Tag: Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Netanyahu ‘making a very serious mistake’

Fareed Zakaria & Zbigniew Brezinski

CNN’s Fareed spoke with former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski about Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

Here is the conversation:

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on CNN told Wolf Blitzer that the invasion of Gaza was a strategy to demilitarize Gaza, explaining the use of force. But it has been quite a robust use of force…Do you think that it is going to succeed, the Israeli strategy?

No, I think he is making a very serious mistake. When Hamas in effect accepted the notion of participation in the Palestinian leadership, it in effect acknowledged the determination of that leadership to seek a peaceful solution with Israel. That was a real option. They should have persisted in that.

Instead Netanyahu launched the campaign of defamation against Hamas, seized on the killing of three innocent Israeli kids to immediately charge Hamas with having done it without any evidence, and has used that to stir up public opinion in Israel in order to justify this attack on Gaza, which is so lethal.

I think he is isolating Israel. He’s endangering its longer-range future. And I think we ought to make it very clear that this is a course of action which we thoroughly disapprove and which we do not support and which may compel us and the rest of the international community to take some steps of legitimizing Palestinian aspirations perhaps in the U.N.

Here is the video:

July 21, 2014
Brzezinski Says Turkey “Key” to Resolving Syrian Crisis

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Nick Ottens

Former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski appears on NBC News’ Morning Joe, February 7

On NBC News’ Morning Joe on Tuesday, Zbigniew Brzezinski explained Saturday’s Sino-Russian veto against a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have urged Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down. “What motivates China and Russia is self-interest,” he said.

According to the former national security advisor, the two countries, who were alone among fifteen council members in their opposition to the resolution, feared that it could have set a precedent for international interference in their own struggles with anti-government forces. He called it an “exaggerated” fear because Western powers are unlikely to antagonize China and Russia by seeking to meddle in their internal conflicts but an “understandable” one all the same given past military interventions in Libya and former Yugoslavia which the Russians in particular regarded warily.

Turkey, said Brzezinski, may be “the key” to resolving the situation in Syria where the Ba’athist regime has violently suppressed demonstrations against it for eleven months. Human rights organizations estimate that thousands of people have died in confrontations with security forces so far.

A lot of the opposition in Syria to the Assad regime bases itself on Turkish proximity and in some cases even their presence within Turkey.

A Syrian opposition government in waiting sits in Istanbul while Ankara has refused to close its southern border to Syrian refugees.

In the wake of the “Arab spring,” the Turks have distanced themselves from Damascus despite fostering trade relations with the regime there in previous years. President Abdullah Gül said that he had “lost confidence” in his Syrian counterpart in August of last year while the Turkish foreign minister declared in an interview with France24 in January that his country was “ready to do everything for [the] Syrian people” although he stopped short of endorsing calls for military action.

Whatever pressure the Turks may bring to bear, Brzezinski cautioned against military intervention, pointing out that “the situation within the country is much more confused than the sort of black-white notions that we get from sweeping generalizations about what is happening.”

The Syrian people may not be as united against the regime as was the case in Libya where loyalists were far outnumbered by rebel forces. The uprising increasingly appears to break down along sectarian lines with the majority Sunni population hoping to topple Assad and minority Alawites, Christian and Druze, concentrated in the coastal provinces, less in favor of regime change. They may fear that their religious freedoms will be restricted if there is a Sunni government.

Since foreign news media are largely barred from reporting from Syria, it is difficult to estimate the exact scope of the rebellion although there seems to be less sympathy for the rebels in the northwestern urban areas than there is in Sunni dominated south and southeast.

via Brzezinski Says Turkey “Key” to Resolving Syrian Crisis | Atlantic Sentinel.

February 8, 2012
To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip

By Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz

More than three decades ago, Israeli statesman Moshe Dayan, speaking about an Egyptian town that controlled Israel’s only outlet to the Red Sea, declared that he would rather have Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh. Had his views prevailed, Israel and Egypt would still be in a state of war. Today, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with his pronouncements about the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, is conveying an updated version of Dayan’s credo — that he would rather have all of Jerusalem without peace than peace without all of Jerusalem.

This is unfortunate, because a comprehensive peace agreement is in the interest of all parties. It is in the U.S. national interest because the occupation of the West Bank and the enforced isolation of the Gaza Strip increases Muslim resentment toward the United States, making it harder for the Obama administration to pursue its diplomatic and military objectives in the region. Peace is in the interest of Israel; its own defense minister, Ehud Barak, recently said that the absence of a two-state solution is the greatest threat to Israel’s future, greater even than an Iranian bomb. And an agreement is in the interest of the Palestinians, who deserve to live in peace and with the dignity of statehood.

However, a routine unveiling of a U.S. peace proposal, as is reportedly under consideration, will not suffice. Only a bold and dramatic gesture in a historically significant setting can generate the political and psychological momentum needed for a major breakthrough. Anwar Sadat’s courageous journey to Jerusalem three decades ago accomplished just that, paving the way for the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.

Similarly, President Obama should travel to the Knesset in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah to call upon both sides to negotiate a final status agreement based on a specific framework for peace. He should do so in the company of Arab leaders and members of the Quartet, the diplomatic grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that is involved in the peace process. A subsequent speech by Obama in Jerusalem’s Old City, addressed to all the people in the region and evocative of his Cairo speech to the Muslim world in June 2009, could be the culminating event in this journey for peace.

Such an effort would play to Obama’s strengths: He personalizes politics and seeks to exploit rhetoric and dramatic settings to shatter impasses, project a compelling vision of the future and infuse confidence in his audience.

The basic outlines of a durable and comprehensive peace plan that Obama could propose are known to all:

First, a solution to the refugee problem involving compensation and resettlement in the Palestinian state but not in Israel. This is a bitter pill for the Palestinians, but Israel cannot be expected to commit political suicide for the sake of peace.

Second, genuine sharing of Jerusalem as the capital of each state, and some international arrangement for the Old City. This is a bitter pill for the Israelis, for it means accepting that the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem will become the capital of Palestine.

Third, a territorial settlement based on the 1967 borders, with mutual and equal adjustments to allow the incorporation of the largest West Bank settlements into Israel.

And fourth, a demilitarized Palestinian state with U.S. or NATO troops along the Jordan River to provide Israel greater security.

Most of these parameters have been endorsed in the Arab peace plan of 2002 and by the Quartet. And the essential elements have also been embraced by Barak and another former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.

For the Israelis, who are skeptical about the willingness of the Palestinians and Arabs to make peace with them, such a bold initiative by Obama would provide a dramatic demonstration of the prospects for real peace, making it easier for Israel’s political leadership to make the necessary compromises.

For the Palestinians, it would provide political cover to accept a resolution precluding the return of any appreciable number of refugees to Israel. Palestinian leaders surely know that no peace agreement will be possible without forgoing what many of their people have come to regard as a sacred principle: the right of return. The leadership can only make such a shift in the context of an overall pact that creates a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital — and that is supported by other Arab countries.

For the Arabs, it would legitimize their own diplomatic initiative, embodied in the peace plan put forward by the Arab League eight years ago. Moreover, their support for Obama in the effort would be a vital contribution to the resolution of the conflict.

Finally, for Obama himself, such a move would be a diplomatic and political triumph. Bringing Arab leaders and the Quartet with him to Jerusalem and Ramallah to endorse his plan would be seen as a powerful example of leadership in coping with the protracted conflict. Since it is inconceivable that the Israeli government would refuse Obama’s offer to bring Arab leaders and the Quartet to its capital, most of the American friends of Israel could be expected to welcome the move as well.

Of course, the proposal could be rejected out of hand. If the Israelis or the Palestinians refuse to accept this basic formula as the point of departure for negotiations, the Obama administration must be prepared to pursue its initiative by different means — it cannot be caught flat-footed, as it was when Netanyahu rejected Obama’s demands for a settlement freeze and the Arabs evaded his proposals for confidence-building initiatives.

Accordingly, the administration must convey to the parties that if the offer is rejected by either or both, the United States will seek the U.N. Security Council’s endorsement of this framework for peace, thus generating worldwide pressure on the recalcitrant party.

Fortunately, public opinion polls in Israel have indicated that while most Israelis would like to keep a united Jerusalem, they would rather have peace without all of Jerusalem than a united Jerusalem without peace. Similarly, although the Palestinians are divided and the extremists of Hamas control the Gaza Strip, the majority of Palestinians favor a two-state solution, and their leadership in Ramallah is publicly committed to such an outcome.

It is time, though almost too late, for all parties — Israelis, Palestinians, Americans — to make a historic decision to turn the two-state solution into a two-state reality. But for that to happen, Obama must pursue a far-sighted strategy with historic audacity.

Zbigniew Brzezinski served as national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter and is a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Stephen Solarz, a former U.S. congressman from New York, is a member of the board of the International Crisis Group.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040903263_pf.html, April 11, 2010

April 19, 2010
An Expert’s Long View on Iran

By GERALD F. SEIB

Iran is both today’s paramount foreign-policy challenge, and a quandary of the first order. Its nuclear program keeps expanding, its concern about international opprobrium seems limited, and nobody can be sure the United Nations Security Council will find the courage to impose more economic sanctions.

So where do we go from here? Few have thought about that challenge longer or harder than Zbigniew Brzezinski, the provocative foreign-policy icon who was White House national security adviser when the Iranian revolution erupted three decades ago and has followed the case ever since.

In an interview, Mr. Brzezinski lays out his formula. Try to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and make Tehran pay a price if it keeps pursuing it, but don’t count too much on sanctions; offer a robust American defense umbrella to protect friends in the region if Iran crosses the nuclear threshold; give rhetorical support to Iran’s opposition while accepting America’s limited ability to help it; eschew thought of a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities; and keep talking to Tehran.

Above all: Play the long game, because time, demographics and generational change aren’t on the side of the current regime.

“This is a country with a growing urban middle class, a country with fairly high access to higher education, a country where women play a great role in the professions,” he says. “So it is a country which I think, basically, objectively is capable of moving the way Turkey has moved.” That is, it can evolve into a country where Islam and modernity co-exist, even if somewhat uncomfortably.

Mr. Brzezinski’s views are noteworthy because he touches so many bases in the Iran debate. He hails from the hawkish wing of the Democratic party, and has a record of working comfortably with Republican administrations.

He was President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser when the Iranian Islamic revolution exploded in 1979. More recently, he teamed up with current Defense Secretary Robert Gates on a milestone 2004 Council on Foreign Relations report that advocated that the U.S. begin to “engage selectively with Iran.” Shortly thereafter, former President George W. Bush summoned Mr. Gates to be defense secretary, a job he retains under President Barack Obama.

Today, Mr. Brzezinski sees two American goals in Iran: “One is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, assuming that is its objective, and to neutralize its strategic political significance if it does. The second goal is to facilitate, carefully and cautiously, the political evolution in Iran toward a more acceptable regional role.” As he notes, those two goals—stopping Iran’s nuclear program while coaxing it into more responsible behavior—can conflict.

On the nuclear-weapons front: There’s a chance, he thinks, that Iran isn’t seeking to possess actual nuclear weapons, but trying to become “more like Japan, a proto-nuclear power” with a demonstrated ability to make nuclear arms without actually crossing that line.

But it’s impossible to know. And if a halt to Iran’s nuclear program can’t be negotiated, “then I think we have no choice but to impose sanctions on Iran, isolate it.” But sanctions alone, he says, won’t “determine the outcome.”

So if Iran crosses the line, the U.S. should “make commitments to any country nearby that America would see itself engaged if Iran threatened to use nuclear weapons against that country, or worse, if it used them.”

What does being “engaged” mean, exactly? “That means if [the Iranians] attack somebody, we have to strike at them,” Mr. Brzezinski says bluntly. “I don’t think every country in the region would want to have a formal agreement with the U.S. Some would want an understanding.”

This American defense umbrella “should be sufficient to deter Iran,” Mr. Brzezinski says. He thinks it significant that Ehud Barak, the defense minister of Israel, the nation most threatened by Iran’s nuclear program, said in a Washington speech last week that Iranian leaders were “sophisticated” enough to “fully understand what might follow” the actual use of nuclear arms, and likely would use them for intimidation.

Meantime, on changing Iran’s character: The U.S. should adopt “a kind of posture of support and endorsement” of the forces inside Iran now openly opposing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Brzezinski says, without deluding itself into thinking it has the ability to propel a regime change.

Crucially, Mr. Brzezinski instead thinks forces at work within Iran will undermine the regime over time, so long as the U.S. and the West don’t take actions that actually interfere with that process.

Thus, it’s important to craft sanctions in a way that “doesn’t stimulate more anti-Westernism, or a fusion of Islamic extremism and nationalism.” He’d keep talking to Iran too: “Most major issues internationally that have been resolved by negotiation have involved negotiations over a long period of time.”

And he would avoid at all costs a military strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran, he said, would make no distinction between an Israeli or an American strike. “The Iranians would strike out at us, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in the Strait of Hormuz.” If energy prices then soar, “we will suffer, the Chinese will suffer, the Russians will be the beneficiaries. The Europeans will have to go to the Russians for energy.” In effect, he argues, America, more than Iran, would be isolated.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A2

March 13, 2010
Brzezinski Says Ignore US Public on Afghanistan
Political Views

By MWC News

By David Swanson

Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke at a RAND Corporation forum on Afghanistan in a Senate caucus room on Thursday. His first statement was that “Withdrawal from Afghanistan in the near future is a No-No.” He offered no reasons why and suggested that his other statements would be more controversial.

During a subsequent question-and-answer period, I asked Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, why he had provided no rationale for his first rule. I asked him why such a rule should be considered uncontroversial when approximately half of Americans oppose the occupation of Afghanistan. I asked how he would respond to the arguments of a US diplomat who just resigned in protest.

Brzezinski’s response would make Dick “So?” Cheney proud. He responded that it was understandable but that a lot of people are weak and don’t know any better, and they should be ignored. But, he urged that those supporters of war who would criticize the president if he pulled out should be feared and followed.

These are paraphrases. For exact wording get the video. Here are my notes on Brzezinski’s remarks:
1. “Withdrawal from Afghanistan in the near future is a No-No.” He gives no reason, just takes it for granted everyone agrees. Says #2 will be more controversial.
2. Don’t repeat what Soviet Union did. Don’t Americanize the American occupation of Afghanistan.
3. Make sure NATO and anybody else willing is there with the Americans, esply Islamic troops.
  The Three Fundamental Noes.
To Do:
1. Deny safe haven to al Qaeda. That is THE objective. Don’t build a nation.
2. Be sensitive to ethnic diversity while we’re building a nation.
3. Do what USSR did in crushing democratic movements in places like Poland. Hire natives to fight.
4. We may have to put in more troops. Control cities and roads. Undertake counterinsurgency.
5. Pursue accomodations with Taleban and Talebanlike formations.
6. Keep economic assistance flowing rather than abandoning Afghanistan as we did after the counterinsurgency against the USSR. Seduce the population.
7. Involve the Europeans in funding elimination of narcotic crops.
8. Be more respectful of Pakistani strategic interests in Afghanistan.
9. Engage China and Iran with their interests in Afghanistan.
10. Build a North-South pipeline to the Indian Ocean.
11. Rename it The Vietghanipipelinistan Quagmire of Freedom.
  OK I made up #11.
Source:
November 1, 2009
NATO Chief Says He’d Consider Brzezinski Plea for Russia Accord

By James G. Neuger

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — NATO said it would consider a proposal by former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to tighten security arrangements with a Russian-led defense alliance to ease East-West tensions.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he has an “open mind” toward ideas to soothe the strains between the former Cold War adversaries that peaked with Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, a would-be NATO member.

“We have to look closer into the possibilities of improving confidence between Russia and NATO,” Rasmussen said in an interview at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels yesterday. “I am prepared to look upon all ideas that serve confidence-building with an open mind.”

Western governments are courting Russian help in securing supply lines for the 100,000 allied troops in Afghanistan, stemming the spread of nuclear weapons and in combating piracy off the coast of Somalia.

Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Brzezinski called for a pact with the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, a seven-nation group cobbled together out of the remnants of the Soviet Union.

Such an agreement would go beyond the periodic high-level NATO-Russia meetings that resumed in June after the 28-nation western alliance ended a diplomatic boycott to protest the Georgia invasion.

Brzezinski, who served under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981, wrote of a need “to consolidate security in Europe by drawing Russia into a closer political and military association with the Euro-Atlantic community and to engage Russia in a wider web of global security that indirectly facilitates the fading of Russia’s lingering imperial ambitions.”

‘Strategic Partnership’

Rasmussen urged a “strategic partnership” with Russia to ward off common threats such as terrorism.

NATO-Russia ties were strained by Bush administration plans for a missile-defense system in eastern Europe and efforts to offer alliance membership to Ukraine and Georgia, two former Soviet republics.

Relations broke down completely when Russia rolled over Georgia’s army in a five-day war to reestablish its sphere of influence. Russia later granted diplomatic recognition to two territories, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which declared independence and established military outposts in them.

President Barack Obama set out to “reset” relations with the Kremlin, heralding an East-West thaw.

Russian and NATO foreign ministers held their first post- Georgia-war meeting in Greece in June, agreeing to resume military-to-military cooperation.

Rasmussen, 56, a former Danish prime minister who became alliance chief Aug. 1, said he had not yet read Brzezinski’s proposals and stressed that any outreach to Russia would not undermine NATO’s role as the bedrock of trans-Atlantic security.

“The cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security will still be NATO,” Rasmussen said.

To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels atjneuger@bloomberg.net

Source: www.bloomberg.com, August 31, 2009

September 2, 2009