Excellent Review of Brzezinski's New Book in NY Review of Books

[BurtWorm]

It's worth buying a copy, or going to the nyrb Website in a few days to see if it goes on-line. The author is William Pfaff, who co-authored another book on foreign policy recently criticizing the Bushist "worldview."

The main points of the review: that Brzezinski faults Bushism, and much of American "thinking" about foreign policy in the wake of 9-11 particularly, for being irrational and impractical, potentially leading the country toward such a useless dead end as Fortress America. Fear of terrorism is a debilitating disease, ZB apparently argues, that must be overcome for the good of the country and the world.

Alas, ZB is apparently stronger on his critique of what's wrong than his prescription for a cure, which involves focusing attention on the Caucusus. The bottom line is that Pfaff thinks any cure that places the US in a special relationship to the rest of the world is doomed to failure, including Brzezinski's, for reasons Brzezinski cites in his critique of others' plans: they're fundamentally irrational. The way out of Bushism and this miserable imperialism of the last dismal American century is to find a path toward rationalism, and this means curing ourselves of our tendency to mythologize. The world wants the US to be effective and strong, and will even follow its lead; but only if it demonstrates that it stands on solid ground.

[WillyBrandt]

1. Did you see the ZB speech from a few months ago?

Brilliant. Insightful.

Say what you will, but Zbigey had a brain on him.

[BurtWorm]

2. I didn't.

I'm not a Brzezinski fan. But the arguments in the first part of his book, as Pfaff represented them, really resonated with me. I like to hear people speaking the truth. I'm sick of the candy-coated mythologizing that's taken the place of rational discussion in the US since 9-11. At least.

[WillyBrandt]

3. I think you'd like this nontheless

A recent speech

http://www.centerforamericanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?cid={E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03}&bin_id={9F92BF4B-1E80-45E3-AFC8-F1672CFC4A4C}

It's not so much ideological as tough-minded. You can watch it here:

http://www.newamericanstrategies.org/downloads/

REALLY recommended.

[BurtWorm]

4. Thanks. I'll check it out tomorrow, when I'm more awake.

As I say, I liked a lot of what I was reading earlier tonight, precisely for its tough-mindedness.

[WillyBrandt]

5. Don't think coldwar. Think common sense

I can't see how any honest person could disagree with the plain, non-propagandizing common sense of his speech.

It will shake any honest person, liberal or conservative, dove or hawk. The moment is one of crisis.

I'm off too, nite!

[punpirate]

6. Wasn't using it too well when...

... he whispered in Carter's ear that promoting a war between Afghanistan and the Soviets would be a great thing, to include sending the CIA and some money to help out a certain Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden.

Realpolitik always seems to have unintended consequences.

Far too much of what ZB and others did was related to the perceived great communist threat at a time when the Soviet Union was imploding of its own dead weight. He's harping on the Bushies' approach only because it doesn't involve any communists. If there was even a remote chance that Arab terrorists were planning a communist takeover of the Middle East, he'd be sounding alarms.

[IrateCitizen]

7. It's important to note ZB's role in Afghanistan

He is the person who was primarily responsible for stirring up militant Muslims against the pro-Soviet Afghan government in 1979 in order to PROVOKE a Soviet invasion.

Note, the action was not in RESPONSE to a Soviet military intervention, but to actively PROVOKE one.

When asked whether he regretted these actions, ZB replied:
"Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'"
Nouvel Observateur (interviewer): And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?"
ZB: "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"

Excerpt taken from the book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson, p. xiii of the Introduction.

I'm wondering if ZB revisited his role in this matter, and addressed the guilt that hangs over his own head? Nah, I wouldn't count on it -- because that would mean admitting the FUNDAMENTAL flaws of US foreign policy over the years, rather than taking the easy route of simply assigning the majority of blame to the extreme excesses of the current Administration.

[BurtWorm]

8. Of course he won't address that.

I have no illusions about ZB's role in the architecture of the cold war endgame and the opening moves of the McWorld/Jihad culture clash. I tend to take his pronouncements with a grain of salt. But Pfaff's review suggests he is capable of some clear thinking on US foreign policy as well as realpolitik. It's more Pfaff's critique of ZB and the whole foreign policy establishment that impressed me.

[BurtWorm]

9. An excerpt from Pfaff's review

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17013


Every country has a "story" it tells itself about its place in the contemporary world. We are familiar enough with the American story, beginning with the City on a Hill and progressing through Manifest Destiny toward Woodrow Wilson's conviction we are "to show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty.... It was of this that we dreamed at our birth." The current version of the story says that this exalted destiny is fatefully challenged by rogue nations with nuclear weapons, failed states, and the menace of Islamic extremists. Something close to Huntington's war of civilizations has begun. National mobilization has already taken place. Years of struggle lie ahead.<7>

The "isolation" of the United States today is caused by the fact that its claims about the threat of terrorism seem to others grossly exaggerated, and its reaction, as Brzezinski himself argues, dangerously disproportionate. Most advanced societies have already had, or have, their wars with "terrorism": the British with the IRA, the Spanish with the Basque separatist ETA, the Germans, Italians, and Japanese with their Red Brigades, the French with Palestinian and Algerian terrorists, Greeks, Latin Americans, and Asians with their own varieties of extremists.

America's principal allies no longer believe its national "story." They have tried to believe in it, and have been courteous about it even while skepticism grew. They are alarmed about what has happened to the United States under the Bush administration, and see no good coming from it. They are struck by how impervious Americans seem to be to the notion that our September 11 was not the defining event of the age, after which "nothing could be the same." They are inclined to think that the international condition, like the human condition, is in fact very much the same as it has always been. It is the United States that has changed. They are disturbed that American leaders seem unable to understand this.

When American officials and policy experts come to Europe saying that "everything has changed," warning that allied governments must "do something" about the anti-Americanism displayed last year in connection with the Iraq invasion, the Western European reaction is often to marvel at the Americans' inability to appreciate that the source of the problem lies in how the United States has conducted itself since September 2001. They find this changed United States rather menacing. An Irish international banker recently observed to me that when Europeans suggest to visiting Americans that things have changed in Europe too, as a direct result of America's policies, "it's as if the Americans can't hear." A French writer has put it this way: it has been like discovering that a respected, even beloved, uncle has slipped into schizophrenia. When you visit him, his words no longer connect with the reality around him. It seems futile to talk about it with him. The family, embarrassed, is even reluctant to talk about it among themselves.

[rdfi-defi]

10. yeah, be sure to catch the part about

"a global political awakening" being one of the threats to us hegemony, and the increased levels of popular "expectations" that go with that awakening.