Zbigniew Brzezinski
Trustee, Trilateral Commission; Director (1973-1976)
Director, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) (1972 to 1977)
In 1979 Carters National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski went into Pakistans border regions with Afghanistan to give a little pep talk to some prospective majehadeen (Holy Warriors).
In a 1997 interview for CNN's Cold War Series, Brzezinski hinted about the Carter Administration's proactive Afghanistan policy before the Soviet invasion in 1979, that he had conceived.
QUESTION: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

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In 1998, in an interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski dismissed the risks of blow back and defended his support of the mujahideen in the following terms: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

These days, Brzezinski might take stirred-up Moslems more seriously.
If he ever republishes his The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, he and other American geostrategists may wish to reconsider the role of Muslims as something other than dispensable pawns.

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