Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

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.

History teaches that the rise of new great powers often triggers major global conflict.

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.

It was one thing to contain the Soviet Union in Europe because Britain, France, and Germany were all willing to join in. But will Japan and other Asian countries be willing to join in the containment of China?

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

If I correctly understand the goal of American policy, one wishes Russia to be a partner.

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

People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.

You know, in the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.

Force-backed humanitarianism, which relies on rational influence over events in other countries, may have been a more feasible project in the bipolar era of the Cold War, with its relatively defined and stable web of alliances and proxies.

During the Cold War, the non-aligned movement tried to become a 'third force' in world politics, but failed because it was too large and unwieldy.

I don't share the view that China and the U.S. need to reach some kind of strategic accommodation to carve up the Asia-Pacific region - that is an arrogant proposition and deeply insulting to other countries in the region, including Japan and potentially also India and Indonesia.

We [the Russians] are going to do something terrible to you [America]—we are going to deprive you of an enemy.

There will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, balances of power ...

The Cold War is over. The world has become much more complicated.

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.

It has become increasingly clear that Pakistan’s chief aim in aligning with the West was to gain support against India

An economic version of mutual deterrence is preserving the uneasy status quo between China and Japan.

… this whole Near East problem is not just an Arab-Israeli dispute but a problem of the influence of the West as opposed to that of the Soviet. We want no wars, but we do not want a Sovietized world.

Russia and China completely disagree with the international order that was established after World War II, and they're trying to take it apart right before our eyes.

The Anglo-Americans want the balance of power in Eurasia. The only balance of power they can achieve now is the whole of Europe against Russia. The only choice for us is either to join this Western European bloc or join in with Russia.

I think the Chinese are wise. After all, they know the U.S. is in a very different league than Russia. The U.S. is the major power in the world, and the US-China relationship... is very important to global stability, to sustain global economic growth.

At the end of the Cold War, the prevailing view in Washington was that the U.S. was strong, and Russia was weak and did not count in a unipolar world. We disregarded Russia's opposition to NATO expansion, the Iraq War, and the U.S.-led military intervention in Serbia for the independence of Kosovo.

Believe me, most of the people in Russia are seeing the West as a threat.

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