List of Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

I Think President George W. Bush Contributed Very Directly To The Fact That The Status Of America As The World's Only Superpower Lasted For 20 Years At Most.

I Have No Patience For Those In The American Jewish Community Who Just Go Around Slandering People As Anti-semites Without Realizing That What They're Doing Is Really Trivializing Anti-semitism.

The Scope Of America's Global Hegemony Is Admittedly Great, But Its Depth Is Shallow, Limited By Both Domestic And External Restraints.

There Are Major Disappointments With The Outcomes Of Solidarity: Corruption, And Major Pockets Of Economic Backwardness And Even Poverty. By And Large, Though, If There Were A Choice Between The Life Poles Led In The 1970s And 1980s And Now, Nobody But A Lunatic Would Say They Wanted To Have Back What They Had Before.

I Cite These Events Because I Think They Underline Two Very Disturbing Phenomena - The Loss Of U.s. International Credibility, The Growing U.s. International Isolation.

In Iraq We Must Succeed. Failure Is Not An Option.

I Think The Us Has The Right To Have Its Own National Security Policy. I Think Most Americans Would Agree With That. And Therefore Clarity On This Issue Is Important And Especially If We Commit Ourselves, Explicitly And Bindingly, To Israel's Security.

We Look A Little Bit Disorderly, Indecisive, Leaderless. That's A Real Problem, And That's A Problem That Concerns Me Particularly On Foreign Affairs. The Presidency, Not Just President Obama, But The Presidency In Recent Years Has Lost Some Of The Terrain That They Used To Dominate In The Making Of Foreign Policy. I Think President Obama Has To Make A Serious Effort To Regain It Because He Lost Some Of It Himself.

There Is An Element Of Paranoia In This Inclination To View Any Serious Attempt At A Compromised Peace As Somehow Directed Against Israel.

Never Before Has A Populist Democracy Attained International Supremacy. But The Pursuit Of Power Is Not A Goal That Commands Popular Passion, Except In Conditions Of A Sudden Threat Or Challenge To The Public's Sense Of Domestic Well-being. The Economic Self-denial (that Is, Defense Spending) And The Human Sacrifice (casualties, Even Among Professional Soldiers) Required In The Effort Are Uncongenial To Democratic Instincts. Democracy Is Inimical To Imperial Mobilization.

Foreign Policy Of A Pluralistic Democracy Like The United States Should Be Based On Bipartisanship Because Bipartisanship Is The Means And The Framework For Formulating Policies Based On Moderation And On The Recognition Of The Complexity Of The Human Condition. That Has Been The Tradition Since The Days Of Truman And Vandenberg All The Way Until Recent Times.

War On Terrorism Defines The Central Preoccupation Of The United States In The World Today, And It Does Reflect In My View A Rather Narrow And Extremist Vision Of Foreign Policy Of The World's First Superpower, Of A Great Democracy, With Genuinely Idealistic Traditions.