The mixed legacy of Zbigniew Brzezinski, strategist of the Cold War
In the autumn of 1938, within nine weeks of each other, two boys arrived in New York, fleeing the gathering storm: a 15-year-old Jewish German and a ten-year-old Catholic from Poland. Both would repay the mortal debt they owed by dedicating their lives to the Land of the Free. The older boy was, of course, Henry Kissinger, later Grand High Poobah to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The younger was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser from 1977 to 1981 and the subject of a magisterial biography bythe Financial Times’sWashingtonsupremo, Edward Luce. From the first, Zbigniew Brzezinski (pronounced ‘ZbigNieff BreshinSki’, as Carter helpfully informed his team) sat in Kissinger’s
