Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński

1928–2017 ○ Died of natural causes at 89

Carter's National Security Advisor who drew the Soviet Union into the Afghan trap

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap… The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

Polish-born American political scientist and strategist, National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981). He drove the human-rights campaign against the Soviet Union, normalization with China, and the Camp David Accords, and articulated the Carter Doctrine committing U.S. force to the Persian Gulf. On July 3, 1979, he signed the finding authorizing covert aid to the Afghan mujahideen while warning Carter it could induce Soviet intervention; in 1998 he called it an 'excellent idea' that drew the USSR into 'its Vietnam war,' fueling the debate over whether the U.S. deliberately trapped the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After the Cold War, his book The Grand Chessboard (1997) championed Eurasian geostrategy and NATO expansion, exerting a lasting influence on American statecraft.