The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border of Afghanistan, I wrote to President Jimmy Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKIUkraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.
More Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes
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I happen to think that as the Ukraine moves to the West, towards the E.U., eventually towards NATO, it will pave the way also for Russia moving towards the West. Because it will become a logical extension of the same process, and it will eliminate any imperial ambitions.
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The United States is prepared really to be engaged in the quest to get people in the world the dignities that they seek today, the social justice that they feel they’re deprived of, and the common solution to global problems.
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Like so many empires before it, the Soviet Union eventually imploded and fragmented, falling victim not so much to a direct military defeat as to disintegration accelerated by economic and social strains.
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Marxism represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man’s universal vision… The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty… More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken.
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For people of different faiths to coexist, it’s going to take maturity, wisdom, and patience. All of which come, eventually, with tolerance. And it’s a process of time.
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I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, not as Democrats attacking the administration, but as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety?
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The kind of problem that America faces in Iraq is a little bit the kind of problem that Israel faced in dealing with Hezbollah. If the conflict, the theater of conflict enlarges, it’s going to become more and more absorbing and more and more costly.
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Today it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people.
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Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers.
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Arab nationalism, which tended to be until relatively recent somewhat secular in motivation, has now become increasingly religious and fundamentalist. And that makes it more pervasive, more difficult to deal with.
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The scope of America’s global hegemony is admittedly great, but its depth is shallow, limited by both domestic and external restraints.
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It certainly would be possible for America to redefine its role in the world, especially if, in the short run, America is able to cope effectively with the ongoing dilemma in the Middle East.
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In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option.
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Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen.
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Though Stalinism may have been a needless tragedy for both the Russian people and communism as an ideal, there is the intellectually tantalizing possibility that for the world at large it was, as we shall see, a blessing in disguise.
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