Zbigniew Brzezinski

Eulogies delivered at the memorial service for Samuel P. Huntington, Memorial Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 22, 2009.

Readers looking for clues as to how the Obama administration might seek to reposition U.S. foreign policy could can consult this book for a wide-ranging and candid presentation of some of the principal themes in American political thought at this critical moment.

Every president since Richard Nixon has recognized that ensuring stability in the Persian Gulf is a vital U.S. interest. In its first term, the Clinton administration attempted to deal with the twin dangers of Iran and Iraq through a strategy of "dual containment" that kept both countries boxed in with economic sanctions and military monitoring. Dual containment, however, is more a slogan than a strategy, and far too blunt an instrument to serve American interests in the Middle East. The United States must employ a more nuanced approach, keeping the straitjacket on Saddam while seeking improved relations with Iran.

Rosy scenarios of a democratic, economically revitalized Russia are the basis for the U.S. partnership with Boris Yeltsin. Such views hinge on the assumption that Russia wants peace with its neighbors. But Russia cannot be both a democracy and an empire, and it now seems to be choosing the ­latter. In the "near abroad," the politically powerful Russian military hungrily eyes breakaway republics. By heaping aid on a corrupt economy and deferring to wounded pride, the United States will legitimize a Russian sphere of influence in Europe's east and forfeit the fruits of its Cold War victory. A more even-handed diplomacy and distribution of aid among the former Soviet republics could temper Russia's imperial impulse.

Overview of the Cold War era, assessing its phases, US-Soviet strategies and tactics, and opportunities missed by both sides. The West faces the collapse not merely of Soviet power, but of "the great Russian empire, which laster for more than three hundred years". The West's objectives should now be to encourage the emergence of a "truly post-imperial Russia" and the "stable consolidation of the newly-independent non-Russian states".

The collapse of communism across Eastern Europe has created the dangers of nationalist competition and chauvinism. The West should encourage (1) the former 'satellites' to develop pluralist constitutions and to move towards closer association with the EC (2) "the eventual transformation of the Soviet Union -- which in reality is a great Russian empire -- into a genuine voluntary confederation or commonwealth". See also 1990:00167.

Seeks to transmute claims of US imperial decline into an agenda for its future role. Strategic doctrine should stress flexibility and the control of space, likened to control of the seas in times past. Areas of paramount geopolitical importance are (1) Eastern Europe and Germany (2) the Middle East (3) Central America, where a combination of anti-Yanqui nationalism and demography may even 'prompt a mood of panic' in the USA. The global role needs to be re-defined against parallels with other declining empires (Rome, Turkey) but also against lack of a successor -- "the Soviet Union will remain internally too weak to become a partner for peace and externally too strong to be satisfied with the status quo". Calls in particular for the upgrading to world status of the US-Japanese relationship -- 'Amerippon'. President Carter's security adviser, 1977-81. An excerpt was republished in 'Eastern Europe: a crisis in need of management' IHT 12 Apr 1988 p4.