Edward Luce — Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet - with Kori Schake

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Union's demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsaw--the heart of central Europe's bloodlands--Brzezinski turned his fierce resentment at his homeland's razing by Nazi Germany and the Red Army into a lifelong quest for liberty. Born the year that Joseph Stalin consolidated power, and dying a few months into Donald Trump's first presidency, Brzezinski was shaped by and in turn shaped the global power struggles of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As counsel to US presidents from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, and chief foreign policy figure of the late 1970s under Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski converted his acclaim as a Sovietologist into Washington power. With Henry Kissinger, his lifelong rival with whom he had a fraught on-off relationship, he personified the new breed of foreign-born scholar who thrived in America's "Cold War University"--and who ousted Washington's gentlemanly class of WASPs who had run US foreign policy for so long.Brzezinski's impact, aided by his unusual friendship with the Polish-born John Paul II, sprang from his knowledge of Moscow's "Achilles heel"--the fact that its nationalities, such as the Ukrainians, and satellite states, including Poland, yearned to shake off Moscow's grip. Neither a hawk nor a dove, Brzezinski was a biting critic of George W. Bush's Iraq War and an early endorser of Obama. Because he went against the DC grain of joining factions, and was on occasion willing to drop Democrats for Republicans, Brzezinski is something of history's orphan. His historic role has been greatly underweighted. In the almost cinematic arc of his life can be found the grand narrative of the American century and great power struggle that followed.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781982173647?ic_referral=l7elYGVVlYYbxpa30ZejAARh2lQygDUvfpQZcTcG6tEwM51x2B71q8DV6IXDTm7s-pb2D3tadAKYnkegi_FkJSQoEqGsRxfKbbDeF119pXGLmVwDybCS2YON4bKepwNbJH93fm8Edward Luce is the Financial Times's chief US commentator and columnist. He is the author of three acclaimed books: The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017), Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (2012), and In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007). He appears regularly on CNN, NPR, MSNBC's Morning Joe, and the BBC. He lives in Washington, DC.Luce is in conversation with Kori Schake, a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Before joining AEI, Dr. Schake was the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. She has had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House. Dr. Schake is the author of five books and has been widely published in policy journals and the popular press. *recorded 5/21/2025