83 Facts About Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski served as a counselor to President Lyndon B Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was an advocate for anti-Soviet containment, for human rights organizations, and for "cultivating a strong West".

Zbigniew Brzezinski has been praised for his ability to see "the big picture".

Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC News' This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and on MSNBC's Morning Joe, where his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, is co-anchor.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's eldest son, Ian, is a foreign policy expert, and his youngest son, Mark, is the current United States Ambassador to Poland and previously served as the United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2011 to 2015.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, on March 28,1928 into an aristocratic Roman Catholic family originally from Brzezany, Tarnopol Voivodeship.

Brzezinski's parents were Leonia Brzezinska and Tadeusz Brzezinski, a Polish diplomat who was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935; Zbigniew Brzezinski thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis.

From 1936 to 1938, Tadeusz Zbigniew Brzezinski was posted to the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, and was later praised by Israel for his work helping Jews escape from the Nazis.

In 1938, Tadeusz Zbigniew Brzezinski was posted to Montreal as a consul general.

The Zbigniew Brzezinski family lived near the Polish Consulate-General, on Stanley Street.

Zbigniew Brzezinski later collaborated with Carl J Friedrich to develop the concept of totalitarianism as a way to more accurately and powerfully characterize and criticize the Soviets in 1956.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1953 to 1960, and of Columbia University from 1960 to 1972 where he headed the Institute on Communist Affairs.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was Senior Research Professor of International Relations at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.

Zbigniew Brzezinski taught future Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who like Brzezinski's wife Emilie was of Czech descent, and whom he mentored during her early years in Washington.

Zbigniew Brzezinski became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and joined the Bilderberg Group.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's thought in the 1960s focused on wider Western understanding of disunity in the Soviet Bloc, as well as developing the thesis of intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union.

Zbigniew Brzezinski continued to argue for and support detente for the next few years, publishing "Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe" in Foreign Affairs, and he continued to support non-antagonistic policies after the Cuban Missile Crisis on the grounds that such policies might disabuse Eastern European nations of their fear of an aggressive Germany, and pacify Western Europeans fearful of a superpower compromise along the lines of the Yalta Conference.

In 1964, Zbigniew Brzezinski supported Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign and the Great Society and civil rights policies, while on the other hand he saw Soviet leadership as having been purged of any creativity following the ousting of Khrushchev.

In 1966, Zbigniew Brzezinski was appointed to the Policy Planning Council of the US Department of State.

In 1968, Zbigniew Brzezinski resigned from the council in protest of President Johnson's expansion of the war.

Zbigniew Brzezinski called for a pan-European conference, an idea that would eventually find fruition in 1973 as the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Out of this thesis, Zbigniew Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, serving as director from 1973 to 1976.

In 1974, Zbigniew Brzezinski selected Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter as a member.

Zbigniew Brzezinski became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975.

Zbigniew Brzezinski became an outspoken critic of the Nixon-Kissinger over-reliance on detente, a situation preferred by the Soviet Union, favoring the Helsinki process instead, which focused on human rights, international law and peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was considered to be the Democrats' response to Republican Henry Kissinger.

Zbigniew Brzezinski began by emphasizing the "Basket III" human rights in the Helsinki Final Act, which inspired Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia shortly thereafter.

Zbigniew Brzezinski assisted with writing parts of Carter's inaugural address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet dissidents.

Zbigniew Brzezinski ran up against members of his own Democratic Party who disagreed with this interpretation of detente, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, whereas Zbigniew Brzezinski favored doing both at the same time.

Zbigniew Brzezinski then ordered Radio Free Europe transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies.

Zbigniew Brzezinski visited Warsaw and met with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, recognizing the Roman Catholic Church as the legitimate opposition to communist rule in Poland.

Zbigniew Brzezinski believed that detente emboldened the Soviets in Angola and the Middle East, and so he argued for increased military strength and an emphasis on human rights.

Zbigniew Brzezinski advised Carter in 1978 to engage the People's Republic of China and traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the two countries.

Zbigniew Brzezinski anticipated the Soviet invasion, and, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China, he created a strategy to undermine the Soviet presence.

Zbigniew Brzezinski constantly urged either the restoration of the Shah of Iran to power or a military takeover, whatever the short-term costs in terms of values.

Minutes later, Zbigniew Brzezinski received another call: The early-warning system actually showed 2,000 missiles heading toward the United States.

Zbigniew Brzezinski even made a midnight phone call to Pope John Paul II warning him in advance.

Zbigniew Brzezinski developed the Carter Doctrine, which committed the US to use military force in defense of the Persian Gulf.

Zbigniew Brzezinski would preside over a reorganized National Security Council structure, fashioned to ensure that the NSA would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of notes.

Zbigniew Brzezinski sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action.

Zbigniew Brzezinski increasingly assumed the role of a Presidential emissary.

Zbigniew Brzezinski had NSC staffers monitor State Department cable traffic through the Situation Room and call back to the State Department if the President preferred to revise or take issue with outgoing State Department instructions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski appointed his own press spokesman, and his frequent press briefings and appearances on television interview shows made him a prominent public figure, although perhaps not nearly as much as Kissinger had been under Nixon.

Zbigniew Brzezinski later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's independence but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition.

Zbigniew Brzezinski wanted to control the revolution and increasingly suggested military action to prevent Ayatollah Khomeini from coming to power, while Vance wanted to come to terms with the new Islamic Republic of Iran.

Zbigniew Brzezinski actively supported Polish Solidarity and the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion, and provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union.

Zbigniew Brzezinski developed "a plan for Europe" urging the expansion of NATO, making the case for the expansion of NATO to the Baltic countries.

On Friday, Zbigniew Brzezinski held a newly scheduled meeting of the National Security Council and authorized Operation Eagle Claw, a military expedition into Tehran to rescue the hostages.

Zbigniew Brzezinski has compared complaints by US officials about Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions to similar statements made before the Iraq war began.

In May 1978, Zbigniew Brzezinski overcame concerns from the State Department and traveled to Beijing, where he began talks that seven months later led to full diplomatic relations.

Zbigniew Brzezinski played a major role in organizing Jimmy Carter's policies on the Soviet Union as a grand strategy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a liberal Democrat and a committed anti-communist, favoring social justice while seeing world events in substantially Cold War terms.

Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that human rights could be used to put the Soviet Union ideologically on the defensive:.

Zbigniew Brzezinski utilized the United States' need to stability and progress in political relations with the Soviet Union to spur on the call for a new strategic arms treaty.

Zbigniew Brzezinski aimed to frame his arms control policy in a way that portrayed it as favorable to create, ensure, and maintain Soviet-American relations.

On this issue, Zbigniew Brzezinski believed that to continue moving safely ahead with talks to control atomic arms with Moscow, despite Soviet troops holding position in Afghanistan, the United States needed to remain firm in containing Soviet expansionism.

Zbigniew Brzezinski left office concerned about the internal division within the Democratic party, arguing that the dovish McGovernite wing would send the Democrats into permanent minority.

Ronald Reagan invited him to stay on as his National Security Adviser, but Zbigniew Brzezinski declined, feeling that the new president needed a fresh perspective on which to build his foreign policy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and more so of the Western European acquiescence to its imposition in the name of stability.

In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski served as a member of the President's Chemical Warfare Commission.

In 1988, Zbigniew Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force, endorsing Bush for president, and breaking with the Democratic party.

Zbigniew Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades.

Zbigniew Brzezinski said there were five possibilities for the Soviet Union: successful pluralization, protracted crisis, renewed stagnation, coup, or the explicit collapse of the Communist regime.

Zbigniew Brzezinski called collapse "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than protracted crisis.

Later the same year, Zbigniew Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre.

Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly opposed the Gulf War, arguing that the United States would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union, and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the Arab world.

Zbigniew Brzezinski expanded upon these views in his 1992 work Out of Control.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against the Serb forces in the Bosnian war.

Zbigniew Brzezinski began to speak out against Russia's First Chechen War, forming the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya.

Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Zbigniew Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin after Boris Yeltsin.

Zbigniew Brzezinski argued against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was outspoken in the then-unpopular opinion that the invasion would be a mistake.

In 2004, Brzezinski wrote The Choice, which expanded upon his earlier work, The Grand Chessboard, and sharply criticized George W Bush's foreign policy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski later stated that he had "visceral contempt" for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who supported Bush's actions in Iraq.

On October 1,2009, Zbigniew Brzezinski delivered the Waldo Family Lecture on International Relations at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

In 2011, Zbigniew Brzezinski supported the NATO intervention against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi in the Libyan Civil War, calling non-intervention "morally dubious" and "politically questionable".

In early 2012, Zbigniew Brzezinski expressed disappointment and said he was confused by some of Obama's actions, such as the decision to send 2,500 US troops to Australia, but supported him for re-election.

Two days after the election, on November 10,2016, Zbigniew Brzezinski warned of "coming turmoil in the nation and the world" in a brief speech after he was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Public Service from the Department of Defense.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was married to Czech-American sculptor Emilie Benes, with whom he had three children.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a past member of the Atlantic Council and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared as himself in several documentary films and TV series, such as: the 1997 film Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror, directed by David Pultz; Episodes 17,19 and 20 of the 1998 CNN series Cold War produced by Jeremy Isaacs; the 2009 documentary Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace; and the 2014 Polish biographical film Strateg directed by Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska and produced by TVN.

Zbigniew Brzezinski died at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, on May 26,2017, at the age of 89.