Zbigniew Brzezinski, who helped topple economic barriers among the Soviet Union, China and the West as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, has died. He was 89.
His death was announced on social media on Friday night by his daughter, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski. She called him “the most inspiring, loving and devoted father any girl could ever have.”
Earnest and ambitious, Mr. Brzezinski helped Mr. Carter bridge wide gaps between the rigid Egyptian and Israeli leaders, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, leading to the Camp David accords in September 1978. Three months later, U.S.-China relations were normalized, a top priority for Mr. Brzezinski.
Expert in Communism
Born in Warsaw and educated in Canada and the United States, Mr. Brzezinski was an acknowledged expert in Communism when he attracted the attention of U.S. policy-makers. In the 1960s, he was an adviser to John F. Kennedy and served in the Johnson administration.
In December 1976, Mr. Carter offered Mr. Brzezinski the position of national security adviser. He had not wanted to be secretary of state because he felt he could be more effective working at Mr. Carter’s side in the White House.
Mr. Brzezinski often found himself in clashes with colleagues like Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. For the White House, the differences between Vance and Mr. Brzezinski became a major headache, confusing the American public about the administration’s policy course and fuelling a decline in confidence that Mr. Carter could keep his foreign policy team working in tandem.
Role in Iranian hostage crisis
The Iranian hostage crisis, which began in 1979, came to dramatise America’s waning global power and influence and to symbolise the failures and frustrations of the Carter administration.
Mr. Brzezinski, during the early months of 1980, became convinced that negotiations to free the kidnapped Americans were going nowhere. Supported by the Pentagon, he began to push for military action.
Mr. Carter was desperate to end the standoff and, over-riding Vance’s objections, agreed to a long-shot plan to rescue the hostages. The mission, dubbed Desert One, was a complete military and political humiliation and precipitated Vance’s resignation. Mr. Carter lost his re-election bid against Ronald Reagan that November.
“I’ve never believed in flattery”
Mr. Brzezinski went on to ruffle the feathers of Washington’s power elite with his 1983 book, Power and Principle , which was hailed and reviled as a kiss-and-tell memoir.
“I have never believed in flattery or lying as a way of making it,” he told The Washington Post that year. “I have made it on my own terms.”
