Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1986 [Part 3 of 3]
Summary
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-American political scientist and geostrategist, was national security adviser to U.S. president Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. In the interview he conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, Brzezinski reveals the prominent role he played in shaping foreign policy in the Carter administration. He chastises those who would make “a fetish out of arms control” and forget the far-reaching competitive relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Reflecting an internal dispute within the administration, Brzezinski amplifies his views that the Soviet Union, building upon post-Vietnam malaise, was aggressively expanding its sphere of influence through proxi-military forces. Of particular concern was Soviet expansion in the Horn of Africa, which Brzezinski sees as key to flagging interest in arms-control talks and dwindling public confidence in détente. “SALT lies buried in the sands of Ogaden,” he maintains. He challenges those who believed that Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union should have impacted the timing of China’s Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping’s visit to Washington. He further recounts the process for normalizing U.S. relations with the People’s Republic of China, which insisted that it be regarded as the sole legal government of China. Brzezinski also discusses his support for the large, super-accurate MX missile that the United States created to expand its strategic options and to avert a situation in which “your only option is responding with everything you have or not responding at all.” These views culminated in August 1980’s Presidential Directive 59 (PD 59), which introduced into the basic nuclear-war plan the idea of striking at the Soviet command structure. For Brzezinski, PD 59 provided “enhanced deterrence” by presenting greater war-fighting flexibility during a protracted limited war.
Topics
Nuclear weapons, Nuclear arms control
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Transcript
Perceptions of the Soviet Union
Interviewer:
How did you perceive Soviet involvement in Iran? Was it a problem?
Brzezinski:
At what time?
Interviewer:
During the hostage crisis. Or during the revolution.
Brzezinski:
The Soviet involvement was marginal and external -- clearly the Soviets were abetting and encouraging the Iranians to be as anti-American as was possible. But they were not directly involved as far as I know.
Interviewer:
Carter said he learned more about the Soviets in a few days than he had in previous years. What did he learn and had he changed his views, do you think?
Brzezinski:
Well I assume he must have changed his views if he...uh, since he said that. Uh, it wasn't much of a surprise to me.
Interviewer:
Did you change your views over the four years, of the Soviets?
Brzezinski:
Not really. I think they confirmed ah, some of my suspicions.
Interviewer:
I don't know if you've read [Egada] Smith's book. He said that PD59 was a capstone of a policy that you've been urging on the president for four years. Does that make any sense, and if so can you tell us what that policy was?
Brzezinski:
Well essentially it was a policy of enhanced deterrence...designed to the give the United States a capacity for maintaining a stable strategic relationship with the Soviets in spite of the massive Soviet buildup which appears to have been designed to give the Soviets at least some initial first-strike capability. And also a greater war-fighting flexibility. It was essentially an attempt to renovate a strategic doctrine, to give it greater flexibility, to make it more effective in the likely conditions. Of the remaining years of the '80s and into the decade beyond.
Interviewer:
Were you disappointed that SALT wasn't ratified?
Brzezinski:
Yes. I was disappointed. But not crushed.
Interviewer:
What kind of thing did you try to impress upon the president in terms of the Soviet Union, its behavior in the four years that you were a national security advisor....
Brzezinski:
I'm sorry; I don't understand the question.
Interviewer:
What kinds of options, ideas etc. did you try to educate the president on, in terms of the Soviet Union, their intentions, their behavior, when you were national security advisor at the White House?
Brzezinski:
It's very hard to summarize, or to reduce this to a few words, but I tried to impress the president with the proposition that the Soviets were a serious competitor, and that they were constant in the pursuit of their strategy, and that the only way that was effective in dealing with them was to be firm and constant oneself, to see the large picture and the interrelationship between the different aspects of the American-Soviet competition. The strategic, the geopolitical, the ideological, that only then could we maintain and sustain an effective strategy that would do two very important things: establish a reasonably stable, through not particularly cooperative relationship with the Soviets; and convince the American people that we were managing that relationship responsibly, and therefore deserved public opinion, support,
without the public opinion shifting from euphoria about detente to hysteria about cold war, which are unfortunately the very destructive swings in American public attitudes regarding the Soviet Union.
Interviewer:
Do you think the Soviets are interested in world domination?
Brzezinski:
You can't answer a question like that, because that's one of those questions which frankly is so simplistic that either a no or a yes answer is a partial distortion. The Soviet Union wishes to be the number one global power. Now whether that is the same thing as Communist domination or not is a very complicated historical, philosophical question. But it certainly wishes to be the number one global power. I for one don't wish it to be.
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