by the summer this interaction was quietly

bearing fruit. On July 22, in the midst of the preliminary Belgrade session, Gierek unexpectedly

announced an amnesty for a number of workers and members of KOR who had been imprisoned

over the past year. As one insider has noted that Gierek did not want to be seen as a “mobster”

before the Belgrade Conference and was vitally concerned with maintaining Poland’s liberal

international reputation for the “pragmatic purpose of preserving access to Western financial

“I was once at a dinner in Paris,” recalled Geremek, who would become Polish Foreign

Minister in the 1990s. Helmut Schmidt began to talk concerning the value of Radio Free Europe—

and he asked me what was my feeling regarding the influence of Radio Free Europe in Poland. I

said that Radio Free Europe was indispensable for introduced elements of the political thinking

and in terms of polity. I told Schmidt, for peace and stability you should think that maybe Radio

Free Europe introduced a necessary sense of freedom that preserved the stability in Europe. So he

was a little bit shocked and he turned to me and said ‘well, but you know my position.’ I said ‘I

know exactly, because we were very, very conscious of it—we were always observing the policies

of the German government toward Radio Free Europe.’” Interview, Warsaw, Poland (May 13,

2002).

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (March 30, 2001).

29 5

markets.”

Indeed, as KOR member Jacek Kuron would later note, Gierek’s action was not so

much a “faith in decency” but “an act of political realism.”

Whatever the motivation Gierek’s act of clemency would have an enormous impact on

the future of the Polish opposition. As Timothy Garton Ash would observe, thereafter KOR

activists would be abused, harassed, fired from their jobs, detained for questioning and held for

the forty-eight hours allowed by law. But they would remain free to solidify the links that had

begun to develop between KOR, the workers, and the Catholic Church that in 1980 would

culminate in the Solidarity movement.

Three days before the KOR prisoners were released in Poland, French President Giscard

d’Estaing had called an “urgent meeting” with West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in an

attempt to curb President Carter’s human rights campaign. In the joint press conference Giscard,

who had recently entertained Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Paris, claimed the United States’

human rights campaign had “broken the code of conduct on détente” that prohibited interference

in other nations internal affairs.

Paul Henze, who worked the radio services in the Carter Administration, recalled that

without the Brzezinski’s presence Carter would have almost certainly given in to pressures from

the West Europeans and his own State Department to move toward a more bilateral détente with

Moscow over the heads of the civil societies of Eastern Europe. He also noted that each time

Lepak, p. 182. Some observers at the time were less enthusiastic about the long-term strategy

of “economic leverage.” See Bernard D. Nossiter, “Threat to West Seen in Rising Soviet-Bloc

Debt,” The Washington Post (March 3, 1977).

George Blazynski, Flashpoint Poland (New York, 1979). p. 328.

Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution, p. 21.

“Giscard, Schmidt on Détente,” The Washington Post (July 19, 1977).

29 6

Carter appeared to be moving toward a “quiet diplomacy” Brzezinski was there to assure that it

would be ineffective:

Eastern Europe had certainly been written off as an area where we could have been, and

should have been, vigorously peacefully engaged. In that sense Brzezinski always saw openings

and opportunities for a more energetic peaceful engagement. Carter on the whole was fairly

sympathetic to this because he wanted to be engaged. But Carter didn’t understand the details of

any of these relationships. I don’t think viscerally he had a very strong interest in them. But

Carter wanted to be active, and he had a very strong tendency to be active, though he wanted to

be active however in what I would say was almost an excessively humane way. There was not

much gut toughness to Carter—unless something really hit him.

Brzezinski was especially determined that the United States not lose the momentum

provided by the Helsinki Accords before the Belgrade Review scheduled for the next fall. To

Brzezinski, the fastest way to lose this momentum was to permit the Warsaw Pact regimes to

once again hide behind the cloak of “quiet diplomacy,” and therefore was more reluctant to

unilaterally disarm a philosophical weapon that had been so effective in putting the Soviets on

the defensive. Brzezinski realized that Helsinki had raised considerable expectations throughout

the Soviet bloc and dissidents would be intensely attentive in the follow up conference to see if

the United States stood by its early approach.

The Soviet bloc states had originally planned a vigorous sequel to Helsinki in Belgrade.

But they were forced to the defensive by the United States emphasis on Basket Three; the days

were certainly gone when the Soviets sought to trumpet Helsinki as a diplomatic triumph. The

See Charles Mohr, “Carter Appears to Have Adopted Quieter Human Rights Approach,” The

New York Times (May 11, 1977). Also, “Human Rights: Carter Backs Off,” Newsweek (October 10,

1977).

Interview, Washington, DC (July 17, 2000).

The Belgrade Conference was looked on with some foreboding by Eastern European regimes.

As the New York Times noted in March, “Communist leaders in Eastern Europe feel there is

reason to hope that the commotion caused by appeals for human rights in recent months is about

played out in time before the June 15 Belgrade meeting on security and cooperation in Europe to

smooth matters over. ‘There are a full four months until the Belgrade conference,’ said

Yugoslavia’s official Tanyug news agency a while back. ‘By that time the big noise about

dissidents in certain East European countries, particularly stirred up by the Western press,

should be partly calmed down.”’ Malcolm Browne, “East Bloc Expecting Rights Drive to Fade,”

The New York Times (March 13, 1977).

29 7

new instructions for East Europeans foreign ministers was to play down the Belgrade conference,

prepare a defense as best they can, and where possible some counterattacks, on the third-basket

issues. On August 23 the Carter Administration’s Policy Review Committee met to consider how

to approach the upcoming Belgrade Conference. Brzezinski recalled that he “stunned” the

meeting with the suggestion that the U.S. delegation consider a “confrontationist approach” at

Belgrade. Though it was only a suggestion, according to Brzezinski the “State Department types”

were “horrified even by the thought.”

The State Department indeed sought to take a much more subdued approach than

Brzezinski. Vance, who was at the time seeking a SALT deal above all else, noted upon arrival

that the U.S. objective at Belgrade would be to avoid “polemics.” “Let me say from the start,”

Vance declared in preparation for the Belgrade conference “that no nation’s record is perfect and

we will accept constructive criticism of our own record just as we ask others to do.”

Vance’s desire to avoid “polemics” was readily seen in his choice of his “alter ego” and

deputy, Warren Christopher to lead the U.S. delegation at Belgrade. Brzezinski believed that

Christopher’s soft-spoken manner and legalistic approach to diplomacy were insufficient to

pound home the importance the Carter Administration placed on the Basket III human rights

clauses contained in the Helsinki Final Act. Brzezinski was successful in replacing Christopher

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 297.

Peter Osnos, “Soviets Set to Clash with U.S. on Rights Issue at Belgrade,” The Washington Post

(June 12, 1977). This “non-polemcial” approach at Belgrade was widely accepted as the way to

proceed at Belgrade. As the Washington Post editorialized shortly before the Belgrade Conference

was set to open, “When 33 European nations plus the United States and Canada met in 1975,

Jimmy Carter’s election was a remote thing. No one could have foreseen how the Helsinki

movement and the Carter crusade would feed into each other. Nor later, when President Carter’s

initial human-rights bursts against the Russians had provoked cold fury in Moscow, could

anyone have foreseen how convenient it would be to have on hand a way to switch over from a

one-country assault on Soviet violations to an effort by all 35 signatories to deal with each other’s

violations. That’s what Helsinki has meant: a code of domestic conduct and a continuing

diplomatic process of review.” “From Helsinki to Belgrade,” The Washington Post (August 9,

1977). In the years of Jimmy Carter’s post-presidency—especially after he was virtually

canonized by the Democratic Party after winning the 2002 Nobel Prize—the Washington Post

would not describe Carter’s human rights campaign against the Soviet Union with phrases such

as “one-country assaults” and “human-rights bursts.”

29 8

with Arthur Goldberg, a former Supreme Court Justice and AFL-CIO leader, whom he believed

would give the U.S. delegation the “visibility and impact” to keep the human rights clauses

number one on the U.S. agenda.

The Carter Administration’s strategy of differentiating” the Soviet bloc regimes would be

evident at Belgrade. The primary targets of the U.S. denunciations on human rights and

violations of the Helsinki Accords were the hard-line regimes of the Soviet Union, East Germany,

and Czechoslovakia. The more moderate regimes of Poland and Hungary were hardly

mentioned, and occasionally even praised for their relatively liberal domestic structures.

When the Belgrade conference disbanded in early 1978 many members of the Carter State

Department believed that Goldberg’s aggressive stance had achieved little beyond aggravating

the already perilous climate of détente.

Goldberg, echoing Brzezinski’s sentiments, responded

to his critics: “We have given hope to dissenters in Prague and in the Soviet Union and others in

Eastern Europe that they are not overlooked, that their rights to organize into monitoring groups

is not ignored because to do so would be a tremendous letdown. They’re pretty realistic that

we’re not going to change the system but it gives them heart.”

Power and Principle, p. 300.

Over the long term the policy had the desired effect of creating further divisions within the

Warsaw Pact as seen in the Hungarian delegation’s failure to defend the Czech government’s

crackdown on its dissidents while American delegates reported that some Soviet bloc

representatives had privately encouraged the U.S. delegation to “keep sticking it to” Moscow.

Michael Getler, “Belgrade Meeting: Lost Hopes and Stalled Effort at Détente,” The Washington

Post (February 23, 1978).

See Stephen Garrett, Potsdam to Poland: America’s Policy Toward Eastern Europe (New York,

1986), p. 165. See also Dante B. Fascell, “Did Human Rights Survive Belgrade?” Foreign Policy no.

31 (Summer, 1978), p. 113.

Michael Getler, “Belgrade Meeting: Lost Hopes and Stalled Effort at Détente.” The Washington

Post (February 23, 1978). Michael Dobbs, “Belgrade Conference Makes Gains,” The Washington

Post (December 23, 1977). The Warsaw Pact position claimed that the communist societies had the

superior record in human rights by the institutional economic and social rights inherent in

communist societies that did not exist in the capitalist West.

The Soviets and their allies had been

pointing to discrimination against minorities and surveillance of political dissenters by the FBI

and CIA, dating back to the 1950s. While there was certainly some truth to this, they picked

rather questionable causes to make their case. To deflect the charges leveled at Belgrade the

Soviets began to publicize the case of Alabama death row inmate Johnny Harris as model of

29 9

As the year came to a close a quiet revolution was gathering more momentum in Poland.

In September KOR transformed itself into a permanent “Committee for Social Self-Defense,”

whose goals were defined as combating violations of the law and fighting for institutional

guarantees of civil rights. That same month saw the launching of a new periodical, The Worker,

addressed to the industrial laborers.

KOR affiliates also founded “NOWA” a roving system of

underground publishing houses located in attics and basements throughout Poland that would

distribute over 200 titles over the next three years. The biggest circulation—over 40,000 copes—

was for a text entitled “What to Do in Contacts with Police.” More intellectual pursuits included

Orwell’s 1984, works by Alexander Solzhenitzyn and Czeslaw Milosz—and Brzezinski’s 1960

work Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict.

Jacek Klich, a student at Krakow’s Jagellonian University in the late 1970s, recalled the

impact Brzezinski’s Soviet Bloc had on Poland’s younger generation. Klich, who gained access to

Brzezinski’s work as part of a political science seminar, recalled that reading it was the

“psychological equivlent to the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

American hypocrisy on the human rights issue. The Soviet attention on Harris was widely

thought to be an attempt to offset the imprisonment of Anatoly Shcharansky who was accused of

spying for the CIA. In 1974 Harris was serving five consecutive life sentences for robbery and

rape. At a prison riot at Fountain Correctional Center at Atmore Alabama Harris had been

further charged with killing a guard by stabbing him twenty-seven times with a homemade

knife. “Moscow Drive Champions U.S. Black on Death Row,” The New York Times (April 15,

1978).

The Polish opposition had also linked their cause with the Charter 77 movement in

Czechoslovakia. On October 31, 1977, when news of the sentencing of the Charter 77 defendants

in the Prague trial reached Warsaw, the Committee for Social Self-Defense issued “A Letter to

Our Friends the Czechs and Slovaks” which expressed shock at the brutality of the communist

reprisals and the “flagrant violations of the Helsinki Final Act.” The document noted that the

1968 Prague Spring was an inspiration not only for Czechs and Slovaks, but for all nations in

Eastern Europe. The Poles also asked for forgiveness for the participation of Polish troops in its

suppression. On November 16 the Czechoslovak dissidents sent a reply to their Polish colleagues

noting that the Czechoslovak people were aware of the circumstances that led to the involvement

of the Polish units in the invasion force in 1968. They also pointed out that the reverse situation

almost occurred during the “Polish October” of 1956. Both documents stressed the solidarity of

the two peoples in their movements and expressed hope for a lasting friendship. Bromke, The

Last Decade ( ). p. 155-156.

300

I remember we were proud that somebody with a Polish name---even an American at

that time—was the author of such a book. But you must try to draw the following picture. Young

people who grew up in small and medium cities which were dominated by people who were

either politically passive in the Polish context or they were involved in the Communist party

structures and were more or less active supporters of the current policies of the day. Suddenly we

enter the university and we start to meet very open-minded people and we begin to be exposed

to other ideas. This is why my experience with Brzezinski’s book was so important. First of all,

up until that moment, Communism was not perceived by me as a danger. These discussions

during the seminar proved that, first of all, it represented a systematic and political threat.

Second, this system can threaten the rest of the world and other societies. It was a traumatic

experience. Of course everybody remembered the Prague Spring and December 1970 in Poland—

so people were partly aware of how fierce Communist powers could be but there were no

international actions yet like Afghanistan. So for me being in Krakow, in a big city, and being

exposed to these fresh ideas and this book was amazing. That’s why I dare to make a comparison

to Brzezinski’s book and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

By November the intensity of the differences between Brzezinski and the State

Department on how to handle the Soviet Union was becoming more public. Brzezinski gave his

first press briefing in October 1977, breaking what had been until then a self-imposed silence. He

was particularly concerned about the continued Soviet involvement in the Horn of Africa.

Brzezinski believed that the continued efforts of Vance and Marshall Shulman to reach a SALT

agreement and announce a Carter-Brezhnev summit meeting had devolved into an officious one-

sided courtship that had the effect of informing the Soviets that they could have SALT while

pursuing their own version of “selective détente” around the world.

Interview, Krakow, Poland (February 11, 2002).

See John Osborne, “White House Watch: Zbiggy Zpeaks,” The New Republic (October 22, 1977).

Brzezinski would later reflect on the disputes that had arisen between he and the State

Department at this time. “For example, in November of 1977, Vance submitted a draft prepared

by Shulman in which the President was to express personal congratulations to the Soviets on the

occasion of the Soviet sixtieth anniversary. In the proposed draft the President was to say: ‘I have

a major task facing me in convincing the American public and our Congress that the treaty and

other documents we contemplate signing are in the U.S. interest, as I believe they are.

Ambassador Dobrynin will have reported to you the efforts I am making here to this end. I will

apply my best efforts and political judgment to the task and I believe I will, in the final analysis,

be successful.’ The proposed draft also again expressed the hope for a meeting between the two

leaders. In my cover memo to the President on November 1, I objected to both passages. The first

seemed to me obsequious; the second was certainly redundant, given Brezhnev’s firm brush-off

to previous efforts along these lines. The President approved the excision of both of these

passages.” Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 176.

301

Brzezinski countered by convincing Carter to include Poland among the sites of his first

major trip abroad as a means to “encourage the processes of liberalization that were gathering

momentum.”

Such a trip would create additional concerns, both in the State Department, and

by the major media outlets that had began to take the State Department line that Brzezinski was

the primary source of the worsening U.S.-Soviet relations. Indeed, many in the State Department

would become vocally hostile to Carter’s trip to Poland, viewing it as an extraneous junket that

could achieve little save for irritating Moscow at a delicate juncture. Among the most vocal critics

was Marshall Shulman, who objected strongly to the trip, warning that it would be viewed as

“provocative” by the Soviet Union.

Such deference was disturbing to many observers. “Well that was the climate,” recalled

scholar Charles Gati, who would later work in the Clinton State Department. “I can forgive

people who did not expect the weaknesses of the Soviet type systems were such that they could

collapse. I didn’t until very late. But not to expect that these regimes can moderate themselves

and become more accommodating to their people and their citizens was inexcusable. The State

Department was full of these people that took the view that we should take them (Eastern

European governments) as they are and make the best of it. I thought that was appeasement--

and Brzezinski certainly had nothing to do with that.”

At the same time Shulman would demonstrate an ability to influence the press—

something that eluded Brzezinski. “Zbig was not good at this,” Gati recalled. “There was nothing

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 297. Meanwhile Brzezinski was using his position from

within the White House to quietly support the opposition in Poland. Not everybody was

convinced of the wisdom of this path, most notably the State Department and certain sections of

the CIA. The National Intelligence Officer for the Soviet Union, Arnold Horelick, wrote the head

of the CIA’s analytical directorate, Robert Bowie, on November 18, 1977: “This march of

proposals was precipitated by Brzezinski’s expression of interest last May on what more could be

done via CIA against Soviet and East European targets. It is not clear to anyone in this building

(CIA) what Zbig may have had in mind; I do not exclude the possibility that he had not thought

that much about it before hand…” Three days later, on November 21, Horelick again wrote

Bowie expressing his concerns: “In present circumstances, U.S. policy interests in fostering

greater East European worker discontent, especially in Poland, are at least ambivalent (some

would say that they are directly contradictory).” Robert Gates, From the Shadows, p. 92.

Interview, Washington, DC (September 13, 2001).

302

chummy about him with the media. He couldn’t stand them—he just couldn’t stand them.”

Indeed Brzezinski would often note that journalists making six-figure salaries should spend more

time studying history than purusing the latest gossip regarding his purported feuds with the

State Department. Nevertheless On December 20, 1977 Brzezinski held a background briefing in

the Old Executive Office building to explain the rationale behind Carter’s trip to Poland.

Brzezinski understood well that a mere ceremonial trip to Poland would achieve little.

Indeed in 1972 Nixon and Kissinger had visited to Poland immediately after the first summit in

Moscow. The trip was so reassuring to the Communist authorities that Brzezinski referred to it as

a virtual “endorsement” of the Brezhnev Doctrine. As Carter prepared to visit Warsaw Brzezinski

would attempt to convince a skeptical national press corps that Carter’s trip to Poland would be

different. As Brzezinski noted:

In Poland let me make reference to four physical objects which in a way do convey a

certain message. The President will lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown solider and then

he will visit two monuments, the monument to the Ghetto uprising and the Nike monument to

Warsaw Resistance, and finally, time permitting he will visit the Royal Palace. These monuments

do in a way convey a variety of messages, all of which are wrapped up in the proposition that

history in Poland is a very living thing, that Poland is a mixture—an uneasy mixture in some

respects—of socialism, nationalism, and religion. The monument to the Unknown Soldier marks

the rebirth of Poland after a century and a quarter of partition, and this is a very dominant reality

in the minds of the Poles. The Ghetto monument salutes the last resistance of the Jewish fighters

in the Ghetto, a Ghetto of some 300,000 people, which was steadily decimated by the Nazis until

the remnants put up a tragic heroic resistance for six weeks, at the end of which the Ghetto was

entirely wiped out and literally 300,000 people who lived in that Ghetto as well as others who

were poured into it by the Nazis were wiped out.

Brzezinski’s brief seminar on Polish history seemed to fall on deaf ears as the first

question from the press insisted on a fuller explanation. “I don’t see,” demanded the reporter “in

our list of explanations for why the President is going to Poland. There doesn’t seem to be much

of a difference between the reasons that were given to us when President Nixon went to these

Ibid.

Transcripts of NSA Background Report: (December 20, 1977) Old Executive Office Building.

Personal Archives, Office of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center of Strategic and International Studies,

Washington DC.

303

countries and later on when President Ford went to a number of them. Is there a difference in

why President Carter is going to Poland as opposed to why President Nixon went to Poland…”

Brzezinski, who clearly lacked Kissinger’s tact of stroking the fragile egos in the media;

“Well, I have just spent an hour trying to explain why there is a significance to what he is dong

now and what he is trying to do…I can’t explain what President Nixon’s views were; I can only

explain what ours are. If this didn’t come across to you, I have failed. Perhaps it is my failure;

perhaps it is yours.”

“Let me follow that up,” insisted the reporter, “since we are not sure just who failed

here. Henry Kissinger would tell us before the Nixon trip to Poland and then we heard it again

before Ford went, the same sort of statement about the symbolic nature of new relationships with

the Poles and with the significance of visits to ghettos or Auschwitz or the monuments. Is there a

change, and can you tell us what the shift in policy is, specifically in this President’s actions as

opposed to President Nixon’s?”

“I can’t improve on what I have tried to do now for an hour,” said Brzezinski with a tone

of exasperation, “ I am sorry. I will just have to leave you unsatisfied.” Indeed Brzezinski’s efforts

would not convince those who continued to insist the trip was a deliberate slap at the Soviet

Union. “Several critics of the trip,” advised the New York Times’ James Wooten the day Carter

departed for Warsaw, “have insisted that there is no significant reason for Mr. Carter to visit

Poland except for the fact that Mr. Brzezinski is a Polish-American whose father was a diplomat

for the pre-World War II anti-Communist Polish government.”

Air Force One touched down at Warsaw’s Okecie airport on December 29 1977. President

Carter, shielding himself from the bitter December wind, was greeted personally on the tarmac

by Edward Gierek who viewed the visit as a welcome distraction from deepening economic crisis

James T. Wooten, “Carter Leaves Today on Tour of 6 Nations,” The New York Times (December

29, 1977).

304

and pressure from party hardliners seeking a firm crackdown on Poland’s emboldened

opposition.

The next day Carter went on a tour of Warsaw as previously outlined by Brzezinski. He

visited the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and the monument honoring Poles who died in

Warsaw in World War II. Carter then moved on to the Warsaw ghetto monument where he

placed a wreath affixed with a yellow Star of David on the monument, then stood for ten

seconds, head bowed, his left hand touching his forehead as if in prayer in respect for the

thousands of Jews who held out in the walled ghetto against the Nazis during the uprising of

1943. Carter, in perhaps the most sensitive political gesture, proceeded to the Nike monument

honoring the Polish resistance to the Nazi occupation. This move was particularly sensitive to

Polish officials since most Poles were aware that the Red Army troops were poised to intervene

in the 1944 uprising but remained paused on the eastern side of the Vistula River as Warsaw--

and with it much of the non-communist resistance--was obliterated by the Nazi occupiers.

That night Carter stood before television cameras in a Warsaw hotel ballroom to give the

first ever press conference by an American president in Eastern Europe.

Carter, despite the

embarrassment of a shamelessly bungled translation, engaged in the delicate effort to praise the

relative moderation of Polish government while at the same time supporting the nascent

opposition movement.

“I think that our concept of human rights is preserved in Poland,” noted Carter, “much

better than other (Eastern) European nations with which I am familiar.” Carter then announced

James T. Wooten, “Carter in Warsaw on Start of Six-Nation Tour,” The New York Times

(December 30, 1977).

Carter was careful to pay homage to members of the opposition press. When an editor of the

underground newspaper Opinia was deterred as he attempted to enter the press conference

Carter alluded to him in his opening statement by announcing, “There were a few who wanted to

attend who were not permitted to come. Their questions will be answered by me in writing.”

“Transcript of the President’s News Conference with U.S. and Polish Journalists,” The New York

Times (December 31, 1977). Opinia was the newspaper for “The Movement for Defense of Human

and Civil Rights” which at the time of Carter’s visit was protesting the detention of two sons of

one of the movement’s leaders—Ryszard Switon.

305

that the U.S. would provide Poland with $200 million in credits to buy food and feed grains—in

addition to an earlier $300 million deal—to help make up for four years of Polish crop failures.

Sam Donaldson, smelling blood, demanded if such laudatory statements meant that

Carter agreed with President Ford that Poland was not “dominated” by the Soviet Union. A

patient Carter replied, “My own assessment within the European theater, Eastern European

theatre,” Carter replied rather patiently “is that here, compared to some other nations, there is a

great religious freedom and otherwise, and I think this is a hope that we all share and cherish. I

think this has been the origin of the Polish nation more than a thousand years ago and it is a deep

commitment of the vast majority of the Polish people, a desire and commitment not to be

dominated.” An unsatisfied Donaldson again asked if this meant that he believed that the Poles

were not “dominated” by the Soviet Union. “I think I’ve commented all I wish on that subject,”

came the reply from a noticeably less patient President Carter.

More thoughtful observers than Sam Donaldson would recognize the long-term

importance of the combination of carrot and stick that had long been inherent in Brzezinski’s

concept of “peaceful engagement.” As Timothy Garton Ash would later note in his classic work

on the Polish Solidarity movement, “At a press conference Carter loudly praised the Polish

record on human rights and religious tolerance. In the next breath he announced a further $200

Ibid.

Ibid,. Brzezinski granted an interview to CBS during the trip to Poland. He urged the press to

take into consideration the obvious sensitivities of Carter’s trip. “I thought the President handled

those issues with extreme sensitivity and understanding. He pointed out that these things are

relative. Relatively speaking, Poland certainly has much more freedom than some other countries

which one need not mention. At the same time, one also knows that in the contemporary world

there are limits—practical limits—to independence and that there is also a general thrust toward

interdependence. Our visit here is to promote peaceful interdependence, greater cooperation, and

through interdependence also more genuine but less dangerous interdependence. And we do so

in our relationship with this country as we do so with our relationships with others, including the

Soviet Union.” CBS News Transcript, Robert Pierpoint, “Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,”

Victoria Hotel, Warsaw, Poland (December 30, 1977).

306

million of U.S. credits. ‘Linkage’ could hardly be more explicit than that. If the KOR activists had

still been imprisoned, it is doubtful if the credits would have flowed so freely.”

Brzezinski still had not played his biggest card in Carter’s stay in Poland. Despite vocal

objections from the U.S. Admbassor to Poland Brzezinski had arranged for himself and First

Lady Rosalyn Carter to meet with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the 76 year-old Roman Catholic

Primate of Poland.

Brzezinski’s gesture continued to demonstrate the differences with the State Department.

Jan Nowak-Jezioranski recalled the controversy surrounding Brzezinski’s visit with the Cardinal.

“The U.S. ambassador to Warsaw at the time was Richard Davies—who said ‘This was wrong!

No! no! no! It will be too provocative!’ And so Brzezinski said ‘fine’ and he went anyway without

the knowledge of the ambassador. Zbig was absolutely furious with the ambassador. But he

made his gesture that we have a dialogue not just with the government but also with the people.

Davies protested violently, and they fired him—period. That was the end of his career. He was

acting more like the ambassador of the communist regime in Washington than vice versa.”

Despite such objections, Brzezinski and the First Lady would engage in a 90-minute visit

at the Cardinal’s Warsaw residence, upon which he delivered a letter from President Carter

Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution, p. 22. The fringes of the hard right seized on Brzezinski’s

trip to Poland to further their claim that he was in fact a closet communist. “President Carter and

his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, celebrated the new year by touring the

captive nations of Central Europe and toasting their dictators. In Poland, whose Communist

leaders had in the previous year received a $240 million loan from Chase Manhattan Ltd and

credit for 2.5 million tons of U.S. grain annually, people stood in the streets crying ‘Carter save

us! Carter save us!’ As the President passed these gaunt men and women to dine fatly with

officials of the Communist Party, police drove the pathetic demonstrators from the streets. The

next day, aware that not a single line of type can be set in their country without Communist Party

approval, Poles read how the American President had declared that in Poland ‘there is a

substantial degree of freedom of the press.’ Knowing that religious believers are excluded from

important jobs and that no teacher who professes belief in God may be employed in their schools,

heartsick Poles read with disbelief how the American President had also announced that in

Poland there is ‘a substantial degree of freedom of religion.’ And yet there at President Carter’s

left side was Poland-born Zbigniew Brzezinski—agent and intimate of international banker

David Rockefeller…” Scott Stanley, Jr., “Editorial,” American Opinion vol. XXI—no. 2, (February

1978), p. 3.

Interview, Annandale, Virginia (August 16, 1999).

307

assuring the Cardinal “You have my prayers and respect; I share your faith, I admire what you

represent. I seek the same goals.”

On the last day of 1977 Carter ended his 35-hour stay in Poland.

Few in the West at the

time recognized the significance of the visit.

The Polish opposition viewed it as a turning

point. Adam Michnik, who was put in jail before Nixon’s 1972 visit, recalls the significance of

Carter’s trip to Poland. “Carter’s visit was thus completely different” Michnik recalls “Brzezinski,

in a very clear way, referred to the Home Army tradition. Brzezinski met with Wyszynski—and

it was the first signal that there was an other Poland rather than Poland of Gierek and the

Communists. On television Carter used the expression ‘the countries under Soviet domination’—

and it was the first time that Poles had heard something like this. In short, it was a visit of

hope.”

Bronilsaw Geremek recalled a similar feeling:

It was so important in the way in which it was organized. The Polish authorities tried to

obtain from the Carter visit a sense of legitimacy. They did obtain it, paradoxically enough, with

the Nixon visit, but not with the Carter visit. Why? Because Brzezinski from the beginning

introduced, not meetings with the opposition, that would be impossible—but with the Church

and the primate of Poland. Carter’s visit and Brzezinski’s idea that in order to have contact with

the Polish society—real society—the Americans, and the President of the United States should

have contact with the real representative of the Polish society—the Church. That changed the

context in a very important way. Even before John Paul II came to the Vatican this visit gave a

national and political dimension to the church—that was the beginning of a process --with the

Pope’s visit in ’79—that was the preparation of the appearance of the Solidarity movement.

David A. Andelman, “Brzezinski and Mrs. Carter Hold Discussion with Polish Cardinal,” The

New York Times (December 29, 1977).

At the time Carter’s visit to Poland was generally treated as another ceremonial occasion that

differed little from previous visits by Nixon and Ford. Piotr Wandyz the distinguished Polish

historian would later note “Carter’s visit to Warsaw in late December 1977 resulted in promises

of additional economic aid (grains) but the presidential press conference and Mrs. Carter’s and

Brzezinski’s meeting with Cardinal Wyszynski produced no great impression on the Poles. The

president handled the human rights issue with caution, on the whole lauding Gierek and the

Polish regime.”

Wandyz, The United States and Poland, p. 409.

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (March 30, 2001).

Interview, May 13, 2001. Geremek, when asked if there any concrete difference in the Carter

visit than Nixon visit, would raise his voice in apparent disbelief of the question. “Absolutely! I

can tell you my personal case. For years and years the government refused to issue me a

308

Two weeks following Carter and Brzezinski’s visit to Poland there emerged a system of

underground system of “Flying Unviersities.” This was a series of underground seminars where

taboo areas of Polish history and society were openly discussed.

In January 58 professors and

writers publicly formed the “Society for Academic Courses” and agreed to give lectures. Their

charter, they insisted , was purely educational, not political and not hostile to the government.

“Without looking for the truth about the world and themselves,” the professors wrote, “the

citizens sense of duty cannot be created. One cannot be a full-fledged citizen.”

The students, from 10 to 150 at a time, began attending these “Flying University” lectures

at considerable risk as the gatherings were often forcibly broken up with the use of tear gas and

police batons. In February Polish police units used mace and injured many of the more than 100

students when breaking up a lecture on Poland’s political history by Adam Michnik. But the

government could do little when Michnik’s lectures were reproduced from tapes and rebroadcast

over Radio Free Europe that had once been dismissed by many as a ‘cold war relic.”

On New Year’s Eve 1977 Carter and Brzezinski left Poland for Iran where the trouble of a

different kind was brewing. Paul Henze, Brzezinski representivie on Radio Free Europe

passport—since ’65 my passport was refused. There were many different interventions—nothing.

But at the end of ’77 President Carter was in Poland. And the week before Carter’s visit to Poland

a security officer came to my home saying ‘your demand was accepted and you will receive your

passport.’ This was all news to Geremek since he had not even applied for a passport.

Unbeknownst to him he had been invited to Washington D.C. by the Smithsonian Institution—

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Geremek recalls his shock. “They knew

it because they received the letter. And in one week I received the passport. I could after that

spend some time in Washington. So in my sense Brzezinski understood how to introduce some

values of freedom inside the Soviet system--and that was the Third Basket of Helsinki. When I

presented to my friends this news that I received a passport without asking for it that was our

reaction—when Nixon came people were put in prison. When Carter and Brzezinski came to

Poland they are offering freedom in the sense the Helsinki agreement and the freedom to travel.”

Andrzej Drawicz, “Experience of Democratic Opposition,” Survey, (Autumn 1979) vol. 24, no.

4 (109), pp. 37-38.

Michael Getler, “History is Uncensored in Poland’s ‘Flying Universities,’” The Washington Post,

(July 5, 1978).

Ibid.

309

remembered that night with some irony. “I can remember coming home New Year’s Eve from a

party somewhere and the phone rang. It was about 11.30 or 12. And the voice on the other end of

the line said ‘This is Zbig!”—I said ‘for god sakes where are you?’ “We’re in Terhan------ I’ve just

come from a party with the Shah.’ Then he said ‘I didn’t want to talk about that I wanted to tell

you about certain things I want you to do tomorrow morning right way in connection with

Poland—he wanted to make sure that the radios had that went out to the press and so forth.

Well, I’ve often thought of that with enormous amusement—here he is in Tehran and all is well—

by the end of ’78 all hell had broken loose in Tehran—but meanwhile in Poland things had gone

on interestingly.

100

Indeed.

100

Interview, Washington, DC (July 17, 2000).

310

CHAPTER EIGHT: SOLIDARITY

Set up administration problems. In October 1978 Zbigniew Brzezinski was among the

many who watched with amazement when it was announced that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had

been elected Pope John Paul II. Indeed, while most Poles rejoiced at the news the event was

looked on with foreboding by a regime already attempting to contain a burgeoning opposition

movement. Poland’s Defense Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski recalled the outrage voiced by his

more orthodox allies in the Warsaw Pact. “When Koral Wojtyla was elected, dogmatic blocs in

the Soviet Union, and in our country, maintained that Brzezinski contributed to that through

various ‘influences’ and inspirations, he made the Cardinals choose Karol Wojtyla. And for our

bloc that was a sign of considerable danger.”

By the summer of 1980 very few observers were paying much attention to Poland. The

combination of a protracted economic crisis, an increasingly hesitant regime, and the election of a

Polish Pope, created a fertile atmosphere for Poland's growing opposition movement. Lublin.

Despite the continuation of Western loans, Poland was on the verge of economic collapse

by 1980. In 1973 Gierek made some attempts to decentralize economic management but was

constrained by unfavorable external circumstances and according to one Polish economist, the

"lack of political will and the resistance of the party bureaucracy." Without systemic reforms,

Gierek's economic "miracle" was in effect simply transferring Western loans to mollify the

workers with higher wages and artificially low food prices. This, of course, could not last. Rather

than risk the political dangers of systemic reform the government again stressed the need for

austerity.

In pure economic terms, the subsidized food prices needed adjustment, as they were

costing the Polish treasury about $40 billion a year, or 8 percent of the national income. Though

See Bradley Graham, "Leaders Urge Poles to Face Up to Economic Austerity," The Washington

Post (March 16, 1980). See Bennett Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges, (New York: 1991), p. 255.

311

Gierek's program had raised living standards, it resulted in depravations of consumer supplies,

which were the centralized economy's counterpart to inflation in market economies.

But expectations had been rising throughout the 1970s. On July 1 the government

attempted to increase food prices. The price increase was met with a strike. The strikes spread

quickly, culminating in mid-August at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk where 16,000 strikers

would change the face of Communism in the twentieth century. Led by Lech Walesa, and

encouraged by the support of intellectuals and the Catholic church, the strikers could no longer

be satiated with material palliatives.

When a delegation from the Politburo arrived to negotiate,

the strikers presented a list of twenty-one demands that challenged the fundamental institutions

of communist authority, and by extension, Soviet rule over Poland. The right to form a free trade

union would undermine the legitimacy of the communist system simply by challenging the role

of the Communist party as the only representative of the working class. The right to strike

provided an effective instrument to defend worker gains. In addition the government agreed to

loosen press censorship, free jailed dissidents, and grant the Catholic Church access to the state

press and broadcast services.

After two weeks of dramatic negotiations the government conceded to virtually all the

worker's demands. The result was the first independent trade union in the communist world,

which the workers named Solidarity. In less than a week Gierek would be replaced by Stanislaw

Kania, a reliable appartakci who lacked his predecessor's international prestige, and whose

allegiance to the Gdansk accord was unknown.

See Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down-The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

(New York-Oxford: 1993), p. 18-19.

As one American columnist wrote "the strikes were no more about food prices than the

American Civil War was about Fort Sumpter." See George Will, "The Workers Who Dare to

Unite," Newsweek (September 1, 1980). See Flora Lewis, "Many Poles Say the Unrest is Far Deeper

Than Economics," The New York Times (January 26, 1977).

See Adam Bromke, "Poland; The Cliff's Edge," Foreign Policy (Winter, 1980-81), p. 155.

312

The Polish crisis provided few attractive options for the aging Soviet leadership.

Solidarity was not a movement led by reformist intellectuals, but a massive working class revolt

that could not be quelched simply by truncating a wayward leadership. Unlike Nagy in 1956 or

Dubcek in 1968, the Polish leaders were basically politically conservative communists who

acknowledged the need for reforms, but did not question the need to preserve the Party's

monopoly or break from the alliance with Moscow.

Financial leverage was also a tenuous option. Since 1968 Moscow had created the illusion

of stability in Eastern Europe with the implied threat of military force and an increase in material

"consumerism" which had generally served to pacify the discouraged populations.

But the

consumerist option was unavailable in 1980. The stagnating Soviet economy suffered with its

own fate. Moscow was thus highly reluctant to intervene and assume the responsibility for

Poland's sizable debt to the West.

With 85,000 Soviet troops bogged down in Afghanistan, Moscow was averse to authorize

an invasion that could erupt into a Polish civil war. But the Soviet leadership also had to consider

the cost of excessive restraint. A political solution would seem to validate the "Eurocommunist"

model, as both the Italian and Spanish Communist parties had voiced their support for the Polish

Seweryn Bialer, The Soviet Paradox (New York, 1986), p. 220.

The consumerist approach was a traditional method of Communist control in Eastern Europe.

The Polish poet Antoni Slominski had termed it "stuffing their mouths with sausage so they'll

shut up." It was used most notably by Janos Kadar in the aftermath of the 1956 Hungarian revolt.

Polish authorities also appeased workers with increased material rewards following the riots in

1970. Consumerism had long played a role in the GDR, and became the basis of Husak's

"normalization" process in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. The problem with the reliance on

material benefits to purchase loyalty was that when the country runs out of "sausage" there are

few reasons to support the Government. See Simons, Eastern Europe in the Postwar World, p. 152-

156.

In one of the many ideological twists of the Polish crisis, Western big business sided with the

communists. As the strikes continued, the banks grew uncomfortable with the increased political

instability, which had severely undermined Poland's economic base. Above all the banks wanted

a return on their loans and thus looked more favorably on a Soviet invasion in the belief that

Moscow would not permit Poland to default on its Western debt which would likely undermine

Moscow's extensive financial relations with the West. Arthur Rachwald, Poland Between the

Superpowers, (Stanford: 1989), p. 49.

313

workers.

Information on the victory of the Polish workers also threatened to ignite the entire

region. Factors Brzezinski once referred to as "technetronic" were limiting Moscow's hopes of

containing the contagion within the Polish borders. Uncensored news of the workers' victory

could be heard on Western radio broadcasts in most of the Soviet bloc, and West German reports

reached television sets in East Germany and much of Czechoslovakia. On September 23, Pravda

personally charged Brzezinski with conducting "psychological warfare" through Radio Free

Europe and the Voice of America.

Along the Polish-Czechoslovak border government officials

stripped vehicles in search of smuggled copies of the Gdansk agreement, which had become the

most sought after samizdat publication in Eastern Europe.

Despite Brzezinski's premonitions, the administration did not foresee the magnitude of

the events in Poland.

As the negotiations with Solidarity proceeded in late August the State Department

sought a low profile to avoid provoking a Soviet response. On August 18 State Department

Deputy Spokesman David Passage emphasized that it was "a matter for the Polish people and

Polish authorities to work out" and "we do not believe that any further comment from the United

States Government would be helpful in the situation as it is evolving in Poland."

Both Carter

See Flora Lewis, "Ripple From Poland: Eastern Europeans Will Feel It," The New York Times

(August 28, 1980).

See Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges, p. 131.

See "Soviet Bloc-Dominoes in Eastern Europe," Newsweek (September 8, 1980).

This lack of foresight was not limited to the U.S. officialdom. In 1979 political scientist Andrzej

Korbonski could confidently predict that the Polish situation was under control; "It is clear that

the second half of the 1970s was a difficult period for Poland. The crisis of confidence in the

system, combined with rising but unfulfilled expectations, resulted in a high degree of political

instability. But was the country on the verge of a collapse which, ultimately, might force the

Soviet Union to intervene in order to safeguard Communist rule? The answer is an emphatic no."

See Andrzej Korbonski, "Poland," in Communism in Eastern Europe, ed. Teresa Rakowski-

Harmstone and Andrew Gyorgy, (Bloomington: 1979), p. 67.

Graham Hovey, "U.S. Wary in Comments on Strikes," The New York Times (August 19, 1980).

See also John M. Goshko, "U.S. Doubts Soviets Will Act Drastically in Polish Situation," The

Washington Post, September 3, 1980. David Binder, "No Urgency Over Polish Crisis Apparent in

Washington," The New York Times, (August 23, 1980). David Binder, "Washington's Policy is to

Live and Let Live-Please," The New York Times, The Week in Review, (August 24, 1980).

314

and Secretary of State Muskie sought to rekindle the issue of human rights on the campaign trail.

Yet with the hostages in Iran and the Red Army in Afghanistan, human rights did not hold the

popular currency of 1976. Brzezinski was more than eager to utilize the human rights issue to

stimulate opposition in Eastern Europe. Yet he viewed the current crisis in the autumn of 1980 as

a matter of power politics. Above all, he sought to avoid the mistakes of previous administrations

and provide a strong deterrent to a Soviet invasion.

Brzezinski could not have hoped for more in his native Poland, but he had little time to

savor it. Given the state of U.S. foreign policy in 1980 more than a few critics were eager to throw

back his smug analysis of Kissinger's propensity for "acrobatics over architecture."

That

summer Brzezinski had come under increasing criticism for his backchannel maneuverings on

Muskie's State Department, mishandling the Iranian revolution, and poisoning relations with

Western Europe over the significance of Afghanistan.

Brzezinski's isolation within the

administration was summed up by an audible round of boos at the Democratic National

Convention, and a Time magazine piece aptly entitled "Almost Everyone versus Zbig."

For an early look at the institutional and philosophical struggles between Brzezinski and

Muskie see Leslie Gelb, "The Struggle Over Foreign Policy," The New York Times Magazine, July 20,

1980. Divisions between Brzezinski and the Muskie State Department surfaced in July when

Brzezinski oversaw the revision of the United States' nuclear targeting policy without consulting

the State Department. PD-59 moved away from "mutual assured destruction" toward a strategy

of targeting Soviet missile bases and command-and-control facilities, as well as cities and

industry. See Robert Divine, Since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Recent American History. New

York, p. 230. For a bitingly critical look at the revised nuclear targeting issue, and Brzezinski in

general, see Anthony Lewis, "The Brzezinski Puzzle," The New York Times, August 18, 1980. See

also Burton Pines and Don Sider, "Rethinking the Unthinkable," Time (August 25, 1980).

In a scathing indictment appearing in Foreign Policy magazine, Ambassador William Sullivan

placed the blame squarely on Brzezinski for the administration's mishandling of the Iran crisis.

See William Sullivan, "Dateline Iran: The Road Not Taken," Foreign Policy, (Fall, 1980).

See Strobe Talbott, "Almost Everyone vs. Zbig," Time, (September 22, 1980). The publicity

generated by Brzezinski's backchannels resulted in a flood of articles suggesting that the

institutional ambiguities of the national security adviser position be curbed. From Bundy,

Rostow, Kissinger, and now Brzezinski the post was seen by many as superfluous, disruptive and

disproportionately powerful. This was the basis of George Ball's memorable quote, "nothing

propinques like propinquity." See Flora Lewis, "The NSC Needs Paring," The New York Times,

September 12, 1980. I.M. Destler, "A Job That Doesn't Work," Foreign Policy, no. 38, (Spring, 1980),

p. 80-88. See also Peter Szanton, "Two Jobs, Not One," Foreign Policy, no. 38, (Spring, 1980), p. 89-

91.

315

But the emerging Polish crisis appeared the culminating point of policy orientation upon

which Brzezinski's academic career had been premised. Brzezinski's long-time predictions

regarding the demise of the Soviet empire no longer seemed the wishful thinking of a Polish

émigré, but the eventual fate of the Soviet empire.

For over two decades Brzezinski had been an abrasive critic of the U.S. neglect of Eastern

Europe. His most trenchant criticisms had focused on the passive U.S. responses in 1956 and 1968

that he believed had actually facilitated the Soviet decisions to invade. Now he had his chance.

Brzezinski's strategy throughout the Polish crisis was based on three primary goals: 1) To

use economic incentives to encourage moderation from the Polish government, which would at

once consolidate the gains of Solidarity and stabilize the volatile political situation; 2) To avoid

the apparent mistakes of the Johnson administration in 1968 by publicly articulating the

consequences of a Soviet invasion and making them clear to Moscow; 3) To deter a Soviet

invasion by urging Polish officials to inform Moscow that they could control the situation, but

that a Soviet invasion would be met with civil resistance.

Following the Gdansk agreement the Carter administration began a delicate game of

rewarding the Polish government as long as it abided by the terms of the Gdansk agreement and

Soviet tanks were kept at bay. This was consistent with the administration's policy of

simultaneously seeking to reward governmental moderation while stoking opposition

movements. The clear hope was that the continued presence of Solidarity, coupled with Western

economic aid to the Polish government, would stabilize the situation, all while moving Poland

further from Moscow's influence.

Thus the administration generally continued its policy of differentiation between the

Soviet Union and more moderate regimes in Eastern Europe. On the one hand, it stressed that

Moscow's violation of human rights, and of the sovereignty of Afghanistan would not be

subsidized by U.S. credits, grain, and technology; on the other hand, the Polish regime's

See "A Fortress State in Transition," Time, June 23, 1980.

316

concessions to the striking workers and its general adherence to the August 1980 agreement with

Solidarity were rewarded with generous U.S. economic aid.

On September 12, 1980, President Carter announced that the United States would

increase foreign credits to Poland to $670 million in 1980-81. Carter termed the gesture "an

expression of our admiration for the dignity with which the entire Polish nation--the workers, the

Government and the church-is conducting itself during this difficult time of evolution and

change."

But this policy had obvious domestic risks. Critics, not the least Ronald Reagan,

immediately charged that the United States had abandoned the heroic workers of Solidarity.

The most significant protest came from American trade unions who (to the consternation of the

State Department) were eager to provide vocal, emotional, and financial support to Solidarity.

Led by its staunchly anti-communist leader Lane Kirkland, the AFL-CIO announced plans to

See Rachwald, Poland Between the Superpowers, p. 49.

This was up from $550 million in fiscal year 1979-80. Arthur Rachwald points out that although

an additional loan of $325 million was organized for Poland by a number of Western banks, 85

cents of every dollar borrowed by the Poles went to servicing their foreign debt. Rachwald,

Poland Between the Superpowers, 1989, p. 48. Some White House officials had been frustrated over

the relative inability of the administration to provide aid to Poland in the heat of a campaign

season. Since U.S. foreign aid laws barred direct grants to Communist countries, agricultural

credits were one of the few programs that could be used at a time when Carter was seeking to

improve his political standing with some sort of tangible aid to Poland. See Steven R. Weisman,

"Carter Lauds Entire Polish Nation And Grants $670 Million For Grain," The New York Times,

September 13, 1980.

Without the burdens of office Reagan could afford to aggressively side with the workers.

Reagan kicked off his official campaign at a Labor Day event billed as an "ethnic picnic."

Speaking in front of the Statue of Liberty and a display of various Eastern European flags Reagan

was joined on stage by Lech Walesa's father (who had come to the United States in 1974 and was

at the time living in Jersey City as a lumberyard worker). After criticizing the Carter foreign

policy, Reagan claimed that Mr. Walesa's son had "provided the kind of leadership that Carter

had failed to deliver." See Ari L. Goldman, "In Jersey City, Polish Father Savors Son's Victory,"

The New York Times (September 1, 1980). It is interesting to note that Reagan was targeting the

identical voting bloc that Carter had sought following Ford's debate gaffe in 1976. At the time

Reagan was speaking in Hudson County, a traditionally Democratic region that Carter carried

with 55 percent of the vote in 1976. See "Reagan Castigating the 'Betrayal' of Workers'

Aspirations," The Washington Post (September 2, 1980).

317

channel funds directly to Solidarity as well as organize boycotts of Polish shipping in support of

the Polish labor unions.

The role of the AFL-CIO accelerated the burgeoning cleavage between Brzezinski and the

State Department on how to handle the growing crisis.

Brzezinski was upset when Carter

authorized Muskie to warn Kirkland that his actions could be seen as a provocation towards

Moscow. Brzezinski also took issue with the State Department's assurances to the Soviet embassy

that the U.S. government had no part in the actions of the AFL-CIO. He called on Muskie to at

least discuss the issue with the Polish Ambassador to avoid the appearance that the U.S. had

again "gone over the heads" of Eastern Europe.

Brzezinski was determined to develop a common Western strategy over Poland that had

been so notably absent after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In many ways his job was easier.

A Soviet move into Poland would be much more difficult for West Europeans to dismiss. Yet in

Kirkland was representative of the devoutly anti-communist nature of the postwar labor

movement in the United States. Long the protégé of George Meany, Kirkland was elected in

November 1979 to the presidency of the AFL-CIO. A co-founder of the "Committee on the Clear

and Present Danger" in 1976, Kirkland shared Meany's hawkish views on international affairs.

Like Brzezinski, Kirkland also held an emotional attachment to Eastern Europe as his wife was a

Czech survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. See the feature "Lane Kirkland, Internationalist,"

The Economist, (November 20, 1993).

See John Darnton, "Polish Officials Tell U.S. Embassy Money Aid May Hurt New Unions," The

New York Times, (September 10, 1980). AFL-CIO official Tom Kahn, would later voice disdain for

the State Department approach; "The notion that the Soviet Union would invade Poland because

the AFL-CIO gave a printing press to the Polish workers shows the analytical level to which the

State Department has fallen. Did anyone think that, having received an appeal from the Polish

workers, we would turn our backs on them and say 'no'? That would amount to telling the Polish

workers they should submit to tyranny." See Daniel Southerland, "AFL-CIO sending aid to Polish

Unionists," The Christian Science Monitor, December 8, 1980.

Treating Eastern European nations as "sovereign" had long been a feature of Brzezinski's

"peaceful engagement" strategy. Writing in 1965 Brzezinski noted "that a sense of nationalism

inherently works in the direction of increasing the independence of these states from the one that

now limits this independence-the Soviet Union. Therefore the United States and Western Europe

ought to respond seriously to any East European foreign policy proposals, and even encourage

the East Europeans to make more. These breed national pride, expose East European leaders to

Western counter-arguments in relative privacy and with freedom from Soviet supervision, and

stimulate an awareness of their own national interests. It is counter-productive to Western

interests to simply dismiss the East Europeans as proxies for the Soviet Union even when, if fact,

they are acting as such." See Brzezinski, "Peaceful Engagement," Encounter, (April, 1965), p. 20.

318

the strategically ambiguous years of the late 1970s a united Western front was anything but

guaranteed.

While the Gdansk negotiations were moving in late August, Brzezinski advised President

Carter to send letters to the Pope, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, French President

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in an effort to develop a

common Western policy.

Though the Vatican still had no "divisions" to speak of, the moral

impact of the Polish Pope would be enormous in the crisis. Britain was expected to be the most

cooperative toward U.S. interests as Thatcher had generally followed the U.S. lead after

Afghanistan. In Paris, Giscard was expected to take a stronger stand over Poland than

Afghanistan given the historical relationship between the two nations and the upcoming French

elections.

Once again the key to a unified Western policy would center on the nebulous role of

West Germany. The emergence of Solidarity strained the already contentious personal

relationship between Brzezinski and Chancellor Schmidt. Thus it was abundantly clear that

Schmidt held little enthusiasm for the Solidarity movement. The rise of Solidarity clearly

threatened Schmidt's delicate arrangement in the East. Schmidt was particularly close to Gierek

and proud of the resulting freedom of emigration for some 230,000 Germans from East European

countries as a result of détente.

Shortly before the Gdansk agreement Schmidt had even stepped up his Ostpolitik,

hoping to move the East-West focus away from Afghanistan. As the Polish crisis broke in August

Schmidt was forced to cancel a planned visit from Gierek, as well as a German "summit" meeting

with Eric Honecker which would have been the first visit by a West German head of government

See Brzezinski, Power and Principle, (New York, 1983), p. 464.

Giscard was the first Western statesman to meet with Brezhnev after the invasion of

Afghanistan traveling to Warsaw in the spring of 1980 to meet with the Soviet leader. His

Socialist opponent Francois Mitterand accused him of playing the "messenger boy" for Moscow.

The less tactful of his political opponents had compared Giscard's refusal to apply sanctions

against Moscow to Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich. See Sammy Cohen and

Marie-Claude Smouts, eds., La politique exterieure de Giscard d'Estaing (Paris: 1985), pp. 246-60.

319

to East Germany in ten years.

Schmidt's objections to a more active U.S. role in Eastern Europe

were seen in his stated objections to Carter's human rights campaign. But Schmidt's distaste with

Brzezinski's hard line peaked following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

After Schmidt

traveled to Moscow on June 30, to discuss Afghanistan and other issues, he urged Carter to

dismiss Brzezinski, arguing that the national security adviser had been a negative influence on

the East-West relationship.

The concern in Washington, and especially for Brzezinski, centered on the political

ramifications of the growing Soviet-West German economic relationship in 1980. Under highly

favorable terms (7.75% interest over ten years) a consortium of 20 West German banks were

negotiating to provide $5.3 billion in credit for the construction of a 3,000 mile natural gas

pipeline from Siberia to West Germany. By 1984 the Soviets were expected to be supplying 30%

of West Germany's natural gas needs, up from 9% of 1980, making West Germany even more

dependent on its economic relationship with Moscow. The clear implication was that in the wake

of the Iranian crisis Bonn no longer saw the United States as a reliable guarantor of a supply

Mideast oil to Europe.

As the West grappled with a common policy, the survival of Solidarity created a

momentum that approached a dangerous state of euphoria. By early October Soviet bloc leaders

See John Vinocur, "Ostpolitik Becomes Impolitic For Now," The New York Times, August 24,

1980.

Brzezinski was at the center of the differences separating U.S.-West German relations

throughout 1980. In mid-June after Chancellor Schmidt appeared to be hedging on the TNF

missile deployment, Carter sent Schmidt a stern letter (drafted by Brzezinski) reminding him of

the stated NATO position. When the letter was leaked to the press, probably by Brzezinski,

Schmidt was livid calling the action "pure spite...by someone who was eager to vent his spleen--

someone who had never been able to decide whether the Germans or the Russians were the

archenemy of the Polish people, from whom he was descended." See Helmut Schmidt, Men and

Powers; A Political Retrospective, (New York, 1989), p. 210.

Brzezinski records that he was pleased with Carter's "contemptuous dismissal" of the

suggestion, and the fact that Carter informed him of it. See Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 463.

See "Moscow Baits Bonn with Siberian Gas Deal," Business Week, July 7, 1980. See also Angela

Stent, "The USSR and Germany," Problems of Communism, (March-April, 1981), See also Stent,

From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955-1980. (New

York, 1981).

320

were growing restless. The possibility of a Soviet invasion looked increasingly ominous. Fear of a

political spillover was a major reason for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Moving

into the fall Moscow portrayed Solidarity not only as a threat to the Polish government, but to

Eastern Europe, and the national security of the Soviet Union itself-thus providing Moscow with

a claim that any military solution would be a "defensive" maneuver. On October 13, East German

leader Erich Honecker announced that Poland "belongs inseparably to the socialist world." In a

disconcerting reference to the Brezhnev Doctrine Honecker vowed that "we together with friends

will make sure of that."

On October 4, Brzezinski reported that Soviet intervention was "quite possible" unless

the administration took "energetic efforts to deter it."

Brzezinski then convened the SCC as a

crisis committee to review contingency plans for a possible Soviet move, providing him with

greater latitude in shaping the administration's policy.

But the question remained whether the

West, Brzezinski, or the Carter State Department, could develop a common policy in the face of

the Soviet threat.

Hopes of a unified response suffered a blow at a meeting in late October involving the

major European allies. At this meeting West German representatives informed the United States

that détente should not be sacrificed in the event of Soviet intervention. This was the clearest

implication that Bonn would continue its political and economic relations with Moscow even if

Quoted in Minton F. Goldman, "Soviet Policy Toward The Political Turmoil in Poland During

the Fall of 1980," East European Quarterly, vol. XX, no. 3, (September, 1986), p. 342. In Prague,

Czechoslovak Politburo member Vasil Bilak observed that Poland was beginning to experience

the "worst of all developments, counter-revolution." See "Vasil Bilak Implies Counter-Revolution

in Poland," Radio Free Europe, Background Report 247 (October 20, 1980).

The Special Coordination Committee (SCC) oversaw intelligence and arms control issues and

also functioned as the crisis management committee. Brzezinski as National Security Adviser,

was its chairman. See Alexander Moens, Foreign Policy Under Jimmy Carter, (Boulder, Co. 1990), p.

37.

Though the Polish issue did not entail the raucous splits of previous administration policies,

the State Department remained far more reserved than Brzezinski. On October 14, Muskie

reiterated what he referred to as the administration's "standing policy" in that the situation was

for "the Polish people and the Polish Government to deal with and to resolve." See "Reply by the

Secretary of State to a Question at a Press Briefing, Ann Arbor, Michigan, October 14, 1980,"

American Foreign Policy Basic Documents (Eastern Europe), 1977-80 (Eastern Europe), Document 231.

321

Soviet troops invaded Poland. This was a position particularly irritating to Brzezinski, who

termed it "the best proof yet of the increasing ‘finlandization’ of the Germans."

But by November the Carter administration had more immediate concerns. The nightly

image of the hostages in Iran had become a lingering metaphor of U.S. impotence. In November

of 1980 a President once portrayed as a moral crusader to heal the nation's collective guilt over

Vietnam was widely lampooned as a foreign policy neophyte who could not stand up to

Moscow. Despite a campaign strategy to "Goldwaterize" Reagan as a Stranglovian mad man, the

Democrats could not match the electoral appeal of Reagan's hard line. On November 4 Carter

was defeated in a Republican landslide.

Carter's resounding defeat clearly limited the administration's options in handling the

Polish crisis.

Yet Brzezinski's post-election strategy continued to center on publicizing the

potential consequences of a Soviet invasion-so Moscow would "know what would follow and

that we were politically bound to react."

Brzezinski had no illusions that U.S. warnings would

be the sole factor in Soviet calculations, yet believed (as he did in 1968) a strong U.S. response

Brzezinski, "White House Diary, 1980", Orbis, (Winter, 1988), p. 34. Before the Polish crisis

broke, Schmidt's Christian Democratic opponent Franz Josef Strauss had pledged a bi-partisan

unity to Ostpolitik. With his right flank secure, some believed Schmidt was moving closer to the

SPD's left wing to placate party leaders such as Herbert Wehner, who had long argued that the

Soviet military buildup in Central Europe was "defensive." As early as 1959 the left wing of the

SDP had developed a "Deutschland Plan" aimed at neutralizing West Germany. See "Germany:

Steering Europe to Independence." Business Week, May 12, 1980. It is worth recalling that a

German move toward a more neutral East-West position was a stated fear of Henry Kissinger in

the 1960s. It was the basis for his concern regarding Brandt's Ostpolitik, and the basis of

Kissinger's criticism of the Brzezinski/Johnson policy of urging Bonn to take independent

initiatives toward the East in the mid-1960s. See Henry Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice, (New

York: 1960) p. 132. See also Kissinger, The Troubled Partnership, (New York: 1965), pp. 211-16.

Kissinger, "The Price of German Unity," The Reporter 32, April 22, 1965, p. 12-17.

A rather inopportune "endorsement" from Moscow probably did not aid Carter's chances in

the neo-Cold War zeitgeist of 1980. See R.W. Apple, "Kremlin Leaders Seem to Conclude That

Carter is Preferable to Reagan," The New York Times (October 27, 1980).

This handicap was seen immediately when the administration could not grant Kania's request

for $3 billion in low-interest loans over three years-a responsibility too vast for a defeated

administration. See "White House Studies Poland's Request For $3 Billion in Emergency

Assistance," The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 1980. As a show of good faith Muskie

recommended that credit guarantees for grain sales to Poland be increased from $670 million to a

reported $900 million over the next year.

See Brzezinski, "White House Diary," p. 44-45.

322

could tilt the balance in the event of an internal Kremlin disagreement, which was in fact

occurring throughout the Polish crisis.

In late November Brzezinski sent a memo (designed to leak to the press) to Muskie and

Defense Secretary Harold Brown listing the likely ramifications of a Soviet invasion. (1) it would

produce a rupture in the political détente in Europe; (2) disrupt East-West economic cooperation;

(3) generate increased NATO budgets; (4) produce severe strains between Western European

Communist parties and the Soviet Union; (5) alienate the Non-Aligned Movement from the

Soviet Union; (6) possibly precipitate turmoil elsewhere in the Soviet bloc; (7) lead to more

American-Chinese military cooperation.

On November 10 the Polish Supreme Court confirmed Solidarity's legal status adding to

the anxiety in Moscow. For the first time Poland's "self-limiting" revolution threatened to spin out

of control. Brzezinski was increasingly concerned that the Poles had failed to recognize, or chose

to ignore, the very real threat of a Soviet invasion.

Brzezinski viewed the threat of armed

For an analysis of the internal Kremlin debate of 1968 see See Jiri Valenta, Soviet Intervention in

Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision (Baltimore and London, 1979). Charles Gati argues that

Soviet policy throughout the Polish crisis was not based on "prudence" but on an internal power

struggle developing in anticipation of the Brezhnev succession. Gati contends that there was no

question that all Soviet leaders knew that Poland must remain in the Soviet sphere, but for over a

year they simply could not decide how to accomplish it. As Brezhnev's health continued to

decline no high-level Soviet leader wanted to be held accountable such a high-risk alternative as

an invasion of Poland. Thus the policy of "muddling through" was a political imperative dictated

by political ambitions of competing power centers in the Kremlin. See Charles Gati, "Soviet

Empire: Alive but Not Well," in Robbin F. Laird/Erik P. Hoffman, Soviet Foreign Policy in a

Changing World, (New York, 1986), pp. 614-615. For a hypothetical but plausible dialogue taking

place in the Kremlin in December 1980 see Walter Laquer, "Poland on the Table: Eavesdropping

on the Politburo-November 27, 1980," The New Republic. vol. 183, no. 26. (December 27, 1980).

Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 467.

In a 1981 interview George Urban asked Brzezinski pointedly whether it might not be to the

long range advantage of the West if the Polish crisis were allowed to blow up in the face of the

Soviet Union and put "great strain on the cohesion of the whole ghastly tyranny?" Brzezinski

responded that such an occurrence would lead to "chaos and a world crisis of the first magnitude.

Only the poor and the weak can afford to have wars and war-like crises in our day." He predicted

that a Soviet invasion would result in "military occupation, massive bloodshed, and,

concomitantly with these, the intensification of police repression in the Soviet Union." See George

Urban, "A Long Conversation With Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski," Encounter, (May 1981), p. 26.

323

resistance in Poland as a vital deterrent. He believed Moscow was more likely to invade if they

were confident Soviet troops could enter unopposed as was the case in Czechoslovakia.

In late November Brzezinski met with various official and unofficial emissaries from

Poland urging them to form a united front and avoid bringing the issue to a confrontation. Once

again Brzezinski recommended the Polish government assure Moscow that they were capable of

preserving order, but an invasion would be met with civil resistance.

Meanwhile Brzezinski had done little to rehabilitate his image with the Democratic

faithful. In the wake of Reagan's triumph Brzezinski took one last jab at the State Department,

claiming that the Democrats had been soundly defeated at the ballot box due to their inability to

recognize and act on the Soviet threat.

Political Scientist Christopher Jones concurred with this point contending that Moscow's

response to previous challenges from Tito, Gomulka, Ceausescu, and Hoxha indicated that the

Soviets "would not use force to remove the leadership of a rebellious East European Communist

party if the leaders of the party are willing to go to war in defense of their national sovereignty."

See Christopher D. Jones, "Soviet Hegemony in Eastern Europe: The Dynamics of Political

Autonomy and Military Intervention," World Politics, vol. 29, no. 2 (January, 1977).

Tass accused Brzezinski (in a meeting with unnamed Polish "political scientists") of

attempting to instigate armed rebellion against the Polish Government. The accusations were

later reprinted in Pravda which went further in suggesting Brzezinski was seeking to

"destabilize" the situation in Poland. See Anthony Austin, "Tass Says Brzezinski Tried to Stir Up

Revolt in Poland," The New York Times, December 5, 1980. Ten days later Pravda renewed its

claims contending that "Zbigniew Brzezinski is making use of the last weeks of his stay with the

administration for instigative actions...The actions of Brzezinski show how the encroachments of

the antisocialist forces in Poland give Poland's enemies a reason for their campaign against the

people's Poland." See "Moscow Again Asserts Brzezinski Instigates Opposition in Poland," The

New York Times, December 15, 1980.

See Richard Burt, "Brzezinski Calls Democrats Soft Toward Moscow," The New York Times,

November 30, 1980. Vance responded in uncharacteristic vigor calling the charge "hogwash"

contending that Brzezinski had ignored the political, economic, and trade aspects of U.S.-Soviet

relationship relying instead "on the use of military power or bluff." Vance would also imply in his

memoirs that Brzezinski was at least indirectly responsible for creating the atmosphere for which

the Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan. Since mid-1978 Vance contended, "the downward

spiral in U.S.-Soviet relations had released the brakes on Soviet international behavior. If, as is

likely, Moscow had decided by late December that the SALT Treaty was in deep trouble, that

access to American trade and technology was drying up (a drying up that Brzezinski and Brown

especially demanded), and that the danger of American-Chinese-Western European encirclement

were growing." Brezhnev doubtless concluded he had no reason not to deal "with a dangerous

problem" on his border. See Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices, (New York, 1983) See also Walter

LaFeber, "From Confusion to Cold War: The Memoirs of the Carter Administration," Diplomatic

History, vol. 8 (1984).

324

At the same time Moscow continued to view Brzezinski as a primary Western villian

behind Solidarity. In late 1980 a Soviet commentator cited a 1973 Brzezinski article as evidence

that the United States had used intentionally used détente "to sow dissension among the socialist

community countries" as well as "undermine their influence in the world." Of particular note to

the author was Brzezinski's contention that "peaceful engagement" in East-West relations "will

almost imperceptibly chip away at...the edges of the Communist doctrinal edifice."

On December 1, Brzezinski expressed concern to Carter whether the administration had

been clear enough in their public statements and "gone sufficiently on record in expressing

anxiety."

Indeed Brzezinski's fear of a Soviet invasion materialized later that week. Just as they

had before the invasion of Czechoslovakia, leaders of the Warsaw Pact nations traveled to

Moscow in an unannounced summit meeting issuing "reassurances" for the fraternal solidarity

and support of the Warsaw Pact countries.

East Germany then abruptly sealed its Polish

See L. Vidyasova, "Anti-Communism-The Core of Imperialist Foreign Policy," International

Affairs, no. 12 (December, 1980), p. 70. The article in question was Brzezinski "U.S. Foreign Policy:

The Search for Focus," Foreign Affairs, vol. 51 (July, 1973), p. 721. who were having second

thoughts about the virtues of détente. It should be noted that the Carter/Brzezinski version of

détente was indeed different than the orginial design seen under Nixon/Kissinger. Thus it is

interesting to contrast Moscow's trepidation over détente in 1980 with its confidence in the

immediate wake of Helsinki. The expected input of capital and technology yielded smaller

benefits than expected and elicited new challenges in the name of human rights. Compare Albert

L. Weeks, "Choosing Sides-The Détente Debate in the Kremlin," The New Leader, March 10, 1980,

p. 9. and Adam Ulam, "Smug Russians: Rationalizing the Past, Savoring the Future," The New

Republic, March 27, 1976. p. 12. Though détente had not worked out as expected, by the late 1970s

the Soviets had become captive to their own commitments. By having proclaimed the

"irreversibility" of détente, Moscow could not simply dismiss it without calling into question the

judgment of the Brezhnev leadership. This point is made cogently in Helmut Sonnenfeldt and

William G. Hyland, "Soviet Perspectives on Security," Adelphi Papers, no. 150 (Spring, 1979), pp. 1-

19.

See Brzezinski, "White House Diary," p. 35.

According to East German documents released in 1993, East German leader Erich Honecker

urged his Warsaw Pact allies to invade Poland. In his appeal to Brezhnev Honecker argued that

"Yesterday our collective measures might have been premature. Today they are necessary, but

tomorrow they may be too late." See Stephen Kinzer, "Honecker Sought Drive Into Poland," The

New York Times, January 12, 1993. The official Czechoslovak news agency was even more specific

singling out Lech Walesa, Jacek Kuron, and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, concluding that such

affiliations gave rise to 'the suspicion that Solidarity wants a disruption of the socialist system in

Poland." See Anna Sabbat and Roman Stefanowski, "Poland, A Chronology of Events: November

1980-February 1981," RAD Background Report/263, p. 27.

325

border to Western military observers. CIA intelligence sources also indicated that East German,

Czechoslovak, and Soviet forces had mobilized on Poland's frontiers, ready to launch a massive

invasion.

Intelligence reports indicated that Red Army divisions in the western regions of the

Soviet Union were moving advance storage of fuel supplies, unfolding of tents next to field

hospitals, and forwarding assault forces, including a number of paratroopers. It was feared that a

Soviet invasion could involve 30 divisions and perhaps as many as 1 million soldiers. If Polish

security forces could not mount an internal solution it was believed that Moscow would rely on

its strategic doctrine of "overwhelming force."

The first objective would be to overrun airports to serve as beachheads within Poland

and prevent possible counterattacks by the Polish Air Force. At least one of the four Soviet

airborne divisions based in western Russia would drop paratroopers on Poland's major airfields.

Soviet transport planes would land a massive supply of light tanks and armored personnel

carriers at Polish airports. The Soviet Baltic fleet would seek to capture the ports of Gdansk,

Szczezci and Gdynia in hopes of neutralizing the Polish Navy. Meantime, two East German

Army corps would move up to their Polish border creating an anvil and hammer effect. Some of

the Soviet troops stationed in East Germany would move into Poland to monitor railways, roads,

and bridges against potential saboteurs. The two Soviet divisions stationed in Poland would

swing west to secure bridges over the Oder and Neisse rivers that connect the East German

autobahn network with the Polish highways. Soviet troops based near Minsk would move

toward Warsaw on the main highway along the vital Moscow-East Berlin railway. Once Soviet

forces controlled the key airfields, ports, roads, and rail lines, Moscow would send in their main

occupation forces, most coming from the western regions of the Soviet Union itself. Within 24

hours, the Kremlin hoped to have an intimidating number of tanks in all major cities and outside

all Polish Army barracks, deterring any potential resistance.

See "How Moscow Would Invade," Newsweek, December 15, 1980, p. 40-41. See also Drew

Middleton, "Speculation on Polish Crisis: Moscow's Military Options," The New York Times,

326

Brzezinski now more determined than ever to provide an adequate deterrent. With the

transition of power in Washington, Brzezinski sought to establish a common policy with the

incoming Reagan administration

and urged Carter to press "our allies for a rapid definition of a

common purpose" and get them to "line up, as specifically as possible what our economic and

political sanctions will be."

Although he believed that Muskie "would probably object to it" Brzezinski urged Carter

to issue a joint statement with President-elect Reagan expressing U.S. concern. Carter agreed, and

on December 2, White House Press Secretary Jody Powell announced that it would be "serious

mistake for any to assume that in a period of transition...the American Government lacks either

the will or the ability to respond."

On December 3 President Carter used the “hotline” to send a

direct message to the Kremlin informing the Soviet leaders that the consequences of a military

invasion would be severe.

If any doubt remained in the Kremlin, Republican Senator Charles Percy traveled to

Moscow in early December, carrying a message from Brzezinski (addressed to Foreign Minister

Gromyko) stating that the "use of troops in Poland would change the face of the globe" and result

in a massive arms buildup.

The threat of invasion appeared to galvanize the Western alliance. While Soviet troops

remained poised on the Polish borders, the publicity generated by Brzezinski was a key factor in

moving West Germany closer in line with the U.S. policy. The West German trade agreement

with Moscow had recently been completed. Yet on December 4, the German Ambassador, citing

December 4, 1980. See also Middleton, "Russian Forces Around Poland Termed Ready," The New

York Times, December 10, 1980.

See Brzezinski, "White House Diary," p. 39.

See David Binder, "U.S. Cautioning On Intervention in Polish Crisis," The New York Times,

December 3, 1980.

Brzezinski, "White House Diary," p. 22.

See Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges, p. 132.

327

public opinion pressures, informed Brzezinski that Bonn would indeed adopt economic sanctions

against Moscow in the event of a Soviet invasion.

But the threat remained. The U.S. had greater intelligence capabilities than in 1968, much

of it provided by Col. Ryszard Kuklinski, a disillusioned senior Polish staff officer who had long

served as a useful CIA source in the region.

On Friday morning, December 5, CIA director

Stansfield Turner informed Brzezinski that Soviet divisions were scheduled to move into Poland

by Monday morning. Brzezinski immediately informed Carter, and advised the President that he

would hold an SCC meeting the next day if further information confirmed the report of an

imminent invasion. The NSC convened Sunday morning December 7, in the Cabinet Room after

which Carter contacted key foreign governments urging them to express publicly and privately

their opposition to a Soviet invasion.

Brzezinski's role on this point is emphasized by Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos in his work

Kissinger and Brzezinski, (New York, 1991), p. 265. See also Karen Elliott, "Moscow's Dilemma-

Polish Events Pressure Russia to Invade, But It Would Face High Cost," The Wall Street Journal,

December 4, 1980.

After he escaped to the United States in 1981 Kuklinski was court-martialed in absentia in 1984,

convicted of treason and desertion and sentenced to death. After the Communists relinquished

power in 1989 Kuklinski's sentence was reduced to 25 years in prison. Kuklinski was still a

wanted man in Poland when Brzezinski sparked a strong debate among the Polish military when

he suggested on Polish television that Kuklinski should be awarded a medal rather than a

pardon. Brzezinski later explained "I don't think there should be a pardon, because that implies

that there was guilt...There should simply be a flat statement from (President Walesa) that the so-

called martial court sentence was itself an act of loyalty to the Soviet Union and a treasonable act

in regard to Poland's national independence and, therefore, has no validity." On January 12, 1991,

Walesa later sent a private letter to Brzezinski expressing his thanks for pointing out the

"patriotic aspects" of Kuklinski's actions, but cautioning that it "will take time and preparations to

resolve it." See Benjamin Weiser, "Polish Officer Was U.S.'s Window on Soviet War Plans," The

Washington Post, September 27, 1992. For Kuklinski's story see Richard Pipes, "Introduction to

Ryszard Kuklinski," Orbis, (Winter, 1980), pp. 6-7. For his own viewpoint see Ryszard Kuklinski,

"The Crushing of Solidarity," Kultura, Paris, no. 4, (April 1987), pp. 3-57, translated and reprinted

in Orbis, vol. 32 (Winter, 1988), pp. 7-31.

It is interesting to note the role of Cuba in Brzezinski's calculations in Eastern Europe. On the

afternoon of December 7, Brzezinski chaired an SCC meeting where he proposed the option of

warning Moscow on the possibility of a blockade on Cuba in retaliation of a move into Poland-a

move he suggested in 1965 should the Soviets again threaten the status of West Berlin. See

Brzezinski, "White House Diary," p. 46. The possibility of a blockade of Cuba was suggested more

strongly by William Safire in his column "To Deter Invasion of Poland," The New York Times,

December 11, 1980.

328

On December 11-12, NATO foreign ministers met in Brussels to consider joint steps in the

event of a Soviet invasion. These included increasing defense expenditures, severing credits to

Poland and the Soviet Union, terminating technology transfers (including the Soviet-European

gas pipeline) closing Western ports to Soviet ships, and discontinuing MBFR and CSCE talks. The

final communiqué issued from the December 12 meeting warned the Soviets that détente could

not survive a military invasion.

But the situation remained tense. With Brezhnev about to visit India, Indira Ghandi was

urged to express her concerns. Brzezinski conferred with Lane Kirkland to discuss the possibility

of a worldwide boycott on the shipment of all goods to the Soviet Union. Kirkland expressed

optimism in carrying this out as well as garnering international support. Brzezinski also revived

the China card sending a memo (again designed to leak to the press) instructing the Defense

Department to prepare a list of weapons that could be made available to the Chinese in the event

of a Soviet invasion.

Brzezinski also utilized his unique connections as a native Pole. With Carter's approval,

Brzezinski phoned the Pope and briefed him on the situation (in Polish). Brzezinski then took the

unprecedented step of arranging telephone calls to Solidarity leaders warning them to take

personal precautions to avoid being arrested in the middle of the night. Brzezinski's goals in

pursuing these polices were clearly expressed in his journal entry of December 8:

I see four objectives to what we are doing; One is to deprive the Soviets of surprise. This

we have already done. Two, perhaps to encourage the Poles to resist if they are not taken by

surprise, for this might somewhat deter the Soviets. The publicity is already doing that. Thirdly,

and paradoxically, to calm the situation in Poland by making the Poles more aware that the

Soviets may in fact enter. The Poles have till now discounted this possibility and this may have

emboldened them excessively. Here in effect we have a common interest with the Soviets, for

they too prefer to intimidate the Poles, to a degree. And fourth, to deter the Soviets from coming

in by intensifying international pressure and condemnation of the Soviet Union.

Thomas M. Cynkin, Soviet and American Signaling in the Polish Crisis, (London, 1988) pp. 74-75.

See also John Vinocur, "NATO Warns Soviet Invasion of Poland Would End Détente," The New

York Times, December 13, 1980.

Brzezinski, "White House Diary," p. 44.

329

The Czech precedent of 1968 rarely left Brzezinski's mind. At the height of the crisis he

provided Carter with two post-invasion Wall Street Journal editorials criticizing the Johnson

administration's failure to respond to Soviet saber rattling. Yet by December 9, Brzezinski

believed that the Carter administration had at least avoided the major errors of 1968-the failure of

"speaking up when we knew that the Soviet buildup was reaching its culminating stage."

It appeared the storm had been weathered. By mid-December Moscow's tactics turned to

the more subtle policy of courting Western European public opinion. Similar to Moscow's line

before Afghanistan, the Kremlin argued that if the Polish government "invites" armed Soviet

assistance, it should not be viewed as a threat to détente or to the security of Western Europe. On

a visit to Paris, Central Committee hard liner Boris Ponomaryov stressed a conciliatory tone

stating that "The Poles are big enough to settle their own problems," and the Soviet Union "in no

way intends to interfere in their affairs." Brzezinski retorted that "It would be a contribution to a

lessening of tension if such statements were accompanied by a disengagement of the forces

deployed around Poland and a scaling down of their state of readiness."

By late December it

appeared that the crisis had passed. On January 20, 1981 the Polish crisis would be taken up by

the incoming Reagan administration.

Although the management of the Polish crisis was widely seen as a last gasp of a

humiliated administration, the effectiveness of the Carter policy received some vindication in

East German documents made public in 1993. In announcing the opening of the documents,

Professor Manfred Wilke (chief of the research group at Free University in Berlin) offered his

views on why Moscow balked at an invasion; "the fact that the Afghanistan war had been

launched a year earlier and that the Iran crisis was creating new concerns on the Soviet Union's

Ibid, p. 45.

For a look at Soviet strategy toward Western Europe in the Polish crisis, and West Germany in

particular, see John Vinocur, "NATO's Resolve: Soft Spots Show Up," The New York Times,

December 15, 1980. See also Pierre Hassner, "Moscow and the Western Alliance," Problems of

Communism, (May-June 1981). p. 37-54.

330

southern flank, plus the decisiveness of the United States, were the key reasons why this step was

not taken."

Brzezinski regarded the handling of the Polish crisis as one of the Carter administration's

most notable foreign policy successes.

At any rate, it should be compared not only to the U.S.

policies in 1956 and 1968, but to the response of the Reagan administration in 1981. On October

17, 1980, Brzezinski sent Carter a memo outlining the "disturbing" implications of a possible

Reagan victory. His primary concern was that in Eastern Europe there will be a great fear that the

U.S. is once again writing off Eastern Europe, especially in Poland. "The Soviets will then have no

alternative but to conclude that U.S.-USSR relations have become one-dimensional."

Later events appeared to verify Brzezinski's fears. On December 13, 1981 Polish special

riot police and army units launched an "internal solution" resulting in the arrest of virtually the

entire leadership of Solidarity. At the time the Reagan administration claimed to have been taken

by surprise. But in June of 1986 The Washington Post reported that the secret contact of Col.

Kuklinski had in fact provided the Reagan administration with detailed advanced knowledge of

the Polish government's plans to move on Solidarity. While voicing harsh rhetoric condemning

the institution of Martial Law, the return to Cold War tensions with Poland fit more favorably

into Reagan's Manichean world view.

It also seemed to confirm Brzezinski's fears that a

See Stephen Kinzer, "Honnecker Sought Drive into Poland," The New York Times, (January 12,

1993).

Whether the Carter administration could have done more to aid Solidarity has been debated.

Timothy Garton Ash has argued that the United States had a brief opportunity to orchestrate

something of a covert Polish "Marshall Plan." The theory held that Solidarity would have had a

greater bargaining power in exchange for such an aid package. But Ash admits the timing of the

Polish crisis made such a proposal politically unrealistic for a lame duck President. See Ash, The

Polish Revolution., pp. 325-328. Charles Gati argues that optimism in an aid package was naive in

suggesting that the "almighty dollar" could have made a difference at a time when the "power

and prestige--the vital interests--of the Soviet Union were at stake." See Gati, "Polish Futures,

Western Options," Foreign Affairs, (winter-1982-83), p. 304.

See Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 569.

Tom Kahn of the AFL-CIO commented caustically that the Polish declaration of martial law fit

into Reagan's more simplistic propaganda aims allowing him to "look at martial law as an

opportunity for a rhetorical holiday, lighting candles for the suffering Polish people, saying let

Poland be Poland, and mounting a mass anti-communist campaign without adverse

consequences, and to avoid having to directly confront the Soviets." See Eric Chenoweth and

331

meaningful U.S. policy toward Eastern Europe would be sacrificed as a Cold War pawn in the

Reagan White House.

The fact that the Reagan administration took no precautions to curb the institution of

Martial Law was paraded by Polish spokesman Jerzy Urban shortly after the circulation of the

1986 reports: "The U.S. administration could have publicly revealed these plans to the world and

warned Solidarity. Had it done so, the implementation of martial law would have been

impossible." Urban claimed that when Kuklinski fled Poland in late 1981, the Polish government

knew he had been spying for the U.S. and had "waited for some kind of announcement from

Washington. But time passed and the United States was silent, so the plans were put into

effect."

Though such declarations were no doubt intended to tarnish the heroic image of

Ronald Reagan, they added a comparative luster to the Carter administration's approach in

confronting a similar situation in December of 1980.

As the Carter administration served out its final days in office, a more subtle transition of

power was taking place in the Kremlin. The image of an anemic Leonid Brezhnev struggling with

five elderly pallbearers to support the casket of Kosygin provided a macabre symbol of the rise

and fall of the Soviet empire. As the youthful beneficiaries of Stalin's purges, this generation of

leaders had ruled over the longest period of stability in Soviet history. Yet as the world moved

into the 1980s it was apparent that this stability had been achieved at the price of domestic

tyranny, an overly militarized society, and an antiquated economic system. Such problems were

Jerzy B. Warman, "Solidarity Abandoned-Why Reagan Didn't Help," The New Republic, vol. 195,

no. 2 and 3, (July 14 and 21), 1986, pp. 19-20.

This seems to have been confirmed by Reagan Secretary of State Alexander Haig's recollection

that "some of my colleagues in the NSC were prepared to look beyond Poland, as if it were not in

itself an issue of war and peace, and regard it as an opportunity to inflict mortal political,

economic, and propaganda damage on the USSR." See Alexander Haig, Caveat: Realism, Reagan,

and Foreign Policy, (New York, 1984) p. 239.

See Chenoweth-Warman, "Solidarity Abandoned," p. 20.

General Jaruzelski would later claim that because Kuklinski had known all the plans, the

Polish leadership assumed that the failure of the U.S. government to act meant a tacit if reluctant

approval for Polish action, in preference to Soviet military intervention. See Paris AFP, April 17,

1992, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Eastern Europe, (April 20, 1992), p. 17.

332

compounded for the satrapies in Eastern Europe whose dependence on a occupying power in

decline put them in a most unfavorable position. By the time the Carter administration left office

in 1981 the Communist system throughout Eastern Europe had entered an irreversible state of

disintegration that would culminate in the revolutions of 1989.

333

CONCLUSION

On January 20, 1981 Zbigniew Brzezinski concluded his term as President Carter’s

National Security Adviser. His old friend Henry Kissinger warned him that he might be

depressed when he first returned to private life. Brzezinski, however, took the transition rather

well. “During the preceding four years I had often reminded myself—deliberately—that being in

the White House was an exceptional and very transitory period in my life. Frankly, I enjoyed it

enormously but I also sensed how easy it would be to become attached to the trappings of power

and to become totally enveloped in its aura. I was determined not to become the captive of my

temporarily exalted status, or to take it for granted, or to yearn for it when it was over. I

conditioned myself to view my White House experience as a unique chapter in my life, self-

contained and not repeatable. This helped me to retain some sense of perspective about it all and

to be detached about its end. “Decompression” was not a problem.”

The hostage crisis in Iran had dominated Carter’s final year in office and obscured many

of the administration’s accomplishments. The release of the Iranian hostages minutes after

Reagan’s inaugural only added to the sense of humiliation. Brzezinski, upon leaving office,

remained the most articulate defenders of Carter’s foreign policy. In the spring of 1981 Brzezinski

gave an extended interview with George Urban that provided an articulate defense of the Carter

foreign policy. “In any case, it is a point of fact that in the area of foreign affairs President Carter

achieved a historically impressive record. In four years his Administration—and the credit for

this has to go largely to him personally—contributed significantly to world peace, to greater

global justice, and to enhanced national security. It was Carter’s major accomplishment that, by

the time he left office, there was more widespread appreciation worldwide that American stood

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981

(New York, 1983), p. 514.

334

again for principle and identified itself with the movement for more social and political justice. It

is not exaggeration to say that, thanks to Carter, America was again seen, after the years of

Watergate and the Vietnam War, as standing for its traditional value of freedom. That is an asset

in world affairs that cynics are wrong to dismiss.”

No figure in the Carter Administration drew more controversy than Zbigniew

Brzezinski. Shortly after the election Newsweek reported that Brzezinski was the most unpopular

of Carter’s official scoring an “unfavorable” rating of 80%. “We really shouldn’t be surprised,”

said one Carter official. “After all, he was booed spontaneously at the convention in New York,

and if he was that unpopular with Democrats, we should have realized how he was going over

with the country as a whole.”

George Urban, “A Long Conversation with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski,” Encounter (Spring 1981).

Urban suggested that perhaps the complexity of the Carter foreign policy was not immediately

grasped as easy as Reagan’s hard line. Brzezinski used the moment to take a shot at the media

who spent much of the Carter years analyzing the personal feuds between he and Cyrus Vance

rather then the deeper underpinnings of American foreign policy. “I agree,” said Brzezinski.

“But what, then, are the alternatives? Demagogy? That is cheap, and is destructive of democracy;

and President Carter was not a demagogue. Translation of the world into black-and-white

categories? In political terms that would mean ending up with a policy either like Senator

McGovern’s at one extreme, or the Nixon-Kissinger emphasis on power alone at the other. The

fact of the matter is that we are not living in the 1930s when you could plausibly say that

“Stalinism” was the principal enemy and focus on that; of in the 1940s when you could say that

“Hitlerism” was the principal enemy and focus on that. There is, I’m afraid, no easy remedy to

the condition you have described. No single aspirin will cure the headaches of democracy.

Education would certainly be one important point of departure, but I would press for the

education not only of the public but also of the men who run and write for our mass-media. They

will have to be taught the habit on analyzing and thinking through the meaning of events, and

some willingness to engage in the difficult effort to understand and convey nuances. “ Ibid.

Bill Roeder, “Brzezinski as Mr. Unpopularity,” Newsweek (December 29, 1980), p. 9. That same

week State Department Spokesman Hodding Carter received widespread media attention for an

article he wrote referring to Brzezinski was a “second rate thinker,” who apparently saw himself

as another Henry Kissinger but “lacked both the intellect and political savvy” of his predecessor.

Said Carter, “It is difficult to know from afar why and how the President placed so much value

on Brzezinski.” “Hodding Carter Calls Brzezinski ‘2

Rate’ as Security Adviser,” The New York

Times (December 30, 1980). Brzezinski suggested that events in the long term would prove him

right regarding the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. “It is a criticism of the role I play, strategically, and I

believe events will prove me right. And nothing is resented more than having been right. And

secondly, it is resentment of the directions toward which an activist and strong President like

Carter was moving.” Hedrick Smith, “Brzezinski Says Critics Are Irked by His Accuracy,” The

New York Times (January 18, 1981).

335

Brzezinski spent his first year out of office watching the situation deteriorate in Poland.

On the night of December 13, 1981 Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski resorted to an “internal

solution” that saw the core of the Solidarity leadership rounded up and interned in interment

camps. Brzezinski had little patience with the popular suggestion that Jaruzelski’s Martial Law

was necessary to bring “stability and order” to Poland. “

Shortly thereafter Brzezinski offered a prophetic scenario for the Soviet Union. “I think

the problems that the Polish Communist system has run into—inefficiency, demoralization, lack

of motivation, neither fear nor terror, increasing pressures for self-expression from a more literate

working class—are going to be felt in the Soviet Union as well. There is, if you will, an historical

time lag at work here and I don’t know whether it’s a decade or two decades, but what has

happened in Poland could easily already be happening in the Baltic republics, in certain portions

of the western Ukraine, maybe in those parts of the Soviet Union where the working class is now

in the third generation and is somewhat politically mature. That, of itself, is not enough to make

it into the kind of a crisis that Poland went through. But in a decade or two, it could become quite

widespread.

”5

“The Polish Crisis: Proof of an Empire’s Failure: Brzezinski Sees Similar Tensions for Russia

Too,” The Washington Post, December 20, 1981. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and

the East German Party leader, were photographed together throwing snowballs and slapping

each other on the back. When asked for his first reaction to the declaration of Martial Law in

Poland, Chancellor Schmidt would note; “Herr Honecker is as dismayed as I am, that this was

necessary….” John Vinocur, “Germany’s Reasons for Immobility on Poland,” The New York Times

(January 3, 1982).

“The Polish Crisis: Proof of an Empire’s Failure: Brzezinski Sees Similar Tensions for Russia

Too,” The Washington Post (December 20, 1981). On February 6, 1982 at Town Hall in New York

City, various elements of the American left came together to discuss the meaning of the crushing

of the Solidarity Movement. Susan Sontag drew boos and shouts for her criticism of the

intellectual state of the American left—and implicit agreement with Brzezinski’s long time

argument that Communism and Fascism were virtually the same system. Said Sontag; “There are

many lessons to be learned from the Polish events. But, I would maintain, the principal lesson to

be learned is the lesson of the failure of Communism, the utter villainy of the Communist system.

It has been a hard lesson to learn. And I am struck by how long it has taken us to learn it. I say

we—and of course I include myself. I can remember reading a chapter of Czeslaw Milosz’s The

Captive Mind in Partisan Review. When it came out in 1953, I bought the book—a passionate

account of the dishonesty and coerciveness of intellectual and cultural life in Poland in the first

years of Communism, which troubled me but which I also regarded as an instrument of cold war

336

It also seemed to confirm Brzezinski's fears that a meaningful U.S. policy toward Eastern

Europe would be sacrificed as a Cold War pawn in the Reagan White House. At the time the

Reagan administration claimed to have been taken by surprise. Jarzuzelski would later insist that

the Polish government had become aware that the secret contact of Col. Kuklinski had provided

the Reagan administration with advanced knowledge of the Polish government's plans to move

on Solidarity. According to Jaruzelski, the fact that the Reagan Administration took no public

measures to stop it was taken as an implicit approval of the “internal solution” as opposed to a

Soviet invasion.

propaganda, giving aid and comfort to McCarthyism. I put it on my student’s bookshelf. Still a

student (though an unofficial one) twenty-seven years later, in 1980, on the eve of my first visit to

Poland, I took down my old copy of the Captive Mind from the shelf, re-read it (for the first time)

and thought, and thought only: But it’s all true. And in Poland, I was to learn that Milosz had, if

anything, underestimated the disgrace of the Communist regime installed by force in his country.

I have asked myself many times in the past six years or so how it was possible that I could have

been so suspicious of what Milosz and other exiles from Communist countries—and those in the

West known bitterly as ‘premature anti-communists’—were telling us. Why did we not have a

place for, ears for, their truth? The answers are well known. We had identified the enemy as

fascism. We heard the demonic language of fascism. We believed in, or at least applied a double

standard to the angelic language of Communism. Now we take another line. Now it seems easy to

do so. But for many decades, when horrors exactly like, no, far worse than, the horrors now

taking place in Poland took place, we did not meet to protest and express our indignation, as we

are doing tonight. We were so sure who our enemies were (among them, professional anti-

Communists) so sure who were the virtuous and who the benighted. But I am struck by the fact

that, despite the rightness of many of our views and aspirations, in particular our sense of the

madness of a nuclear war between the superpowers and our hopes for reforms of the many

injustices of our own system, we were not responding to a large truth. And we were

countenancing a great deal of untruth.” “Susan Sontag Provokes Debate on Communism,” The

New York Times (February 27, 1982). “Communism and The Left,” The Nation (February 27, 1982)

vol. 234, no. 8. pp. 230-231.

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (April 27, 2003). Tom Kahn of the AFL-CIO commented caustically

that the Polish declaration of martial law fit into Reagan's more simplistic propaganda aims

allowing him to "look at martial law as an opportunity for a rhetorical holiday, lighting candles

for the suffering Polish people, saying let Poland be Poland, and mounting a mass anti-

communist campaign without adverse consequences, and to avoid having to directly confront the

Soviets." See Eric Chenoweth and Jerzy B. Warman, "Solidarity Abandoned-Why Reagan Didn't

Help," The New Republic, vol. 195, no. 2 and 3, (July 14 and 21), 1986, pp. 19-20. This seems to have

been confirmed by Reagan Secretary of State Alexander Haig's recollection that "some of my

colleagues in the NSC were prepared to look beyond Poland, as if it were not in itself an issue of

war and peace, and regard it as an opportunity to inflict mortal political, economic, and

propaganda damage on the USSR." See Alexander Haig, Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign

Policy (New York, 1984), p. 239.

337

Adam Michnik noted later “I think that Brzezinski’s policy was much more sensible and

constructive than Reagan’s policy. From the American policy point of view all of 1981 was a

waste of time—and Reagan had no idea how to support Polish reform. Brzezinski had a vision

and a flexible policy which had a clear and determined aim—but uses various means to achieve

the same—and Reagan had a very general policy of ideological confrontation.”

Brzezinski agreed with this assessment to a point:

It is a fact I think that in October, November, December 1981—the Reagan administration

paid very little attention to what was happening in Poland—whereas a year earlier we paid a

great deal of attention to what was happening in Poland—and that was a very fundamental

difference. But once Martial Law was imposed I think the Reagan administration reacted

strongly—and by and large given the circumstances effectively. I think more could have been

done at that stage perhaps to try to complicate the planning of Martial Law. But that is one of

those historical conundrums that I don’t think we can ever unravel—because it is really very

hard to imagine how at that time Solidarity could have come to power—and transformed Poland

into a democratic non-Soviet satellite viable state—hence one has to ask oneself what might have

happened otherwise—and what could evolved eventually Soviet intervention—even though the

Soviets didn’t want to intervene—it might have involved a civil war in Poland. If Jaruzelski had

been a different kind of person—if he been more like Gomulka—one could perhaps envisage

some sort of coalition arrangement emerging in Poland which would have created more or less a

Yugoslav-type situation for Poland—but that’s a lot of ifs.

Brzezinski was critical of Reagan’s early foreign policy. He noted that unilateral hard line

of the Reagan foreign policy overlooked the fact that the outbreak of global chaos rather than a

global “Pax Sovietica.” Brzezinski saw the passing of Brezhnev and the rise of Yuri Andropov in

late 1982 as an opportunity to calm the global situation in what he had termed the “arc of crisis”

spanning from the Middle East to Afghanistan.

“On Poland, I would like to match the existing policy of sanctions with a larger aid

package subject to the control of the International Monetary Fund, provided there is relaxation

and accommodation in Poland. On Afghanistan, I’d like to propose that we guarantee a neutral

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (March 30, 2001).

Interview, Washington, DC (September 8, 2000).

Edward A. Gargan, “Brzezinski Assails U.S. Foreign Policy,” The New York Times (November 17,

1982). See also “Q & A: Zbigniew Brzezinski: View From the Democratic Sidelines,” MaCleans,

June 14, 1982, vol. 95 no. 24, p. 8.

338

Afghanistan and jointly arrange for Islamic peacekeeping forces, even from countries like

Algeria, to make sure that Afghanistan doesn’t turn violently anti-Soviet when the Soviet forces

have left. None of these proposals are one-sided compromises, but all three would help to begin

to improve the relationship.”

In 1983 Brzezinski released his memoirs from the Carter Administration. The theme was

the attempt within the Carter Administration to combine power politics with a Wilsonian

idealism. The reviews were rather tepid. Strobe Talbott, then writing for Time Magazine, wrote:

Carter’s adviser also argues that the Administration knew what it wanted and knew what it was

doing in foreign policy. The aim was to champion American values like human rights while at

the same time demonstrating American might, as in the dispatch of an aircraft carrier to some far-

off trouble spot. Brzezinski sums up that goal in the title phrase, the reconciliation of power with

principle. But this is just the sort of slogan that the author constantly mistook for practical

wisdom when advising his President. He indulges his love affair with what he describes as

“code” words that might make sense in a political science textbook but that defend translation

into workable politics. Brzezinski still thinks he improved on his rival and predecessor Henry

Kissinger by insisting that détente with the Soviet Union be ‘increasingly comprehensive and

genuinely reciprocal.’ He italicizes the phrase, almost as though typographical emphasis could

reinforce its truth. But neither five years ago nor in Brzezinski’s retelling now do these words

mean much in the real world. It is the problem of the blind spot again; Brzezinski does not realize

how often his theorizing appears as glibness or gobbledygook.

Brzezinski returned to teaching post at Columbia where he would become indirectly

embroiled in academic debates that dated back his early scholarship at Harvard. The early 1980s

saw the peak of influence of the school of revisionist historians who came to dominate the field of

“Brzezinski: ‘We Can Push Him.’” Newsweek (November 22, 1982).

Strobe Talbott, “Zbig-Think,” Time, May 2, 1983.

339

Soviet studies in the United States. Merle Fainsod’s death in 1971 marked the passing of the first

generation of Soviet scholars. Fainsod’s book, long the staple of American graduate programs,

was being replaced a “revisionist” school of history. Brzezinski was particularly dismissive of the

school of revisionism that looked to Stalin as more a positive force than a negative. They viewed

Stalinism not as a “betrayal” of Lenin’s revolution but, if pruned of some “excesses,” the positive

fulfillment of Leninism. The proponents of this school sought to downplay the estimates of

Stalin’s deaths as Cold War propaganda, insisting victims in the “low hundreds of thousands.”

The rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in March of 1985 would involve Brzezinski in his

last academic battle about the nature of the Soviet system. Brzezinski, who had long insisted that

Soviet system could not be simply retooled to conform to a liberal democracy, was pitted against

a cohort of revisionist historians who cited Gorbachev as proof that the system could move past

the Stalinist “aberration” to finally make the Soviet experience “turn out right.”

In the fall of 1986 Brzezinski began work on what turn out to be his last book of the Cold

War era. With the provocative title of The Grand Failure Brzezinski argued that the phenomenon

known as “Gorbachevism” was doomed to failure. Brzezinski noted that Gorbachev could not

rebuke Lenin, because he would then be saying that the whole of Soviet history--had been in

error. Yet any genuine reform required a break from Lenin’s central premise that a perfect social

See Sheila Fitzpatrick, Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington, 1978). See also J.

Arch Getty, “Purge and Party in Smolensk: 1933-1937,” Slavic Review, vol. 42, 1983, pp. 60-79.

Convinced that no official data could prove the crimes of Stalin, many began to question the

previously accepted scale of Stalin’s crimes. Having framed their research on the assumption that

little or no primary evidence was available to prove the massive nature of Stalin’s purges—a

claim they also dismissed as rooted in a cold war bias. This also led them into accepting official

documents as better evidence than what they referred to as “anecdotal” accounts—that is, the

first-hand testimony of actual witnesses that contradicted the official picture. Fainsod’s analysis

of the Smolensk archives concluded that Stalin had perpetrated “an almost continuous purge” in

the 1930s. This led revisionist J. Arch Getty would declare that Fainsod’s view was “weakly

supported by the available evidence.” Davies, p. 1014

Michael Scammell, “Why Gorbachev Had to Happen: The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A

Historical Interpretation by Moshe Lewin,” Los Angeles Times (May 22, 1988).

340

system can be shaped by a political dictatorship that subordinates all society to the supreme state

acting as history’s all-knowing agent.

According to Brzezinski, any genuine liberal reform required the breakup of the all-

powerful state bureaucracy both in the economic and social realms and some significant de-

collectivization in agriculture. These are monumental tasks, given the ruling elite’s vested

interests, not to speak of the enduring Russian tradition of supremacy of the state over the

society. In addition the multinational character of the Soviet state also meant that any genuine

attempt at reform would likely inflame the nationalist aspirations among the non-Russian

nationalities that had been subjected to centuries of imperial rule. Brzezinski argued that

economic progress required competition, but competitors also must know the real prices of

things they buy and sell. The Soviet system, argued Brzezinski, was ill-prepared to unable to

make the leap to real prices, if only because politics, great leaps usually require other parties to

spur them into action. Gorbachev’s idea of pluralism, argued Brzezinski, was proceeding no

further “than urging communists to argue with each other a bit more energetically inside the one-

party system.”

Nevertheless Gorbachev’s more open society would settle some of the more tangible

debates that had raged in the academic world. In the late 1980s mass graves uncovered outside

single Soviet cities were found to contain millions of remains. At the height of the Glasnost era,

local people started digging in the Kuropaty Forest near the Belarussian city of Minsk that some

locals believed had been a depository of bodies during the 1930s. A number of circular pits were

exposed with each containing a mass grave for some 3,000 bodies. They could see that perhaps a

hundred of such pits lay nearby. In 1989 the Russian “Memorial” organization, a group devoted

to discovering the true scope of Stalin’s crimes, unearthed a pit at Chelyabinsk in the Urals dating

Brzezinski, The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (New

York, 1988).

341

from the 1930s. It contained 80,000 skeletons. The bullet holes in skulls was seen as proof that

these were not merely victims who had been worked to death in the Gulag.

By 1987 Brzezinski was advising the Reagan Administration to consider a more flexible

policy on Poland. As Adam Michnik recalled “There was a paradox when the tough policy of

Reagan started bearing fruits and there came time for a flexible policy. But Reagan didn’t know

how to react. In the beginning the policy of economic sanctions was a reasonable policy

concerning Poland. But the Reagan administration didn’t understand that at one moment they

should rescind these sanctions, but this resignation doesn’t’ mean the resignation from the

strategic aim—but only the resignation from one instrument. Reagan didn’t understand that—

and Brzezinski understood it very well. He understood that you have to exploit gaps in this

totalitarian communist wall—but the aim was still the same—the destruction of the totalitarian

system.”

In the fall of 1987 Vice President George Bush called on Brzezinski before he made a trip

to Poland as part of his early bid for the presidency. Brzezinski, believing the trip had the

potential to revive the moribund Solidarity movement, suggested that Bush make it clear that

Poland’s long-sought economic aid from the West would come only after internal political and

economic changes. Bush then requested that Brzezinski act as an intermediary with the

government of Poland’s leader General Jaruzelski. According to a senior Bush assistant,

Brzezinski was behind the “breakthrough” discussion persuading the Polish government that

Bush must have open events with spontaneous exposure to Polish crowds.

Bush’s visit included meetings with Jaruzelski and Walesa, church leaders, and Polish

intellectuals. In policy terms, Bush’s mission was to make it clear to Jaruzelski that long-sought

economic aid from the West would come only after internal political and economic changes. At

“80,000 Ghosts Return to Haunt Moscow,” The Independent (September 6, 1989).

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (March 30, 1987).

“Chanting Polish Crowds Provide Bush with Footage for ’88 Campaign,” The Washington Post

(October 4, 1987).

342

the same time Bush found the Solidarity leadership urging the United States to dangle the

promise of more aid in exchange for reform. Beyond the policy talks, the Bush mission became a

daily cat and mouse game between his entourage and the Polish authorities. Bush’s itinerary was

not published in the state run media though U.S. officials had it broadcast on Radio Free Europe.

Bush made an emotional visit to the grave of Solidarity’s hero Father Jerzy Popieluszko, who was

murdered in 1984 by Polish internal security forces. After Bush laid a wreath at Popieluszko’s

grave and--with Walesa at his side—took a Solidarity banner out of his pocket and put it on.

Instead of exiting the church as Polish authorities had expected, Bush was led away by his aides

to a balcony, where he and Walesa were greeted enthusiastically by Polish chants “Solidarity!

Lech Walesa! Long live Bush! Long live Reagan!”

In 1988 Brzezinski made the decision to support Bush over the Democratic candidate

Michael Dukakis. The move strained relations with Brzezinski’s former protégé Madeline

Albright who was managing the foreign policy task forces for the Dukakis campaign. Although

Brzezinski insists that his opposition to Dukakis was purely principled, some of his friends

believe he might have been persuaded to work with the candidate had Albright reached out to

him. Instead, they say, she jealously guarded here own privileged access to the candidate. “She

did not make any effort to get me on board,” says Brzezinski. ”However, she did tell me that one

of the reasons she was so angry was that she was quietly trying to get us on board and I short-

circuited that, in addition to being disloyal to her.” But in reality Brzezinski had little interest in

coming “on board.”

“I was just turned off by Dukakis’ view on foreign policy,” Brzezinski would later recall.

“ I felt that he was in a sense disowning not only Carter, but Truman—and I felt that it was just

too much—and I did not support McGovern in ’72 for the same reasons—and I felt that in ’88

with Dukakis seventeen points ahead of Bush that this would be extremely bad for the United

States—so I decided to endorse Bush. But I do emphasize the point that I endorsed him when he

Ibid.

343

was seventeen points behind—and that was out of conviction—that this was simply the wrong

course to pursue for the country—and the Democratic Party.”

On the other hand Dukakis, like

many liberal Democrats, saw Brzezinski’s “betrayal” as a badge of honor. “I was never a fan of

his. I thought he was a lousy national security adviser, with an ego as big as a house.”

That same year Brzezinski sensed that events in Eastern Europe were reaching a turning

point. In January 1988 Brzezinski gave the Hugh Seton-Watson Memorial Lecture at the Center

for Policy Studies in London, in which he predicted that 1988 might be another 1848. “It is not an

exaggeration,” suggested Brzezinski, ‘to affirm that there are five countries now in Eastern

Europe all of which are ripe for revolutionary explosion. Nor is it an exaggeration to say that this

could happen in more than one simultaneously.”

Brzezinski’s claim was greeted with marked skepticism by even the most articulate

observers of the region. Timothy Garton Ash, who would later write so eloquently on the

revolutions of 1989, noted that Brzezinski’s projection of revolutions “seems precisely—an

exaggeration.”

Charles Gati, a noted scholar on Eastern Europe, was more optimistic. “His

(Brzezinski’s) article in Problems of Communism in the summer of ’88 was very important. There

was a half-sentence that I know it struck me as brave and important---and it said in Poland there

was a ‘pre-revolutionary’ situation. That is when I also too began to think that perhaps instead of

‘evolution’ we could think of something more.”

Indeed by early 1989 things began to move quickly in Eastern Europe. How the United

States should handle the situation in Eastern Europe would again pit Brzezinski against his old

rival Henry Kissinger. In early 1989 Kissinger outlined a plan for the Bush Administration in

Interview Washington DC (September 8, 2000).

Michael Dobbs, Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey (New York, 1997). p. 332-

333.

Quoted from A Year in the Life of Glasnost, Center for Policy Studies, Study no. 94, p. 12.

Timothy Garton Ash, “The Empire in Decay,” The New York Review of Books (September 29,

1988), p. 54.

Interview, September 13, 2001 (Washington, DC).

344

which Moscow would agree to allow liberalization in Eastern Europe in return for a pledge from

the United States that it would not exploit these changes in a way that would threaten Soviet

security (such as trying to lure Moscow’s allies out of the Warsaw Pact). Brzezinski saw

Kissinger’s plans as reviving the ghost of Yalta.

Brzezinski insisted that the negotiations over a

new East-West security arrangement must be matched by a Western policy of assisting genuinely

systemic change. Just pouring money into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe would not only

be a waste but would delay the needed fundamental reforms. Instead, Brzezinski urged the U.S.,

Western Europe, and Japan to insist that any substantial assistance be reciprocated by reforms

that institutionalize economic and political pluralism.

By late 1988 Gorbachev was issuing strong hints that the Brezhnev Doctrine was no

longer in force. Gorbachev’s speech at the UN in December 1988 was the catalyst for momentous

events in Eastern Europe in 1989. His declared commitment to “freedom of choice” for all

nations, a principle that “knows no exceptions,” sent the most definitive signal that Moscow

would not again order its tanks and soldiers into Eastern European cities to crush the people’s

will. Moreover, Gorbachev’s promise of significant unilateral troop withdrawals left the leaders

of hard line regimes to face their own populations without the threat of the Brezhnev Doctrine to

back them up.

Things were also changing in Poland. After outlawing Solidarity in December 1981,

General Jaruzelski and the ruling Polish United Workers Party introduced a program of

economic reform in an effort to achieve some reconciliation. When these reforms stalled,

Jaruzelski initiated the famous April 1989 “Round Table Talks” which re-legalized Solidarity and

led to the June elections that saw Solidarity candidates sweep to victory. Jaruzelski, who

regarded Brzezinski as an arch foe, would later concede that the idea of peaceful engagement was

the proper method to enact gradual change.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Proposition the Soviets Shouldn’t Refuse,” The New York Times

(March 13, 1989).

Ibid.

345

“The Round Table talks were a political dismemberment not a revolutionary overthrow.

In this sense I understood that Radio Free Europe, Brzezinski, Nowak-Jezioranksi were our

opponents on one side—understandable—but on the other side, paradoxically, they were our

allies. They didn’t promote revolutionary activity that would cause a catastrophe. Why? Because

they are two Poles, who knew our romantic temperament, our traditions, uprisings, barricades—

it’s our way. They were aware of this and supported it. For this I have to refer to them with

compliments.”

During August, Poland reached a crisis point; the Communists were negotiating with

Solidarity over membership in the new collation government. At the peak of the crisis, on the

evening of August 22, the secretary-general of the Polish Communist Party, Mieczyslaw

Rakowski, telephoned Gorbachev to ask his advice. Gorbachev told Rakowski “the time has come

to yield power.” Two days later the Solidarity leader Tadeusz Mazowiecki was overwhelmingly

elected prime minister of a new Solidarity-led coalition.

In late October of 1989 Brzezinski traveled to Moscow as a member of the United States

delegation to a Soviet-American conference on “Changing Europe: American and Soviet

Attitudes.” Brzezinski received a standing ovation before giving a speech at the Diplomatic

Academy in Moscow.

“This is the fourth time that I have had the that I have had the

opportunity to make a public address in this part of the world—which you call the socialist camp

and which we call the Soviet bloc. On each occasion, there was a certain historical coincidence to

the timing. The first time was in July of 1968 in Prague. The second time I made a major address

was two years ago in Budapest at the beginning of the end of the Kadar era. The third time was in

Poland a few weeks before the recent elections, and this is now the fourth.”

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (April 27, 2003).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Toward a Common European Home,” Problems of Communism

(November-December 1989).

346

But Brzezinski’s 1989 visit would portend even greater changes. On November 9, 1989

the world watched as the Berlin Wall came down. The contagion quickly swept through Bulgaria

and Czechoslovakia. Inspired by events in Germany protesters in Prague poured onto the streets

to demand free elections. The dissident playwright Vaclav Havel, released from prison, became

the symbol of the Velvet Revolution. By the end of December Eastern Europe, with the exception

of the violence in Romania, had liberated itself peacefully from the Soviet Union.

In November of 1990 Lech Walesa was invited to speak before the United States

Congress. Bronislaw Geremek, the former dissident who remembered Brzezinski’s first visit to

Communist Poland in 1957, was in attendance that night in Washington. “Zbigniew Brzezinski is

a great American and at the same time I would say a great Pole. I will never forget when Lech

Walesa presented his speech to United States Congress. I know Brzezinski is a man with few

emotional reactions. But this time I saw him happy—crying from joy---it was a great moment.”

While others tended to celebrate Brzezinski was deeply concerned about the future of the

global system. “Well, in the late 1940s President Truman had around him a cluster of creative

people who asked themselves how the West should respond to the collapse of Germany. Now is

the time to ask ourselves, creatively and historically, how do we respond to the apparent collapse

of the Soviet Union? We can either deliberately shape a new world or simply let the old

disintegrate—with some of the wreckage possibly even endangering us.”

Brzezinski understood that the Cold War had actually opened up new possibilities for

chaos and instability. On August 2, 1990, the armed forces of Iraq invaded the emirate of Kuwait.

Saddam Hussein, the militaristic leader of Iraq, soon announced that he was annexing Kuwait.

After some initial indecision, the Bush administration initiated a strong military buildup in an

effort to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

Interview, Warsaw, Poland (May 13, 2002).

Strobe Talbott and Robert T. Zintl “Vindication of a Hard-Liner,” Time (December 18, 1989), p.

13.

347

Brzezinski, to the surprise of many, was among the most vocal opponents of going to war

in Iraq, arguing that that anti-Americanism was very high throughout the Arab world and that a

war “could be quite expensive in both money and blood.”

Above all, he noted, American

power in the region rested largely on an alliance with local governments, which, in several cases,

“were based on corrupt and obscenely rich classes, increasingly run the risk of losing touch with

their own populations.”

The roots of Brzezinski’s opposition to going to war in the Middle East were articulated

in his 1970 work Between Two Ages, which suggested the international situation was likely to

devolve into a state of anarchy unless the developed nations combine their forces to prevent it.

Brzezinski feared a widening of hostilities not only with rising casualties but an increasing wave

of anti-Americanism among the Arab masses, even inside countries with pro-U.S. governments.

Brzezinski feared that the Bush Administration was not looking at the long-term problems that

could accompany a war. “I don’t have a sense that in this Administration the decision-making

circle is very wide,” he noted. “I think it’s basically confined to four people, and I don’t have a

sense that there are fundamental disagreements. There are strengths in that, but there’s also the

danger that you begin to have a situation in which views are reinforced rather than examined.”

Once again a key foreign policy decision again pitted Brzezinski against his old rival

Henry Kissinger. Brzezinski was close to many in Congress including Senate Armed Services

Committee Chairman Sam Nunn. Brzezinski had a private session with Democratic Senator

Edward Kennedy. Shortly afterward the Massachusetts senator would brandish statistics

provided by Brzezinski on civilian casualties during the bombing of North Vietnam as

ammunition against a witness testifying before the committee—Henry Kissinger.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Why to Fight—And Why Not To,” Newsweek (August 27, 1990). p. 32.

R.W. Apple, “Standoff in the Gulf: Washington Talk; Bush Told to Listen to Voices of Dissent,”

The New York Times (December 7, 1990).

348

“Quite frankly, I don’t think Kissinger’s interested in resolving the issue,” Brzezinski

said, “I think Kissinger wants to destroy Iraq, period. Kuwait is just an excuse.” Brzezinski

argued that negotiations, he preferred the word “discussions”—should be undertaken about

ways Iraq could resolve its disputes with Kuwait over their common border, its desire to lease

two Kuwaiti islands or its big debts to Kuwait. The discussions, he says, might produce “some

arrangement for adjudication” of those issues. “I see nothing wrong with that, and I find such an

outcome perfectly acceptable.”

Brzezinski noted the real priority of U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s should move beyond

Iraq to focus on a Middle-East settlement. He predicted that in an era of one-sided American

preponderance, an American failure to promote a peaceful termination of the Arab-Israeli conflict

would likely to facilitate the mobilization of religious fundamentalism and nationalist radicalism

against continued American regional supremacy.

Brzezinski offered a rather prescient analysis

of the events that would come to dominate U.S. foreign policy as it moved into the 21

century.

Gerald Seib, “ Split Between Kissinger and Brzezinski on Iraq Reflects Search for New Foreign

Policy Consensus,” The Wall Street Journal (December 17), 1990.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Brzezinski offered a cautionary note to the

consumption patterns of the United States did not make it a necessarily healthy model of

emulation. “In the age of awareness of massive human inequity and deprivation, it is politically

and morally disturbing to calculate how much of Western consumption is unnecessary: that is,

driven by artificially stimulated desires for the latest fads, fashions, gimmicks, and toys.

Moreover, consumption derived from artificially induced desire and not from need is

increasingly a middle-class phenomenon, not just confined to the very rich. But the very rich—

usually the newly very rich—do set the style, and their vulgar and conspicuous consumption

contributes to an atmosphere in which material consumption—derived not from want but from

self-gratification—becomes the decisive equivalent of the good life.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of

Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21

Century (New York, 1993), pp. 72-73.

Brzezinski’s Out of Control took note an emerging hypothesis put forth by his old Harvard

colleague Samuel Huntington. “As this book went to press, I had the opportunity to read the

unpublished—and highly compelling –essay by Sameul P. Huntington of Harvard University

entitled “The Clash of Civilizations?” In it, he makes a powerful case that conflicts along the fault

lines of what he defines as the Islamic, Confucian, and Christian civilizations will pose in the

future the major threat to world peace. This book’s discussion on pp. 163-165 of “the oblong of

violence” deals, in effect, with the geographical vortex of Huntington’s clashing civilizations.”

349

Finally, the United States is almost certain to remain, throughout this decade and into the

next century, the central arbiter of the power politics of the Persian Gulf/Middle Eastern region.

That will in turn engage America in the internal problematics of the firth cluster, one that lacks

internal cohesion and is most susceptible to foreign intrusion. The long-range danger is that the

United States could thereby become embroiled in a protracted engagement in the regions almost

endless list of trouble-spots, with the additional risk of a dangerous cultural-philosophical

cleavage with the world of Islam, whose theocratic and fundamentalist tendencies the West

understandably fears but also tends to excessively exaggerate. The West should understand that

the 1 billion Moslems will not be impressed by a West that is perceived as preaching to them the

values of consumerism, the merits of amorality, and the blessings of atheism. To many Moslems,

the West’s (and especially America’s) message is repulsive. Moreover, the attempt to portray

‘fundamentalist’ Islam as the new central threat to the West—the alleged successor in that role to

communism—is grossly oversimplified. Politically, not all of Islam—in fact, relatively little—is

militantly fundamentalist; and there is precious little unity in the political world of Islam. That

philosophically much of Islam rejects the Western definition of modernity is another matter, but

that is not a sufficient basis for perceiving a politically very diversified Moslem world—which

ranges from black West Africa, through Arab North Africa and the Middle East, Iran and

Pakistan, Central and South Asia, all the way to Malaysia and Indonesia---as almost ready to

embark (armed with nuclear weapons) on a holy war against the West. For America to act on that

assumption would be to run the risk of engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But Brzezinski maintained that the United States must utilize its power in other areas.

Brzezinski sought to avoid the use of force in Iraq, he was among the most vocal critics of the

Clinton Administration’s passive reaction to the outbreak of the Yugoslavian civil war. In early

1993 Brzezinski argued that by talking with “thugs” and not threatening force to counter force,

negotiators had done little to halt the mass murders, rapes and ethnic cleansing taking place in

Bosnia.

Brzezinski insisted that a “punitive use of force” was the only way to convince the Serbs

to desist their aggression. Brzezinski noted in 1993. “We shouldn’t demonize the Serbs. A good

portion, a majority of the Serbs, are decent, brave people who used to be our allies and many of

them voted against Milosevic. But right now, the brigands and the extremists have a situation in

which they can argue that they can have their cake and eat it too, namely, they can use force, the

West is not going to respond, therefore, why desist? Unless we’re able to convince the Serbs

themselves that this kind of policy is suicidal, this conflict is going to continue in Bosnia, perhaps

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21

Century (New York,

1992), p. 209-210.

Steven A. Holmes, “Ex-Officials Urge U.S. to Act to End Serbian Siege,” The New York Times

(February 19, 1993).

350

there’d be renewed fighting in Croatia, then there’s Kosovo down the wings and other Balkan

problems as well.”

Brzezinski’s vocal opposition to the West’s “toothless” approach to Serb aggression were

a return to his debates within the Carter Administration. United Nations’ peace envoy Cyrus

Vance and U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher, were among the most visible Western

diplomats insisting the conflict must be settled at the diplomatic table. A visibly irritated Cyrus

Vance dismissed Brzezinski’s charges as “hogwash” and repeated his view there was no viable

alternative to a “negotiated settlement.”

In July of 1993 Brzezinski attended an international conference in Warsaw that brought

together Jews who had survived the Holocaust that stressed that the world must take a stand and

move away from its ambivalence on the atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. “Brzezinski noted that

the Holocaust, during which 6 million Jews died nor World War II, which killed 20 million

people, have taught leaders to react quickly and firmly to quench violent conflicts. “We are living

at a time when people are being killed systematically and a doctrine of ethnic cleansing is

postulated,” argued Brzezinski. “The West is not demonstrating any compassion nor any

commitment to action. It is watching a great deal of crime.”

The vacillation of the United States carried on over Yugoslavia until 1995. Following the

fall of Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 Brzezinski contributed an article to the New Republic

carrying the acidic subtitle “The following is the speech that might have been delivered

immediately upon the fall of Srebrenica if the post of Leader of the Free World were not currently

vacant.”

“Zbigniew Brzezinski Shares Views on Bosnia and Russia,” CNN Transcript # 349-3, (April

26, 1993).

Alan Ferguson, “Bosnia Serbs Vote to Accept U.N. Envoys Peace Plan,” The Toronto Star

(January 21, 1993).

See Bogdan Turek, “Holocaust Survivors Appeal for End to Indifference over Bosnia,” United

Press International (July 7, 1993).

351

The fall of Srebrenica is a defining moment. The prolonged and brazen defiance of the

international community by an armed mob of Bosnian Serbs can no longer be tolerated. The

suffering of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and the murder of tens of thousands of

them, can no longer be passively observed by the civilized and democratic world. You have seen

the pictures of the atrocities in Bosnia. If our shared commitment to human rights means

anything to us, as Americans and as decent men and women, the United States had to react.

There is no other choice. Over the last three years the United States has been unable to protect the

victims or to deter the aggressors. Repeated violations of U.N. resolutions have gone

unpunished. The United Nations Protection Force, or UNPROFOR, originally deployed to protect

the helpless, the unarmed and the vulnerable, has itself been subjected to humiliation,

intimidation and fatalities. When the conflict in the former Yugoslavia first broke out, our

European allies insisted that it was Europe’s responsibility to resolve it. Acting under a United

Nations mandate, the UNPROFOR was deployed in order to provide humanitarian assistance

and to make secure the several U.N. designated safe-havens. A U.N. negotiator appointed by the

European Community sought to find a peaceful solution. They actively discouraged any military

pressure on the Serbs, particularly by the United States, on the grounds that it would be

counterproductive. The result has been a moral and political calamity of historic proportions. For

some three years now, ethnic cleansing, massive brutality and persistent contempt for the

international community have characterized the conduct of the Bosnian Serbs. We can no longer

maintain the pretense that the conflict in Bosnia is merely an extension of ancient ethnic feuds,

justifying the world’s moral indifference and political passivity. The historic facts are to the

contrary. Over several centuries, ethnic and religious coexistence, not ethnic and religious

conflict, has been the predominant reality in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even the current violence

did not begin with the support of the majority of Bosnians, whether of Muslim, Croat or Serb

origin. It is the product of an organized, brutal and fanatical minority. The international

community has the obligation to distinguish between victims and aggressors. Not to do so is to

reduce the U.N. Charter to a farce. But the issue is not only a matter of morality, or of principle,

or of simple justice. The character of the international order is also at stake. A world unable to

make the distinction between victims and aggressors, and especially a world in which the United

Nations becomes the object of derision---on the part not only of the aggressors but of all free

peoples. World peace will be the ultimate casualty in Bosnia. After some three years of sustained

brutality, no one can deny that the U.N. has proven incapable of coping decisively with the forces

of aggression in Bosnia. Even worse, the impotence of the U.N. has so constrained any attempt at

an effective response by NATO that both the unity and the credibility of our alliance are now at

stake. On a number of occasions, retaliatory NATO air strikes at Bosnian Serb targets, requested

by the UNPROFOR commanders, were emasculated by U.N. officials to the point that they

became mere pinpricks of no deterrent value. They emboldened, rather than constrained the

aggressors. NATO’s inability to act assertively is now generating increasing tensions within the

alliance itself. The alliance triumphed in the course of the Cold War. Yet indecision and disunity

in regard to Bosnia are undermining the most successful coalition in history. It would be ironic if

Europe’s longer-range security and stability were to join the growing list of victims of the

unchallenged aggression in Bosnia.

As the euphoria of the 1989 revolutions began to fade, Brzezinski was critical of the U.S.

insistence on a policy of free-market “shock therapy” as a means to reform the economic systems

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “After Srebrenica,” The New Republic (August 1995).

352

of the former Soviet bloc nations.

Brzezinski’s attention to Poland’s adjustment problems led

several political leaders to recruit him in an effort to succeed Lech Walesa as the President of

Poland.

Poland’s Solidarity party viewed Brzezinski as perhaps the only chance to defeat the

former Communists who were at the time running a campaign of “reform socialism.”

Brzezinski, though flattered, declined the honor. Andrzej Roman, Brzezinski’s Polish

cousin, recalled, “He never wanted to agree to be a candidate for president of Poland. Many

people in Poland thought he would be a very good president. But he refused—saying that

‘culturally I am Polish but politically I am American.’ But I think people made him think about it.

I’d never touch this subject with him. But once, he asked me about it. We were in a car going to a

place where my friends died in the Warsaw uprising of 1944. He turned back and asked, ‘What

do you think about campaigning for president?’ I remember it very well. I wanted him to run—it

would have given me many nice moments. But I knew my answer should be wise. It was a time

when Poland was at the crossroads. Maybe he would be even a better candidate than Walsea or

Kwasniewski—but it was my duty to warn him. ‘Election Day is Sunday and you win—but after

“The liberated peoples of the former communist countries had truly exaggerated and

simplistic notions of the kind of help that they would receive from the West. There was a

generalized anticipation of manna from heaven, of some new “Marshall Plan’ being applied on a

vast scale, notwithstanding the actual historical and intellectual irrelevance to former communist

countries of the Marshall Plan experience. And in the West, there was a general underestimation

of the systemic complexity of the changes required, of the resistance of established and still-

pervasive nomenklaturas, and of the duration of the process itself. There has been a tendency in

the West, and particularly the United States, to make shibboleths of the free market and of the

elimination of the role of the government in guiding economic development. Indeed, even advice

on democracy should be offered with the historically humbling appreciation of the prolonged

stages that were required to nurture and consolidate democracy in the West. Cultural

conditioning and specific circumstances should be taken into account to a far greater degree than

they have been in the rather dogmatic advice that has often been proffered.” Zbigniew

Brzezinski, “The Great Transformation,” The National Interest, no. 33 (Fall, 1993), pp. 3-13.

“Brzezinski to Run for President?” Polish News Bulletin (October 6, 1994). Tom Hundley,

“Carter Aide as Polish Leader?” The Sacramento Bee (October 14, 1994).

“Brzezinski to Run for President?” Polish News Bulletin (October 6, 1994). Tom Hundley,

“Carter Aide as Polish Leader?” The Sacramento Bee (October 14, 1994).

353

Sunday comes Monday’—and we understood each other. I answered his question the way he

expected me to. It meant no, of course. But he knew this already.”

By 1994 Brzezinski was publicly (more so privately) critical of what he termed as the

United States’ “premature partnership” with Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. According to Brzezinski, this

policy stalled the badly needed market reforms as the sizable Western aid was largely funneled

into the pockets “crony capitalists” dominated by former communists and oligarchs who had

little interest in enacting systemic reforms.

Brzezinski believed the Clinton’s Administration’s treatment of Russia as a “Great

Power” marked an inadequate response to the Chechnya war in 1994. He argued that the United

States’ repeated assurances that the war was a Russian “internal matter” served to rekindle

Russia’s Great Power pretensions and delayed the process of transforming Russia into a more

westward looking post-imperial nation-state.

Brzezinski was vital in lobbying the Clinton administration to back the idea of NATO’s

eastward expansion in spite of sustained attempts by Russian officials to derail it. Brzezinski’s

close relationship with key officials in the Clinton White House—particularly Anthony Lake and

Madeline Albright--was a crucial factor in Clinton’s decision to support the policy.

Interview, (Warsaw, Poland), December 3, 2002.

Brzezinski criticized the Clinton Administration’s obsequious policy toward Boris Yeltsin’s

Russia that seemed more inclined to bolster Russia “self-esteem” rather than engage in a policy of

clarity and strength. Brzezinski was particularly critical of President Clinton’s decision in 1995 to

travel to Moscow rather than London to celebrate the 50

anniversary of the end of World War II.

This was particularly true at a time when Russia was engaged in a bloody crackdown on

Chechen separatists. “Not to go to London but to go to Moscow is morally ambiguous,

historically evasive, politically counterproductive, and sends a signal to the Europeans that our

policy is Russia-first and not Europe-first.” Brzezinski noted that America’s “alliance” with the

Soviet Union in World War II came after Moscow’s pact with Hitler, in the midst of a war in

which Stalin killed millions of his own people, and before he occupied Eastern Europe in 1945.

“The British stood alone when no one was with them, and they fought for democracy,” said

Brzezinski, “Stalin was not fighting for democracy; he was fighting for himself.” George Moffett,

“Clinton’s ‘Morally Ambiguous’ Moscow Trip,” The Christian Science Monitor (April 26, 1995).

See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “NATO—Expand or Die?,” The New York Times (December 28, 1994).

Zbigniew Brzezinski and Anthony Lake, “For a New World, A New NATO,” The New York Times

(June 30, 1997).

354

Brzezinski was instrumental in encouraging Ukraine to pursue a more “European”

option. He insisted that the West must take an active role in enhancing its economic and security

ties with Kiev. He noted that the decade 2005-2015 was a suitable time frame for the initiation of

Ukraine’s inclusion into in the EU and NATO. An active Western policy in this regard would

serve to encourage reforms and reduce fears in Kiev that Europe’s expansion would erect a new

“misery curtain” permanently along the Polish-Ukrainian border. Perhaps as importantly,

Brzezinski saw Ukraine’s move toward the west (taking the “conveyor belt” metaphor further

east) as a key factor in prompting Russia to follow a similar path. Brzezinski warned that if

Russia turned the other way it risked being turned into a “Eurasian outcast” neither linked to

Europe or Asia and perpetually mired in “near abroad” struggles such as the conflict in

Chechnya.

On October 9, 1997 Brzezinski appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

to endorse NATO expansion. Brzezinski argued that NATO enlargement “is not principally

about the Russian threat, for currently it does not exist,” nor is it “primarily a moral crusade” to

undo injustices suffered by Central European peoples under Soviet oppression.” It is, Brzezinski

argued, “the long-term historic and strategic relationship between America and Europe” that is

central to NATO expansion. “NATO expansion is central to the vitality of the American-

European connection, to the scope of a democratic and secure Europe, and to the ability of

America and Europe to work together in promoting international stability.”

Brzezinski’s predictions of a chaotic 21

century appeared to have materialized on

September 11, 2001 when terrorist attacks felled the World Trade Center in New York and the

Pentagon in Washington. Brzezinski was sensitive to the charge that he had activated such

extremist groups by assisting Afghanistan’s defense following the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Why the West Should Care about Chechnya,” The Wall Street Journal

(November 10, 1999).

“Zbigniew Brzezinski Testifies on NATO Enlargement,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee

(October 9, 1997). United States Information Service.

355

People who had a simplistic notion of the U.S. somehow activating Islamic

fundamentalism in Afghanistan overlook some salient facts: Afghanistan was a relatively stable

but complex Muslim society, with a quasi-medieval cast to it. The Soviets completely disrupted

Afghanistan, devastated it for a full decade, and stimulated the truly fundamentalist and

extremist reactions. The U.S. supported the resistance of the Mujaheddin, working closely with

the Pakistanis, but leaning basically toward the relatively moderate Afghan nationalists. The

Osama Bin Laden phenomenon did not surface until the latter half of the eighties, largely in the

context of the extremism that the Soviets had stimulated. Last but not least, would we be better

off in dealing with terrorism today if the Soviet Union still existed, with its various training

camps and KGB support for international terrorism? The Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, and

especially the effective Mujaheddin resistance made a direct contribution to the disintegration of

the Soviet Union. There is no reason to regret that development, nor to overlook it insofar as its

connection to what happened in Afghanistan is concerned.

Indeed Brzezinski believed the trauma of the events of September 11, 2001 might have

finally convinced Russia had finally cast its lot with the West. Brzezinski had been a noted critic

of Vladmir Putin before and after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Yet he saw signs

that Russia had finally begun to join the “community of developed nations.” “We shouldn’t see

this as something that developed in the last eight weeks. It’s the consequence of the collapse of

the Soviet Union and the end of an entire historical era in Russia’s past, the imperial age, and it’s

a process of adjustment to Russia being a normal state, eventually a European state.”

Interview, e-mail (July 23, 2002).

“New Friends,” Transcript The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, (November 15, 2001). In 2000

Brzezinski had expressed his distaste for Russian “reforms” under Vladmir Putin in a prominent

speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. One Russian in the audience took

particular offense. “I am a scholar at the Kennan Institute and a professor at the Yaroslavl State

Pedagogical University in Russia. This is not the first time that I am impressed by your brilliant

anti-Russian propaganda….Let me ask a simple question. What requirements must Russia meet

in order to be called a ‘democracy’?” Brzezinski replied, “That is a very good question. It also

shows, however, that democracy is not very well understood. I would have thought that by now

most people in Russia would know what a democracy is. First of all, democracy means free

elections, not a constitutionally manipulated process in which the election date is shifted so that

the opposition is deprived an opportunity to put forth a candidate and the public is denied a real

choice between programs and candidates. It means also winning the elections on the basis of a

program, not on chauvinistic sloganeering about war against a small group of people to the south

of one’s own country. Beyond that, in case you are still interested, democracy means a free

press—a free press that is not manipulated, not controlled, and not intimidated. Democracy also

means a system of transparent laws and a government that is both constrained by law and

subject to it. Democracy means the elimination of massive corruption—uncovering and

punishing those responsible for assassinating political opponents. Perhaps you are familiar with

356

some of those cases in St. Petersburg and elsewhere. Democracy means a lot of these things; and

as you visit the United States, perhaps you will learn more.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Post-

divided Europe: Principles and Precepts for American Foreign Policy,” Woodrow Wilson

International Center for Scholars (July 19, 2000).

357

BIBLIOGRPAHY

I. PRIMARY SOURCES

INTERVIEWS

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Bronislaw Geremek

Paul Henze

Samuel Huntington

Wojciech Jaruzelski

Stanislaw Kania

Henry Kissinger

Jerzy Kozminski

Stephen Larrabee

Albert Mavrinac

Jan Prokop

Adam Michnik

Jan Nowak-Jezioranski

Gen. William Odom

Henry Owen

William Quant

PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Toward a Community of Developed Nations,” Department of State Bulletin,

(March 13, 1967).

John A. Gronouski, “The Intellectual and American Foreign Policy,” Department of State Bulletin,

Vol. LVII, No. 1475, (October 2, 1967).

President Lyndon Johnson, “Encouraging the Rule of Reason in Eastern Europe,” Department of

State Bulletin, vol. LIX, no. 1528, (October 7, 1968)

“Oral History Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski,” General Services Administration, National

Archives and Records Service, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library.

A. BOOKS BY ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism (Cambridge, Mass:

1956).

- Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, (Cambridge, Mass: 1960

-Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics (New York: 1962).

358

-Political Power USA/USSR (New York: 1964).

-Alternative to Partition:: For a Broader Conception of America’s Role in Europe (New York: 1965).

- Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Tecnetronic Era (New York: 1970),

-The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan, (New York: 1972).

-Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981 (New York: 1983)

-Game Plan 1985

-The Grand Failure 1988

-Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21

Century, (New York: 1993).

-The Grand Chessboard

B. ARTICLES BY ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

Brzezinski, Zbigniew “Shifts in the Satellites,” The New Republic, 134: 24 (June 11, 1956).

- “Totalitarianism and Rationality,” American Political Science Review, vol. L, no 3 (September,

1956), p. 752.

- “U.S. Foreign Policy in East Central Europe-A Study in Contradiction,” Journal of International

Affairs vol. XI no. 1 (1957).

- “A Book the Russians Would Like to Forget,” The Reporter (December 22, 1960).

Brzezinski, Zbigniew and William Griffith, “Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe,” Foreign

Affairs Vol. 39, No. 4 (Spring, 1961),

-“A Policy of Peaceful Engagement: How We Can Profit from Communist Disunity,” The New

Republic, (March 26, 1962).

-“Deviation Control: A Study in the Dynamics of Doctrinal Conflict,” The American Political

Science Review (March, 1962),

- “Surprise a Key to Our Cuba Success,” The Washington Post, (November 4, 1962).

- “After the Test Ban—The U.S. Must Take the Initiative in Europe,” The New Republic, (August

31, 1963)

- “Calculations and Suggestions,” Newsweek, (November 25, 1963).

- “Peaceful Engagement,” Encounter (April 1965).

359

- “The Soviet Political System: Transformation of Degeneration,” Problems of Communism,

(January-February 1966), Vol. 15.

- “Communism is Dead,” The New Leader, Vol. L, No. 15, (July 17, 1967).

- “The Framework of East-West Reconciliation,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 46, No. 2 (January 1968).

- “America in the Technetronic Age,” Encounter, (January, 1968).

- “Revolution and Counterrevolution (But Not Necessarily About Columbia!), The New Republic,

(June 1, 1968).

- “Meeting Moscow’s Limited Co-existence,” The New Leader, Vol. 51, No. 24 (December 16, 1968).

-“Détente in the ‘70s,” The New Republic, (January 3, 1970).

-“For Lenin’s Centenary: The Soviet Past & Future,” Encounter (March, 1970).

-“America and Europe,” Foreign Affairs, (October, 1970).

-“A Community of Developed Nations,” Newsweek (February 1, 1971),

“The State of Communism,” Newsweek (March 15, 1971),

-“Not War But Anarchy,” Newsweek, (April 5, 1971).

- “Stalemate or Settlement,” Newsweek, (May 17, 1971).

- “Sayonara to Certainty,” Newsweek, (September 20, 1971).

- “The Balance of Power Delusion,” Foreign Policy 7 (Summer 1972).

-“The International and the Planetary,’ Encounter, (August 1972).

-“Debating Détente,” The New Leader, 55:19 (October 2, 1972).

-"U.S. Foreign Policy: The Search for Focus," Foreign Affairs, (July, 1973).

-“The Deceptive Structure of Peace,” Foreign Policy (Spring 1974).

-“The Economics of Détente: A US Portfolio in the USSR?” The New Leader (August 5, 1974).

-“Making America Relevant,” Current (April 1975).

-“America in a Hostile World,” Foreign Policy, 23 (Summer 1976),

-“What’s Wrong With Reagan’s Foreign Policy,” The New York Times Magazine (December 8,

1982).

-“The Future of Yalta,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 63 No. 2 (Winter, 1984/85).

-“On Anniversaries in 1985,” Problems of Communism, (March-April 1985).

360

-“NSC’s Midlife Crisis.” Foreign Policy 69 (Winter, 1987-88)

"White House Diary, 1980", Orbis, (Winter, 1988).

- “The Premature Partnership,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 73 No. 2 (March-April, 1994).

- “Why the West Should Care about Chechnya,” The Wall Street Journal, (November 10, 1999).

- “Living With Russia,” The National Interest, (Fall 2000).

C. MEMOIRS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith (New York: 1982).

Vance, Cyrus. Hard Choices (New York: 1983).

Kissinger, Henry. The White House Years (Boston: 1979).

NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

Atlantic Monthly

Christian Science Monitor

Commentary

The Economist

New York Times

New York Review of Books

New Yorker

Newsweek

Time

Washington Post

Harpers

Los Angeles Times

The New Republic

Problems of Communism

The Nation

Survey

II. SECONDARY SOURCES

A. BOOKS AND MONOGRAPHS

Ambrose Stephen E. Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962 (New York: 1987).

Andrianopoulos, Gerry A. Kissinger and Brzezinski (New York, 1991).

Arendt , Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: 1951)..

361

Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (New York: 1983).

Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent, (New York: 1993).

Timothy Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (London: 1999).

Bialer, Seweryn The Soviet Paradox (New York, 1986).

Brinkley, Alan . American History: A Survey (New York: 1995).

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VITAE

Patr ick G. Vaughan

Departm ent of H istory

W est V ir g in ia Un iv e r sity

PO Box 6303

Morg antow n, W V 26506-6303

(304) 29 3-2421 ext. 5231

em a il: p a tr ic kvaug h an44@ h otm ail.com

Education

West Virginia University , Ph .d 2003

Field s: Eastern Europ e; US D ip lo m a tic ; Tw entieth Century US; Modern Europe

D isser ta tio n Title: Z big niew Brzezinski: Th e Political and Acad em ic Car eer of a Cold

W ar Visionary.

(Ad visor: Robert Blobaum )

West Virginia University , M .A., H istory, May 19 9 4

Major Field: Tw en tieth C e n tur y Eur o p e

Minor Field : US H istory

Master's Thesis: "Th e Carter Ad m inistration and Eastern Europ e."

Ad visors: Robert Blobaum , Joe H ag an, M ark Taug er

Califo r n ia State University - C h ico, B.A.,

H istory/Org aniz ational Com m unications, Aug ust 19 9 0

O th e r Un iv er sities A tte n d ed :

University of Pittsb ur g h : Sum m er Lang uag e Prog ram , 19 9 7 (no deg ree objective).

Employment

Graduate Instr uctor , D ep artm ent of H istory, W est Virg inia University

H istory 2: W estern Civiliz ation: 1500 to Present: (1996-1998)

H istory 53: Making of M od ern Am erica, 18 65 to Present: (1998-2000)

H istory 1: W estern Civiliz ation: Antiquity to 1500: (Sum m er 2000)

Individually in charge of two fully self-contained survey-level sections each

semester including preparation of syllabi, lectures, examinations, book selection,

and grading.

Presentations

"Beyond Benig n Neg lect: Carter, Brz ez inski, and Eastern Europ e," South ern Conference

of Slavic Stud ies, University of Kentucky, May 19 9 7.

"Th e U.S. a n d th e Po lish C r isis 1 9 8 0 " Th e Th ir te e n th A n n ua l O h io V a lle y H isto r y

Conference, Austin Peay University, October 19 9 7.

“Th e Success of Peaceful Eng ag em ent: Zbigniew Brzezinski and Easter n Europ e: 19 56-

1989,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Toronto,

Ontario, June 2000.

G rants and H onors

J. W illia m Fulb r ig h t Sc h o la r sh ip : W arsaw , Poland (Septem ber 2000-June 2001)

W ilkin s Sc h o la r sh ip A w a r d : O utsta n d in g G r a d ua te In str uc to r , W est V ir g in ia Un iv er sity

(M ay 2000)

Th ornburg Doctoral Fellow sh ip Aw ard : W est Virg inia University (M ay 2000)

Jo h n L. Sn ell M em o r ia l Pr iz e: Aw ard ed annually by South ern H istorical Association for

outstanding orig inal g rad uate stud ent research paper in European H istory (October 19 9 9 )

Dennis H . O'Brien G rad uate Stud ent Aw ard : West Virginia University (1997, 1998)

W ilkin s Sc h o la r sh ip A w a r d : O utsta n d in g G r a d ua te Stud e n t a t M A le v e l, W est V ir g in ia

Un iv er sity (M a y 1 9 9 4 )

Publications

“Beyond Benig n N eg lect: Z big niew Brz ez inski a n d th e Po lish C r isis o f 1 9 8 0 ” Th e

Polish Review , Vol. XLIV, No. 1 (1999), pp 3-28.