Zbigniew Brzezinski TOPICS: Global Affairs Government / Politics International Relations FEE CATEGORY:* 30.0k to 50.0k TRAVELS FROM: Washington D.C. Video Profile Program Outlines Request This Speaker

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Profile

Former National Security Advisor

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor to President Carter, was born in Poland and spent part of his youth in France and Germany before moving to Canada. His father, a man of aristocratic descent, served as the Polish consul-general in Montreal during the Second World War and helped Jewish refugees flee Nazi and Soviet persecution. When the communists seized control of the Polish government in 1945, his father retired and remained with his family in Canada.

During the 1960s Brzezinski acted as an advisor to Kennedy and Johnson administration officials. Generally taking a hard line on policy toward the Soviet Union, he was also an influential force behind the Johnson administration's "bridge-building" ideas regarding Eastern Europe. During the final years of the Johnson administration, he was a foreign policy advisor to Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his presidential campaign.

In 1973, Brzezinski became the first director of the Trilateral Commission, a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three regions. Future President Carter was a member, and when he declared his candidacy for the White House in 1974, Brzezinski, a critic of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy style, became his advisor on foreign affairs. After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski Foreign National Security Advisor.

Aiming to replace Kissinger's "acrobatics" in foreign policy-making with a foreign policy "architecture," Brzezinski was as eager for power as his rival. However, his task was complicated by his focus on East-West relations, and in a hawkish way -- in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights.

On the whole, Brzezinski was a team player. He emphasized the further development of the U.S.-China relationship, favored a new arms control agreement with Moscow and shared the president and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's view that the United States should seek international cooperation in its diplomacy instead of going it alone.

In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Since his time in government, Brzezinski has been active as a writer, teacher and consultant.

Brzezinski's first bestseller, The Grand Failure, is based on his many years of experience in observing Soviet politics and society. Written just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the book expressed his optimism that the totalitarianism and repression of Soviet-style communism had failed at last.

In Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century, Brzezinski turns his attention to post-Cold War international politics. The political future, he feels, will be dominated by global "power clusters" rather than superpowered individual nation-states. Brzezinski suggests that the United Nations must play a greater role in politics worldwide, and that the United States be prepared to share responsibilities with its neighbors in Europe, the Americas, and East Asia.

Brzezinski focuses more closely on the role of the United States in world politics in his 1997 publication, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. The United States, he believes, is the first political entity to achieve world domination. He then states that Eurasia is the game board on which world power struggles are played and and sets forth his reasons for believing that the United States must do its best to balance power in Eurasia, and his prescriptions for how to do so.

Brzezinski received B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science from McGill University. In 1953 he earned his doctorate in political science from Harvard. He taught at Harvard before moving to Columbia University in 1961 to head the new Institute on Communist Affairs.

Public and Pro Bono Activities
Honorary Chairman, AmeriCares Foundation (a private philanthropic humanitarian aid organization); Co-Chairman, American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus; Member, Board of Trustees, International Crisis Group; Trustee, Trilateral Commission (a cooperative American-European-Japanese forum); Member, Board of Directors, Polish-American Enterprise Fund and of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation; Member, Honorary Board of American Friends of Rabin Medical Center; Chairman, International Advisory Board for the Yale Project on “The Culture & Civilization of China”; Member, International Honorary Committee, Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, etc.

Private Sector
International adviser to major U.S./global corporations; frequent participant in annual business/trade conventions; also a frequent public speaker, commentator on major domestic and foreign TV programs, and contributor to domestic and foreign newspapers and journals.

U.S. Government
1966-68, Member of the Policy Planning Council of the Department of State; 1985, Member of the President’s Chemical Warfare Commission; 1987-88, Member of the NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy; 1987-89, Member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (a Presidential commission to oversee U.S. intelligence activities).

Public and Political
1973-76, Director of the Trilateral Commission; in the 1968 presidential campaign, chairman of the Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force; in the 1976 presidential campaign, principal foreign policy adviser to Jimmy Carter. In 1988, co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force. Past Member of Boards of Directors of Amnesty International, Council on Foreign Relations, Atlantic Council, the National Endowment for Democracy. 2004, Co-Chair, Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored Independent Task Force, Iran: Time for a New Approach.

Academic
On the faculty of Columbia University 1960-89; on the faculty of Harvard University 1953-60. Ph.D., Harvard University, 1953; B.A. and M.A., McGill University 1949 and 1950.

* Please note that while this speaker's specific fee falls within the range posted at the top of this page (for Continental U.S. based events), fees are subject to change without notice. Also note that most celebrity keynotes begin in the $25,000 and up range (most list "Contact for Fee Schedule"). For current fee information or international event fees, please contact your Speakers Platform representative.