A Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower by Zbigniew Brzezinski

Missed Opportunities

Harry C. Blaney III
Foreign Service Journal
November 2007

Zbigniew Brzezinski's new book is a highly personal tour of the strategic political landscape of the last 15 years, covering the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

True to his policy planning heart, the national security adviser to Jimmy Carter frames his analysis in terms of how well each of these leaders handled three broad sets of tasks: shaping or managing central power relations; containing or terminating conflicts, preventing terrorism and controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and promoting collective peacekeeping.

Along the way, Brzezinski sometimes succumbs to the temptation to defend old battlements but his insights into past strategic successes and mistakes and new directions for the U.S. warrant our attention. He gives us an account of the landscape in which each leader operated, including emerging trends. He also asks strategic and moral questions: Is American society guided by values? And is our government structured in a way that is congenial to effective long term global leadership? I am giving nothing away to note that he has doubts that it is.

Overall, the author gives Bush 41 high marks for his conduct of foreign relations. But he does criticize him for a lethargic response to growing evidence that existing restraints on nuclear weapons proliferation were starting to crack. In particular, he cites Bush's slowness to recognize the danger of the India-Pakistan nuclear rivalry and North Korea's progress toward acquiring a nuclear capability.

Clinton's report card is mixed. There was some progress on nonproliferation issues, such as safeguarding nuclear stockpiles in the former Soviet Union, but the president left much undone. A chapter titled 'The Impotence of Good Intentions' sets forth Brzezinski's view that most presidents, including Clinton, have not accompanied offers of inducements with sufficiently potent or credible threats to change the decision-making process of rogue states. But he weakens his case by not spelling out what we should do when neither carrots nor sticks work.

Few (if any) readers will be surprised that the current president gets poor or failing grades from Brzezinski pretty much across the board in a chapter titled "Catastrophic Leadership (and the Politics of Fear)." The author is scathing about the decision to invade Iraq and the disastrous impact of the war on America's global capabilities. In his judgment, Bush 43's overall strategy in the Middle East, including the campaign to impose democracy, has been devastating, both on the ground and by pushing so many other pressing issues off the diplomatic agenda.

The book's final chapter, "Beyond 2008 (America's Second Chance)," asserts that Washington missed two grand historical opportunities in the post Cold War period. All three administrations failed to shape and institutionalize an Atlantic community with a shared strategic global focus and to move decisively on the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

Brzezinski argues no other power is yet capable of playing our dominant role, providing some room for maneuver. Brzezinski summarizes the landscape as follows: Europe still lacks the requisite political unity and will to be a global power, while Russia cannot decide whether it wishes to be an authoritarian, imperialist, socially backward Eurasian state or a genuinely modern European democracy. China is rapidly emerging as the dominant Asian power, but it has a rival in Japan; nor is it clear that Beijing can resolve the basic contradiction between its freewheeling economic momentum and the bureaucratic centralism of its political system.

The author is adept at identifying the shortcomings of the past and challenges of the future. He gives us useful approaches rather than formulating very detailed recommendations for American strategy. Moreover, his attempts to thread the needle between realism and idealism are not always successful. For instance, despite his criticism of recent U.S. military actions, one gets the sense that he might be among the first to resort to that option in some cases. Yet he does offer a clear path forward, based on "intelligent, cooperative governance, reinforced by power that is viewed as legitimate." In that spirit, his policy recommendations deserve thoughtful consideration and, in many cases, adoption.

Harry C. Blaney III, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, is a retired Foreign Service Officer.