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Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

Former National Security Advisor

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Famous Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

“Like so many empires before it, the Soviet Union eventually imploded and fragmented, falling victim not so much to a direct military defeat as to disintegration accelerated by economic and social strains.”

FallSocialEconomicMilitaryDirectVictimUnionsDefeatEmpiresSovietSoviet UnionStrainFragmentedDisintegration
Book:The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives
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“The dynamic character of China's nonstatist economic transformation, including its social openness to the rest of the world, is not mutually compatible in the long run with a relatively closed and bureaucratically rigid Communist dictatorship.”

WorldLongCharacterRunningSocialEconomicTransformationIncludingChinaOpennessCommunistDictatorshipLong RunsCompatibleDynamic Characters
Book:The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives
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“Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.”

ImportantPoliticalThreeInterestNaturalPowerfulEconomicSecurityAmbitionGoldImportanceHistoricalIncludingChinaOilNeighborRussiaEnormousGasConcentrationRegionsPrizeIranRepublicReservesTurkeysAsianStandpointMineralsNatural GasBalkans
Author:Zbigniew Brzezinski
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“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.”

HumansWellsSelfPassionGoalChallengesEffortDemocracySacrificeEconomicConditionsThreatDemocraticInstinctSoldierInternationalSpendingDefensePursuitCommandWell BeingDenialSupremacyCasualtiesPopulistSelf-denialMobilizationDefense Spending
Author:Zbigniew Brzezinski
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“The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”

EnergyNaturalKnownSeaEconomicSourceDevelopmentPressureOilGasRegionsMassiveExplorationMexicoReservesExploitationAsiaAsianMomentumEconomic DevelopmentDwarfsDwarvesNatural GasKuwaitGulf Of MexicoCentral AsiaNorth SeaCaspian Sea
Book:The Grand Chessboard
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