Carter's adviser Brzezinski dies

Foreign policy was largely his

In this July 9, 2014 file photo, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to examine Russia and developments in Ukraine.
In this July 9, 2014 file photo, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to examine Russia and developments in Ukraine.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the foreign-policy adviser who helped get Jimmy Carter to the White House in 1976 and then guided him through a series of international crises that contributed significantly to Carter's defeat at the polls four years later, died Friday night. He was 89.

"My father passed away peacefully tonight" his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, said on her Twitter account.

The Polish-born strategist became a lightning rod for criticism over the roles he played in the Iranian hostage crisis, a broad but unrewarding diplomatic confrontation with the Soviet Union, and Carter's innovative but unevenly implemented human-rights policy.

In a statement, Carter called Brzezinski "a superb public servant" as well as "brilliant, dedicated and loyal."

Brzezinski's admirers focused on achievements that included the full normalization of U.S. relations with China, an expanded U.S. role in the Middle East that produced an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, and skillful involvement behind the scenes that kept Poland's 1980 Solidarity revolt against communist rule alive and effective.

The author of more than 30 books, Brzezinski gradually moved away from the advocacy of military power and the need to show resolve that made his reputation as an anti-Soviet hawk during his tenure as Carter's national security adviser.

Once an advocate of U.S. escalation in Vietnam, he gradually came to put more emphasis on the need to be diplomatically and politically supportive of nationalist aspirations in developing countries.

He strongly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The undeclared border war between Russia and Ukraine led him in 2014 to caution that the West should not draw Ukraine into a military alliance. That risked greater, more dangerous complications with Russia, he argued.

Brzezinski also struggled in vain to move out of the shadow of another European-born academic turned policymaker, Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger and Brzezinski shared a taste for celebrity and control of the policy process that previous national security advisers had largely eschewed. And both initially made their reputations at Harvard by arguing that threatening the limited use of nuclear weapons might be a more effective policy instrument than was the then-controlling doctrine of "massive retaliation."

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski was born in Warsaw on March 28, 1928. After obtaining a master's degree in political science from McGill University in 1950, he enrolled in Harvard and received a doctorate in government three years later.

In 1955, he married Emilie Benes, a sculptor and grand-niece of Eduard Benes, who served twice as president of Czechoslovakia.

Brzezinski taught in Harvard's government department until 1959, when he moved to Columbia University. He was soon named a full professor and became director of the Research Institute on Communist Affairs.

Becoming a U.S. citizen in 1958, Brzezinski was active in the Council of Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group and later the Trilateral Commission, private groups of U.S. business executives, intellectuals and politicians who work to strengthen U.S. ties abroad through dialogue.

His books, journal articles and television appearances propelled him to the fore of Democratic Party foreign-policy circles. Vice President Hubert Humphrey made him a principal adviser to his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1968.

Brzezinski recruited Carter, then a Georgia governor, into the Trilateral Commission in 1973. The Trilateral connection and Brzezinski's foreign-policy credentials helped boost Carter to victory over incumbent President Gerald Ford -- whose secretary of state was Kissinger -- three years later.

On Iran, the national security adviser urged the unsteady Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to use all force necessary to crush the Islamic revolution. But the uprising quickly chased the terminally ill shah from his throne.

Although he played a secondary role in the Camp David negotiations that produced the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Brzezinski and his staff did contribute to expanding the U.S. role in the greater Middle East by crafting the Carter Doctrine as a response to the Iranian crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The United States, Carter declared, would not permit any outside power to dominate the Persian Gulf and its oil supplies, committing America for the first time to an active role in the Persian Gulf.

Brzezinski continued to engage in spirited public advocacy after leaving the White House and joining the Center for Strategic and International Studies as counselor and trustee. A particularly caustic critic of President George W. Bush, he strongly supported Barack Obama's election campaign in 2008, but gradually came to fault Obama's lack of "strategic determination."

Information for this article was contributed by Adam Bernstein of The Washington Post.

A Section on 05/27/2017

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