Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

I think Russia is dangerous, not a superpower. I know what the president is trying to say. I worked for him for five years, not just two.He doesn't want us to overreact. He doesn't want to go back to the Cold War and some superpower competition. But my own view, and I think General Mattis stated something similar today, is that Russia is a challenge for the United States. It is a threat to some of our allies.

I thought that in general we in the United States were too optimistic in believing that the Soviets might alter what had been for a long time, as a matter of fact for centuries, fundamental Russian policies in respect to the rest of the world.

Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.

For the Kremlin, it is more feasible to preserve its great-power status in cooperation with the United States than in confrontation.

During the Cold War, America took sides not only in disputes between Arab countries, but also in debates within them.

The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about the rise of China and are threatened by the rise of radical Islam.

Other than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.

Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all — in one way or another — obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster…

We believe US threats of an approaching World War III and their use of Iran's nuclear issue as an excuse is another form of American insanity.

My last words to you, my son and successor, are: Never trust the Russians!

We are running out of enemies. We are down to Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung.

That's the problem with Russia: The world has changed. Europe is not at war, and no one wants to negotiate with us. The world has changed, but Russia prefers to pretend it has not.

The United States is as weak as the Soviet Union. If enough pressure is applied to them, they will pull out of the Middle East.

The Cold War didn't end. It was won.

If we can deter the Soviet Union, if we can deter North Korea, why on earth can't we deter Iran?

I don't think there is any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt's time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it's different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

America is not really a strong enough state for us to regard it as an enemy of Russia.

We won the Cold War because we showed nuclear vigilance and diligence.

I don't worry about superpower confrontation. You know, I lived through the Cold War days, and where everybody was worried about a Soviet Union armed to the teeth. I think we're going to get along fine with Russia, and I don't see them as internationally ambitious.

President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.

It's Russia some people would like to get rid of. They are still afraid of our nuclear deterrent. We have our own foreign policy whether they like it or not.

I'm sure it is, I'm not for any kind of war, we've been engaged in several wars since the second world war and we lost in Korea, we lost in Vietnam, they are political wars, they have nothing to do with any real threat, nor does this one.