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Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

Former National Security Advisor

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Famous Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

“Our world is integrated to an unprecedented degree, while the global political awakening is injecting into interstate relations an intense amount of tension, emotion, even irrationality, which could cumulatively produce circumstances that preclude an effective and genuinely shared universal response to new global problems.”

“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.”

“The society will be dominated by an elite of persons free from traditional values who will have no doubt in fulfilling their objectives by means of purged techniques with which they will influence the behavior of people and will control and watch the society in all details. It will become possible to exert a practically permanent watch on each citizen of the world.”

“The political awakening that is happening worldwide is a major challenge for America, because it means that the world is much more restless. It's stirring. It has aspirations which are not easily satisfied. And if America is to lead, it has to relate itself somehow to these new, lively, intense political aspirations, which make our age so different from even the recent past.”

“America is the only superpower. But our leadership is being tested in the Middle East, and some of the things that we have done in the Middle East are contributing to a potential explosion region-wide. And if that explosion gets out of hand, we may end up being bogged down for many years to come in a conflict that will be profoundly damaging to our capacity to exercise our power, to address the problems implicit in this global awakening, and we may face a world in which much of the world turns away from us, seeks its own equilibrium, but probably slides into a growing chaos.”

“Most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.”

“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.”

“Too rich to be relevant to the world's poor, [Europe] attracts immigration but cannot encourage imitation. Too passive regarding international security. Too self-satisfied, it acts as if its central political goal is to become the worlds most comfortable retirement home. Too set in its ways, it fears multicultural diversity”

“Today we are again witnessing the emergence of transnational elites ... [Whose] ties cut across national boundaries ...It is likely that before long the social elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist in spirit and outlook ... The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty... Further progress will require greater American sacrifices. More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken, with some consequent risk to the present relatively favorable American position.”