Zbigniew Brzezinski

A Geostrategy for Eurasia

Seventy-five years ago, when the first issue of Foreign Affairs saw the light of day, the United States was a self-isolated Western hemi spheric power, sporadically involved in the affairs of Europe and Asia. World War II and the ensuing Cold War compelled the United States to develop a sustained commitment to Western Europe and the Far East. Americas emergence as the sole global superpower now makes an integrated and comprehensive strategy for Eurasia imperative. Eurasia is home to most of the world s politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world s most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or eco nomic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there, as are all but one of the world s overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world s population, 60 per cent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasias potential power overshadows even Americas. Eurasia is the world s axial supercontinent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the worlds three

Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe

THE United States has never had a realistic and effective foreign policy toward Eastern Europe. During World War II the official American position was that the disposition of Eastern European problems should await the peace settle ment, but this was primarily a rationalization for a lack of policy. After the war, when the area became dominated by the Soviet Union (to some extent because of Western passivity), the Amer ican interest in Eastern Europe was overshadowed by the policy of containment. Containment was meant to halt further expan sion of Communism, but by its nature it had only indirect bear ing on areas already under Soviet domination. As a result, Soviet control of Eastern Europe was not seriously contested by the West during the period roughly from 1948 to 1953. The Eisen hower Administration then enunciated the policy of liberation. Subsequent events increasingly demonstrated the lack of realism and purpose behind this, and it soon became an empty slogan. The popular risings in East Berlin in 1953 and in Budapest in 1956 were the final nails in its coffin. Since 1956 there has been uncertainty about the goals and means of American policy toward Eastern Europe. It is by now fairly well agreed that the situation there is far more diverse than was the simple Stalinist pattern of uniformity. It is also recognized that the new situation offers both a challenge and a hope to the free world. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to discuss the goals of American policy in Eastern Europe and the most effective means for pursuing them. In dealing with the Communist r?gimes in Eastern Europe, American policy must operate on two levels: it must consider the r?gimes as such and it must consider the peoples they rule. To focus on one alone distorts our appraisal and prevents us from taking advantage of existing opportunities. In dealing with areas outside their bloc, the Communists have always realized that in order for foreign policy to be successful it must operate simulta neously on more than one level. A dual policy is equally necessary for the United States.

America and Europe

TWENTY-FIVE years have passed since the collapse of Europe. Vienna-Versailles-Potsdam: these historic mile stones mark the calamitous decline of the European world order during the last hundred and fifty years. At Vienna, European statesmen sought to restore a European balance of power, having defeated?with the critical assistance of maritime Britain and Eurasian Russia?the Napoleonic effort to establish a unified continental system. In 1815, it was still European statesmanship that resolved Europes imperial prob lems and thereby ordered the structure of world power. At Versailles, with Russia excluded, European statesmen grappled with the new force of national self-determination and strove to limit the power of the single most dynamic European national entity, Germany; but they did so in a political and idealistic context created largely by a transatlantic statesman, who represented the entry of American power into the European arena. Europe alone no longer could fight its wars nor build its peace. At Potsdam, 25 years ago last July, Europe was absent. In the prostrate capital of the most mighty European nation the future of the former center of the world was shaped in a confrontation between an Atlantic-Pacific continental power, the offspring of Europes liberal tradition, and a Eurasian ideological empire, likewise a transplanted product of the European intellectual diffusion. Though some of the most lively debates at Potsdam were the personal contribution of the British war leader, the British presence?representing primarily an overseas empire? was already becoming an extension of American power. A new post-European world order thereby emerged, with Europe itself powerless and divided. This was a shift of historic proportions, the disappearance of what for several centuries in fact had been the center of world power, the partition of hith erto the worlds most dynamic continent, the emergence instead of two competitive, ideologically distinct, non-European centers of power. To this day Europe is effectively absent from world politics. Its decline has been halted on the social-economic plane and in

China and America in a Post‐Hegemonic Age

A great historical transition is underway from American-led Globalization 1.0 to Globalization 2.0—the interdependence of plural identities where no one power or alliance of powers dominates. The G-20 is floundering as the immediate global financial crisis has receded. The United Nations and the old Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO—have lost their vigor and are struggling to adjust to the global powershift with the rise of the emerging economies. While Europe is paralyzed as the historic project of integration stalls, the worlds two largest economies—the United States and China—are as yet unable to figure out how to share power. The danger now is that the geopolitical vacuum will invite assertions of national self-interest that will unravel the rules-based order that enabled stability and prosperity over recent decades. Americas leading geopolitical strategist, Chinas most outspoken strategic thinker and one of Asias leading global thinkers from Singapore offer their reflections on this state of affairs.

Kosovo Defines the West

Kosovo is a proxy war with the Holocaust. As such, this war and its outcome will do much to define the West in the next century That it is a war in Europe, for Europe, sets it apart from all the other tragedies from Rwanda to Kashmir. Our collage of comment on this subject ranges from the secretary general of NATO to the leader of the Kosovars in Albania.

Poland in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century: A Panel Discussion

Our discussion coincides, almost exactly, with the thirtieth anniversary of the end of hostilities in Europe. Our objective is to review Polands experiences during those thirty years and to project our study into approximately the same period in the future, that is, into the opening stages of the twenty-first century. In 1945 we were all on the verge of manhood-the oldest panelist was twenty-three and the youngest sixteen. In the year 2000 those of us who survive will be over seventy. Our discussion, then, is likely to have some personal overtones-we shall be reviewing the period of history which corresponds to the most active part of our own lives. We are apt to look at events around us not only as witnesses but also, to a lesser or greater extent, as participants. In short, we shall be offering the perspective of the generation born in the 1920s and which has now reached middle age. Incidentally, it is not without some symbolic significance that five prominent members of the generation of the Columbuses (pokolenie Kolumubow), as we are known in Polish, are holding a discussion on Poland on the other side of the Atlantic. Our observations inevitably will be colored by our own personal experiences, and in this respect the members of the panel differ considerably. First, we left Poland at different times. Second, the panelists come from several different countries today. Finally, even though the theme of our discussion is primarily political, the panelists are drawn from various disciplines. It would be fitting now, I think, to start our discussion by citing a passage from an address Professor Brzezinski delivered earlier:

Russia and Europe

THE Soviet attitude toward the development of European unity has been ambivalent in both politics and economics. The Kremlin, unable to interpret the European movement accurately, has oscillated from one reaction to another. Mean while the processes of change within the Communist world, intensified by the Sino-Soviet schism, were creating the precondi tions for a new historical relationship between the Western and the Eastern parts of the old Continent.