Reuters, 27 May 2017 – Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who established himself in the Carter administration as a hardliner on foreign policy, died on Friday, his family said. He was 89.
Brzezinski’s daughter Mika, a host on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, said on social media that her father died peacefully. She did not give the cause of his death.
Brzezinski, the son of a Polish diplomat, was national security adviser for all four years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. He helped Carter contend with several major international events, including the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah, the taking of 52 Americans as hostages in Tehran and a failed rescue mission, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Brzezinski, plucked by Carter from the academic world, saw many of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy moves as evidence it could not be trusted.
That placed him at odds with two of Carter’s closest advisers: Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who pushed for a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT-2) with Moscow, and Defense Secretary Harold Brown, who urged a US-Soviet accord to curb conventional forces in Europe.
When Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, Brzezinski strongly backed the arming of Afghan rebels in response.
Former President Barack Obama called Brzezinski “an accomplished public servant, a powerful intellect, and a passionate advocate for American leadership.
While he was skeptical of Soviet motives and objectives, Brzezinski nurtured a diplomatic friendship between the United States and China, which culminated in a trip to Beijing in June 1978. Six months later Carter announced a decision to re-establish diplomatic ties with China starting in 1979.
Brzezinski’s view of the Soviet Union may have been colored by his childhood experiences. Born in Warsaw, Poland, on March 28, 1928, he was taken as a youngster to Canada where his father served as a diplomat. When the communists took over Poland at the end of World War II, the family remained in the West.
Brzezinski received a doctorate from Harvard University in 1953 and became an American citizen in 1958.