Tag: Brzezinski

US-Russian partnership will end shield row

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:11:00 GMT

Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski believes if the US and Russia work together they would eliminate the need to install a defense shield in central Europe against the "Iranian threat."

A former US national security adviser says the US-Russian “cooperation” on Iran would lead to the shelving of a defense shield plan in Europe.

In an interview with a Polish daily, President Jimmy Carter’s advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said pushing the “reset button” in Russia-US relations is likely to change the situation created by Iran’s nuclear activities.

He added that if the US and Russia join forces to mount pressure on Iran it would reduce or even eliminate the need for Washington to deploy a missile shield in Central Europe.

Russian daily Kommersant cited White House sources as saying earlier last week that President Barack Obama had made a proposal to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev asking him to change position on Iran in exchange for a halt to the US missile shield plan.

Plans for the installation of anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic have contributed to the deterioration of White House-Kremlin relations over the past few years.

The missile shield plan has rankled Moscow, as it sees the system as a threat to its national security. President Obama has addressed the Russian concern by saying that he wants to press the “reset button” and build better relations with Moscow.

The White House under former President George W. Bush said the missile defense shield is necessary to counter a threat posed by “rogue states”, such as Iran.

Russia, however, says it will not be taken in by the “missile threat” excuse.

“No sensible person believes in fairy tales about the Iranian missile threat, and that thousands of kilometers from Tehran on the coast of the Baltic Sea, it is necessary to station a missile interceptor system,” Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin said in November 2008.

The US, Israel and their European allies — Britain, France and Germany — claim that Iran is developing a military nuclear program.

Tehran, however, denies the charge that it is seeking to build a bomb and argues that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – to which it is a signatory – allows for a domestic, civilian nuclear industry.

CS/HGH

Source: www.presstv.ir, 16 Mar 2009

March 18, 2009
Obama adviser urges talks with Hamas

Paul Volcker, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, has urged him to break with US policy and open talks with Hamas in order to test the militant group’s willingness to join a unified Palestinian government.

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 4:19PM GMT 15 Mar 2009

Paul Volcker has urged talks with Hamas

Mr Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who was picked by the president to head his new economic recovery advisory board, signed a letter with nine other Washington veterans and senior ex-officials urging him to open dialogue.

Other signatories of the letter, delivered to the president days before he took office, include Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the first George Bush, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who performed the same role under Jimmy Carter.

The group is expected to be granted an audience at the White House as early as this week to make their case that lines of communication should be opened with the group that is blacklisted as a terrorist organization and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians.

They are likely to make a forceful case given their personal experience of tortuous Middle East negotiations. “I see no reason not to talk to Hamas,” Mr Scowcroft told the Boston Globe. “The main gist is that you need to push hard on the Palestinian peace process. Don’t move it to end of your agenda and say you have too much to do.”

Mr Obama has made peace in the Middle East a central goal of his presidency. Within days of taking office he appointed former senator George Mitchell, a heavy-hitting veteran of the Northern Ireland peace process, as a special envoy to the region.

Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, made an early trip to the Middle East and swiftly held out an olive branch to Iran-backed Syria, sending in senior diplomats for talks.

Some in Washington see a rare opportunity to open talks with Hamas now that the group is discussing a unity government with Fatah, the more moderate Palestinian faction. Hamas was elected to power in Gaza in 2007 and has been shunned by the US for its refusal to renounce violence or recognize Israel’s legitimacy.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk, 15 Mar 2009

March 18, 2009
Brzezinski reviews US policy towards Russia

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US National Security Adviser under Jimmy Carter, claims that bringing the Ukraine closer to the West is the key to assuring the democratization of Russia.

In an interview for the French paper Le Figaro said that the West must work to reopen relations with Russia and that Georgia and the Ukraine must be part of that dialogue.

Western nations, including Poland and the United States, must rework their relations with Russia in order to `slowly limit Russia’s nostalgia for imperialism and renew disarmament negotiations.`

Brzezinski told the paper that initiating a new dialogue with Russia cannot happen at the cost of limiting the aspirations of those countries seeking NATO membership – such as the Ukraine and Georgia – especially because the Ukraine, as a NATO member opens up a transformative path to democratize Russia.

Source: The Georgian Times, 02.19.2009

February 20, 2009
What exactly does “Renewing the U.S.-U.N. relationship” mean?

The New Republic Blog, 24.11.2008

At the core of the international liberal elites is a hollow. Nothing confirms this so much as an advertisement published in Thursday’s New York Times that costs anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 depending on the ideological proximity of the sponsors to the editorial positions of the paper. Now, I don’t really know how much cash was transferred to the Times for printing this hokey pronouncement. But I bet it wasn’t anywheres near top rate. In any case, the statement and its signatories were put together by the Partnership For A Secure America (whatever that means or is) and the United Nations Foundation, which was founded by that profound thinker Ted Turner who is also one of the endorsers of the manifesto.

The principles of “We Agree: Renew the U.S.-UN Relationship” are not exactly dangerous. But they aren’t anodyne either. Instead, they are portentous in the sense that the document presumes to address significant issues while what it actually does is simply assert high-minded attitudes. But they are high-minded attitudes altogether out of context. And worse: in utterly distorted context. All addressed to the United States and, at least inferentially, to Barack Obama.

Here, actually, is one of its nine points that is utterly banal: “Place well-qualified Americans in open positions at the UN.” Still, there is some ambiguity in its meaning? Does it mean in all positions on the U.S. representation to the organization? Or for the United Nations positions reserved for the American quota? Maybe both. Anyway, what do the signatories presume? That President-elect Obama, Secretary-designate Clinton and Ambassador-presumptive Susan Rice (a person I suspect I’ve under-rated or maybe over-blamed in the past) are going to place ill-qualified Americans in these positions?

Here’s one that’s totally out of context: “Help the growing workload assigned to UN peacekeeping by providing logistical and management expertise and support needed to enhance UN capacities.” Being about the UN, the command is quite naturally built on gobbledygook. But it insinuates a falsehood, and that is that it is the U.S., rather than, say, China and Russia, that cripple U.N. peacekeeping.

Here’s my favorite that assumes fixability of one of the U.N. organs, the Human Rights Council, but one that is simply unfixable. “Obtain a seat on the faltering Human Rights Council and work to influence it from within.” This assumes that the United States had not expended energy, thought, resources and diplomatic capital on taking the Human Rights Council (and, before that, the Human Rights Commission) from the absolute control of the worst abridgers and aborters of freedoms in the international arena. The fact is that the U.N. is dominated by countries which themselves are traducers of human rights or by countries that really don’t care a fig about violations of liberties unless, of course, they can attribute somehow them to Israel. The Council is actually a council on Israel. Nothing more, nothing less. America has little sway with the two of the five permanent members of the Security Council or with many of the 150-off governments in the General Assembly which are in New York as a vacation from home.

Please take a look at this innocent-sounding but pernicious document.

Which names other than Ted Turner are affixed to this document? There are 38 including the excitable Mme. Albright, General Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Lee Hamilton who is the axiomatic co-chairman of any national bi-partisan commission that is set up for any reason or excuse. Also Sandy Berger who, though unable to heed the simplest rules of national security, still purports to tell the city and the world what to do. Rita Hauser, well, too angry, too pathetic and too unknown to characterize. And Gary Hart who managed George McGovern’s 1972 campaign, still has McGovern’s politics and once ran for the Democratic nomination for president from which running he escaped when caught doing “monkee business.” Almost all of these eminences are aged. Their ideas might have made some sense when the United Nations was founded six decades ago in Flushing Meadows, Lake Success, New York.

Posted: Monday, November 24, 2008 10:15 A

Source: blogs.tnr.com

November 25, 2008
Middle East Priorities For Jan. 21

By Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski

Friday, November 21, 2008; Page A23

The election of Barack Obama to be the 44th president is profoundly historic. We have at long last been able to come together in a way that has eluded us in the long history of our great country. We should celebrate this triumph of the true spirit of America.

Election Day celebrations were replicated in time zones around the world, something we have not seen in a long time. While euphoria is ephemeral, we must endeavor to use its energy to bring us all together as Americans to cope with the urgent problems that beset us.

When Obama takes office in two months, he will find a number of difficult foreign policy issues competing for his attention, each with strong advocates among his advisers. We believe that the Arab-Israeli peace process is one issue that requires priority attention.

In perhaps no other region was the election of Obama more favorably received than the Middle East. Immediate attention to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would help cement the goodwill that Obama’s election engendered. Not everyone in the Middle East views the Palestinian issue as the greatest regional challenge, but the deep sense of injustice it stimulates is genuine and pervasive.

Unfortunately, the current administration’s intense efforts over the past year will not resolve the issue by Jan. 20. But to let attention lapse would reinforce the feelings of injustice and neglect in the region. That could spur another eruption of violence between the warring parties or in places such as Lebanon or Gaza, reversing what progress has been made and sending the parties back to square one. Lurking in the background is the possibility that the quest for a two-state solution may be abandoned by the Palestinians, the Israelis, or both — with unfortunate consequences for all.

Resolution of the Palestinian issue would have a positive impact on the region. It would liberate Arab governments to support U.S. leadership in dealing with regional problems, as they did before the Iraq invasion. It would dissipate much of the appeal of Hezbollah and Hamas, dependent as it is on the Palestinians’ plight. It would change the region’s psychological climate, putting Iran back on the defensive and putting a stop to its swagger.

The major elements of an agreement are well known. A key element in any new initiative would be for the U.S. president to declare publicly what, in the view of this country, the basic parameters of a fair and enduring peace ought to be. These should contain four principal elements: 1967 borders, with minor, reciprocal and agreed-upon modifications; compensation in lieu of the right of return for Palestinian refugees; Jerusalem as real home to two capitals; and a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.

Something more might be needed to deal with Israeli security concerns about turning over territory to a Palestinian government incapable of securing Israel against terrorist activity. That could be dealt with by deploying an international peacekeeping force, such as one from NATO, which could not only replace Israeli security but train Palestinian troops to become effective.

To date, the weakness of the negotiating parties has limited their ability to come to an agreement by themselves. The elections in Israel scheduled for February are certainly a complicating factor, as is the deep split among Palestinians between Fatah and Hamas. But if the peace process begins to gain momentum, it is difficult to imagine that Hamas will want to be left out, and that same momentum would provide the Israeli people a unique chance to register their views on the future of their country.

This weakness can be overcome by the president speaking out clearly and forcefully about the fundamental principles of the peace process; he also must press the case with steady determination. That initiative should then be followed — not preceded — by the appointment of a high-level dignitary to pursue the process on the president’s behalf, a process based on the enunciated presidential guidelines. Such a presidential initiative should instantly galvanize support, both domestic and international, and provide great encouragement to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.

To say that achieving a successful resolution of this critical issue is a simple task would be to scoff at history. But in many ways the current situation is such that the opportunity for success has never been greater, or the costs of failure more severe.

Brent Scowcroft was national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. He is president of the Forum for International Policy and the Scowcroft Group. Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. He is trustee and counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The two are authors of “America and The World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy.”

Source: www.washingtonpost.com, November 21, 2008

November 24, 2008
Obama Adviser Brzezinski’s Off-the-record Speech to British Elites

Written by William F. Jasper

Friday, 21 November 2008 13:31

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a senior adviser to President-elect Barack Obama on matters of national security and foreign policy, was the featured speaker at Chatham House in London on November 17, 2008. The title of his lecture was “Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US President.” Although Chatham House events are known to attract “the great and the good” of England’s political, financial, and academic elites — as well as many of its top media representatives — there has been virtually no word as to what Brzezinski had to say in any of the world’s press.

Type “Brzezinski” and “Chatham” into your Internet search engines and you will come up with … virtually zilch, nada, nothing.

The esteemed Times of London had only this to say on November 16, the day before the lecture: “Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser … will give an address tomorrow at Chatham House, the international relations think tank, in London.” No report on the event the day after — or since. Ditto for the Telegraph, the BBC, and other British media. Same for the U.S. media: no reports in the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CNS, CNN, Fox, etc.

This is but the latest example of the hermetic seal known as the “Chatham House Rule,” which states:

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

Chatham House, in St. James Square, London, is the headquarters of the powerful Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), founded in 1920 as the principal front organization of the secret Round Table network of Cecil Rhodes, famous for his fabulous wealth from Africa’s gold and diamond mines. The RIIA was founded in conjunction with its sister organization in the United States, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which is headquartered at the Pratt House in New York. Pratt House also has formally adopted the Chatham House Rule, as has the U.S. State Department (which has been dominated by CFR members for seven decades) and other U.S. agencies.

Thus, we frequently have top U.S. officials speaking privately to audiences of American and foreign elites concerning matters of great importance to the American people, but the content of those talks is off-limits to the American public. This especially should be a matter of concern if the matters these elites are discussing involve plans that will dramatically impact our society, our economy, and our political system.

Brzezinski and his friends at the RIIA and CFR assure us that nothing of the sort ever happens at these gatherings. However, I did attend one of Brzezinski’s lectures at a globalist conference, where the content certainly was disturbing. It was Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1995 State of the World Forum in San Francisco, and Brzezinski was one of the key speakers. He was frustrated that the new millennium was only five years away, but his long-sought goal of world government was still far off. “We do not have a new world order,” he told the audience, a veritable Who’s Who of world finance, business, politics, media, and academia. “We cannot leap into world government in one quick step,” Brzezinski noted. Attaining that objective, he explained, would require a gradual process of “globalization,” building the new world order “step by step, stone by stone” through “progressive regionalization.”

Through his writings — as well as his policies while President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser — Brzezinski has demonstrated that he is committed to the globalist world view of the RIIA/CFR and the Trilateral Commission (which he helped found, becoming its first director) rather than the constitutionalist view of our Founding Fathers. Rather than a sovereign, independent, constitutional republic, he is committed to a “new world order” that proposes steadily encroaching international controls and institutions, leading gradually, steadily to an America that is submerged and subsumed in a world government.

Those familiar with the writings, speeches, policies, and public records of the many public figures who attend (and speak before) these globalist gatherings understand that Brzezinski’s views on these matters are not his alone; they are shared by many (if not most) of those in attendance. They are the people who set policies and determine the course our nation will take. They prattle regularly about their commitment to “transparency” in government. Yet they themselves speak at off-the-record gatherings such as the recent Chatham House event where Brzezinski was the featured speaker.

Source: www.thenewamerican.com, 21 November 2008

[This is what Chatham House website has about the event -h]

The Whitehead Lecture: Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US President

Monday 17 November 2008 18:30 to 19:30

Location

Held at Chatham House

Participants

Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor and Trustee, Center for Strategic and International Studies; National Security Advisor to the President of the United States (1977-81)

Type: Members event

In the wake of the US election the speaker will discuss the major foreign policy issues which will confront the incoming President from the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the competitive pursuit of resources.

This event will be followed by an open reception.

Resources:

Meeting Recording
Q&A Recording

Source: www.chathamhouse.org.uk

November 24, 2008