Foreign policy intellectual who served as adviser to Carter
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the combative, visionary foreign policy intellectual who helped bring Jimmy Carter to the White House in 1976 and then guided him through a series of international crises that contributed significantly to Mr. Carter’s defeat at the polls four years later, died Friday night. Hewas 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 Mr. Carter’s innovative but unevenly implemented human-rights policy.
Mr. Brzezinski’s admirers focused on achievements that included the full normalization of U.S. relations with China, an expanded American 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.
The author of over 30 books, Mr. Brzezinski moved away from the strident advocacy of military power and the need to show resolve that made his reputation as an anti-Soviet hawk during his tenure as Mr. Carter’s nationalsecurity adviser.
Once a muscular 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 bring Ukraine into a military alliance. That risked greater, more dangerous complications with Moscow, he argued. But Mr. Brzezinski maintained that there was more continuity in his thinking than was apparent.
Always ready to do battle with ideological opponents, Mr. Brzezinski placed equally strong emphasis on developing warm personal relationships with world figures he respected.
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski was born in Warsaw on March 28, 1928. Ten years later, his father, Tadeusz, a diplomat from an aristocratic Catholic family, was posted to Montreal as Poland’s consul general.
The temporary assignment turned into extended refuge for the Brzezinski family as Poland was invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union, partitioned, and then absorbed into the Soviet empire after the war. “Zbig,” as he was called, took an early interest in Russian culture and diplomacy, his parents recalled.
After obtaining a master’s degree in political science from McGill University in 1950, he enrolled in Harvard and received a doctorate in government. One of his mentors was Merle Fainsod, a leading specialist on Soviet political-persecution.
Mr. 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.
In 1955, he married Emilie Benes, a sculptor and grandniece of Eduard Benes, who served twice as president of Czechoslovakia. Besides his wife and daughter, survivors include two sons, Ian Brzezinski and Mark Brzezinski.
Becoming an American citizen in 1958, Mr. 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 American ties abroad through dialogue.
Mr. Brzezinski recruited Mr. Carter, a little-known Georgia governor, into the Trilateral Commission in 1973. The Trilateral connection and Mr. Brzezinski’s foreign policy credentials helped boost Mr. Carter to victory over incumbent President Gerald R. Ford three years later.
Mr. Brzezinski’s brash manner and rapidly hardening views on Soviet expansionism quickly brought him into conflict with Cyrus Vance, the patrician lawyer and government administrator who was Mr. Carter’s secretary of state, and Mr. Vance’s aides. The Washington press corps began to portray Mr. Carter as an indecisive leader who veered from Mr. Vance to Mr. Brzezinski and back again. But Mr. Brzezinski always maintained that because Mr. Vance was not a strategic thinker, they did not often clash personally over policy.
Mr. Vance fought to obtain U.S. ratification of the SALT II treaty with the Kremlin to limit superpower nuclear arsenals. Mr. Brzezinski opposed it, maintaining that conducting diplomacy as usual would reward Soviet misbehavior in Africa and elsewhere.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 pushed Mr. Carter to adopt Mr. Brzezinski’s strict “linkage” approach and, among other things, cancel U.S. participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Mr. Carter also did not move ahead with ratification ofthe SALT II treaty, although both countries observed its provisions in practice.
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. Mr. Vance had urged political liberalization to quiet the rebellion.
Mr. Vance resigned in April 1980, when Mr. Carter backed an attempt — supported by Mr. Brzezinski — to rescue 52 U.S. diplomats held hostage in Tehran by Iranian radicals. That mission failed when aircraft involved in staging the operation crashed, killing eight U.S. soldiers, and making Mr. Carter’s reelection chances remote. The Iranian captors released their hostages on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.
Even the accomplishment of which Mr. Brzezinski was most proud — full diplomatic relations with China — sparked controversy because of suspicions at the State Department that he intended to use the initiative as an anti-Soviet ploy.
Although he played a secondary role in the Camp David negotiations that produced the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Mr. 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, Mr. 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 gulf.
Mr. Brzezinski’s criticisms of Israeli policies over the years triggered accusations of anti-Semitism, which he rebutted in part by pointing out that his father had been recognized by Israel as having helped Jews escape from Nazioccupied Europe.
Mr. 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 caustic critic of President George W. Bush, he strongly supported Barack Obama’s election campaign in 2008, but gradually came to fault Mr. Obama’s lack of “strategic determination” and accused him of having “caved in” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Israeli settlements.