The Great Chess Board

according to Zbigniew Brzenzinski

Zbigniew Brzenzinski is an influential strategic advisor to American presidents from JF Kennedy onwards. His influence on foreign policy in Afghanistan, the expansion of NATO and the contention for Ukraine is candidly described in his 1997 work: the great chessboard. This includes an agenda for the enlargement of NATO and UE that was followed to the letter by the successive American administrations from 1998 to 2008, until the Ukrainian contention.

Born to a Polish aristocratic family uprooted by the German-Soviet invasion of Poland while his father is a consul of Poland in America, he will be deeply marked by the violence of relations between States and vowed the strategic defeat of the Soviet Union.

Brzezinsky (left) in 1978 Credit: wikicommons

Brzezinski, with Kissinger, is one of the "grand strategists" of the Cold War. American Aparatchiks have "grand strategy" amongst their favorite activities, the objective is to maintain US hegemony.

Brzezinski was controversial, he was criticized for:

• for having favored the support of the CIA of Mujahideen insurgents in the 1970s, the failed operation to rescue American hostages in Iran,

• his support for the bombing of Serbia by NATO outside of the international institution framework,

• and his choice of a book title: "The great chessboard", which frames world politics as a zero-sum game.

I reproduce below some passages in italics of this book. A work that is more influential than premonitory and shows the perception of the world by Washington and its simplified vision of European policy.

Geostrategy: hegemonic liberalism

For America, the main geopolitical prize is Eurasia. Huntington is right to assert with daring: that a world without the primacy of the United States will be a world with more violence and disorder, less democracy and economic growth than the world where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country in world affairs. The international superiority maintained in the United States is essential to the well-being and security of the Americans and in the future of freedom, democracy, open economies, and international order in the world.

Brzezinski is referring to the theories of Halford Mackinder, a 19th century English strategist that suggested Iran's independence from Russia to preserve British hegemony.

Axial Eurasia. Credit: wikicommons

Eurasia is the largest continent in the globe and is geopolitically axial. Eurasia control would almost automatically lead to Africa's subordination.

The most dangerous scenario would be a great coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran.

The currently dominant American global system, in which "the threat of war is out of question", is likely to be stable only in the parts of the world where the American primacy, guided by long-term geostrategy, is based on compatible and homogeneous sociopolitical systems, linked together by multilateral frameworks dominated by the United States.

Nuclear weapons have considerably reduced the usefulness of war as a policy tool or even as a threat. The growing economic interdependence between nations makes political exploitation of economic blackmail less convincing.

Geostrategy consists in preventing collusion and maintaining security dependence between vassals, keeping them tributary, obedient and protected, and preventing barbarians from gathering.

Brzezinski is the opposite of an isolationist, he wants an America involved in Central Asia. He is "liberal" insofar as he believes that American democracy is guaranteeing certain freedoms and objectively preferable values.

This point is disputed by realists: each country defends the national interest. Each diplomat maintains that the best possible regime is that of the country that he represents.

He is a realist when explains that a certain homogeneity and correspondence of the political regimes in place allows a better dialogue and more tolerance.

Geostrategic actors and pivots

Very candidly, Brzezinski describes his interpretative grid for Washington decision-makers:

The geo-strategically active states are those that have the capacity and the national will to exercise power or influence beyond their borders. France, Germany, Russia, China and India are major and active states, while Great Britain, Japan and Indonesia, although very important countries, do not have one political will.

• France, in particular, has its own geostrategic conception of Europe, which differs in certain respects from that of the United States, and is inclined to engage in tactical maneuvers intended to oppose Russia to America and Great Britain in Germany.

• France and Germany consider themselves empowered to represent European interests in their relations with Russia.

• Great Britain is less and less relevant because of its ambivalence towards European unification and its attachment to a special relationship with America. Its friendship needs to be nourished, but his policies do not call sustained attention.

• Russia remains a major geostrategic player,

• Japan prefers not to engage in the policy of the Asian continent. The capture of Japan must be cultivated very subtly by America.

• India is in the process of establishing itself as a regional power and perceives itself as a potentially major global actor

Geopolitical pivots are the states whose importance does not result from their power and their motivation, but rather from their sensitive situation and the consequences of their potentially vulnerable condition on the behavior of geostrategic actors.

Ukraine, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Turkey and Iran play the role of geopolitical pivots of crucial importance, although Turkey and Iran are to a certain extent - within the limits of their more limited capacities - also active from a geostrategic point of view.

• Ukraine, a new and important space without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still aspire to the imperial status, but it would then become an imperial state with Asian predominance. If Moscow regains control of Ukraine, with its 52 million inhabitants and major resources as well as its access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically regains the means to become a powerful imperial state, covering Europe and Asia.

• Azerbaijan, with its vast energy resources, is also critical geopolitically. It is the cap in the bottle containing the riches of the Caspian sea pool and Central Asia. Regardless of the current Iranian hostility towards the United States, acts as a barrier with any Russian threat in the long term for American interests in the Persian Gulf region.

• South Korea is a geopolitical pivot of the Far East. Its close links with the United States allow America to protect Japan and thus prevent Japan from becoming an independent and major military power

If France played the role of America’s unruly ally until the Iraq war in 2004, this role appears to belong now to Turkiye.

The fable of the equal partnership

Since the time of the Kennedy administration, the standard invocation has been that of the "equal partnership". Washington has always proclaimed its desire to see Europe emerging. Does Washington really want a Europe that is a partner truly equal in global affairs, or does it prefer an unequal alliance?

American-European differences on Iran and Iraq have also been dealt with by the United States not as a question between equals, but as a question of insubordination.

American support for European unity also extends to the question of how European unity must be defined, in particular which country, if one must be chosen, which would lead a united Europe. Washington has also shown a clear preference for German leadership - rather than French - in Europe.

Given the growing consensus on the opportunity to admit the nations of Central Europe both for the EU and for NATO, the practical meaning of this question draws attention to the future status of Baltic Republics and perhaps also that of Ukraine.

The Russian Empire: warden of the Balkans of Central Asia

Democratic Russia would be more favorable to the values shared by America and Europe and therefore also more likely to become a junior partner in the formation of a more stable and cooperative Eurasia. The establishment of Russian foreign policy (composed mostly of former Soviet officials) still nourishes a deeply rooted desire for a special Eurasian role, which would therefore lead to the subordination in Moscow of the newly independent post-Soviet states.

The internal recovery of Russia is essential to the democratization of Russia and its possible Europeanization. But any recovery of its imperial potential would be contrary to these two objectives.

The costs of exclusion from Russia could be raised-creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in the Russian mentality.

Internal tensions within Turkey and Iran are likely not only to worsen, but to considerably reduce the stabilizing role that these states are able to play in this volcanic region.

While advocating the extension of NATO, Brzezinski warns against the isolation of Russia and underlines the instability of the 25 countries of Central Asia succeeding the explosion of the Soviet Empire.

China and Japan

Suppose China is not democratized but continues to grow in economic and military power? Any effort to prevent this from happening could lead to an intensification of the conflict with China.

Such a conflict could put to the test of American-Japanese relations, because it is far from certain that Japan wants to follow the example of America to contain China.

If Japan has briefly attempted to get closer to China under Abe and Fukuda between 2006 and 2008, China's militarism concerning the disputed islets and pathologies maintained by the Chinese government (38% of Chinese consider Japan is an enemy) brought Japan back to the fold of its former conqueror: the United States.

NATO: American bridgehead in Eurasia

Unlike America's links with Japan, the Atlantic Alliance, strengthens political influence and American military power directly on the Eurasian continent.

At this stage of American-European relations, while the allied European nations still depend on the protection of the security of the United States, any expansion of the scope of Europe automatically becomes an expansion of the scope of direct influencethe United States. A political Europe has not yet emerged. Western Europe, and increasingly central Europe, remains largely an American protectorate, with its allied states reminiscent of the old vassals and tributaries.

The situation is aggravated by a more generalized decline in the internal vitality of Europe. The residual European anti-Americanism, currently quite low, is curiously cynical: Europeans deplore American "hegemony" but comfort themselves to be protected by it.

The problem with Europe is increasingly confronted is that of an excessively heavy social protection system which undermines the vitality of its economy, while the resistance to any reform by special interests diverts European political attention inward.

The idea of unity always enjoys significant popular support, but it tends to be lukewarm, lacking passion and of a sense of mission.

Brzezinski sees that faced with its geostrategic challenges, Western Europe already seems to have in 1997 collapsed under the weight of its welfare State which, set up in 1945, has not been reformed despite the demographic evolution.

French neo-imperial delirium and German expiation

Brzezinski gives an interesting reading grid of Franco-German motivations:

The political elites of two major European nations - France and Germany - remain largely engaged in the aim of shaping and defining a Europe that France seeks to reincarnate in Europe; Germany hopes for redemption by Europe.

The creation of a real Europe - in the words of Charles de Gaulle, "from the Atlantic to the Urals" - was to remedy this deplorable situation. And such a Europe, since it would be led by Paris, would simultaneously find for France the greatness that the French still consider as the particular destiny of their nation.

For Germany, a commitment to Europe is the basis of national redemption, for Germany, redemption + security = Europe + America. This formula defines the posture and politics of Germany, making Germany both the real good citizen of Europe and the most fervent European supporter in America.

There is an element of delusional obsession in the concern of the French political elite with the idea that France is always a world power.

With self-marginalized Britain and essentially an appendix to American power and with divided Germany during a large

Part of the Cold War and always handicapped by its history of the 20th century, France could grasp the idea of Europe, identify with it, and usurp it as identical to the conception that France has of it-even.

The reunification of Germany has also radically changed the real parameters of European policy. It was both a geopolitical defeat for Russia and for France. With the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, the link with America now provided the framework under which Germany could more openly assume a leadership role in Central Europe without simultaneously threatening its neighbors.

A glance at the map of the vast continental Eurasian mass underlines the geopolitical importance for America of the European bridgehead - as well as its geographic modesty. The gap between the world concern of America for stability and the dissemination of the

Democracy that follows from it and the apparent indifference of Europe about these questions (despite the self-proclaimed status of France as a world power) must be filled.

Left to themselves, Europeans run the risk of being absorbed by their internal social concerns. The economic resumption of Europe has concealed the long-term costs of its apparent success. The crisis of political legitimacy and economic vitality with which Western Europe is increasingly confronted - but which it is unable to overcome - is deeply rooted in the general expansion of the social structure sponsored by the State which promotes paternalism, and protectionism.

The interests of Germany are congruent, even sublimated, by those of the EU and NATO. America should repeat, in words and acts, its desire to ultimately deal with the EU as a political and world security partner in America and not only as a regional common market.

Brzezinski extension agenda

The agenda given by the author in this 1997 book was followed to the letter by Washington and the EU…

NATO provides European security and provides a stable framework for the continuation of the European unit. The UEO will encompass certain EU member states which, for various geopolitical or historical reasons, could choose not to ask for membership in NATO. It could be Finland, Sweden, or even Austria, who have already acquired observer status from the EUO.

France is not strong enough to obstruct America on the geostrategic fundamentals of American European policy or to become a leader of Europe. Therefore, its peculiarities and even its anger attacks can be tolerated.

All of southern Europe is increasingly concerned about the socio-political threat posed by instability along the southern coast of the Mediterranean. A global policy of the United States for Eurasia as a whole will not be possible if the enlargement effort of NATO, launched by the United States, stagnates and vacillates.

The narrower Western definition of Europe was associated with Rome and its historical heritage. However, the Christian tradition of Europe also involved Byzantium and its Russian Orthodox emanation. Thus, culturally, Europe is more than petrinian Europe, in current circumstances, the enlargement of NATO to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary - probably by 1999 - seems likely.

After this initial but significant step, it is likely that any subsequent expansion of the alliance will coincide with the enlargement of the EU or will follow it. Nevertheless, after the first three new NATO members have also joined the EU, the EU and NATO will have to look into the issue of

The extension of membership in Baltic Republics, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, and also, possibly, in Ukraine.

In 1999, the first new members of Central Europe will have been admitted to NATO, although their entry into the EU will probably not intervene before 2002 or 2003. In the meantime, the EU will start negotiations for negotiationsMembership with the Baltic republics, and NATO will also begin to advance on the question of their membership as well as that of Romania, their membership to be completed by 2005.

At one point at this stage, the other Balkan states could also become eligible. The membership of the Baltic States could encourage Sweden and Finland to also consider adhering to NATO.

Somewhere between 2005 and 2010, Ukraine, especially if, in the meantime, the country has made significant progress in its interior reforms and has succeeded in being identified in a more obvious manner as a central European country should prepare for serious negotiations with the EU and NATO.

Russia: excluded more than expected since 1997?

In 2010, the Franco-German-German-Polonian-Ukrainian political collaboration, involving some 230 million people, could evolve towards a partnership strengthening the geostrategic depth of Europe.

But the isolation of Russia was not part of the Brzezinskien plan:

Russia should be continuously reassured that the doors of Europe are open, as are the doors of its possible participation in a widely enlarged security transatlantic system.

If the concept of "mature strategic partnership" is flattering, it is also misleading. America was not inclined to share the world power with Russia and could not do it, Russia was simply too weak.

Also, in the opinion of Washington, Germany, Japan and China were at least as important.

There was a foreboding of isolation since Russia sees itself as a superpower and America would refuse it this role.

Other elements have played that Brzezinski does not mention. (1) The pathologies of the newly integrated countries (Baltic Country, Poland) which wanted to exclude Russia from any security cooperation, (2) the election of President Trump who caused Democrats to designate Russia as a strategic Enemi for policy purposesInterior, while (3) the American military-industrial complex needed a conventional enemy to justify its level of expenditure.

One does not build 15 nuclear aircraft carriers to hunt Somali pirates in dingy boats, who can convince Congress to spend three hundred million a piece on producing F22 fighter jets to fight against Afghan goat herders? The conventional war capable enemy must be found somewhere.

After 1997

In 2004, Brzezinski expressed his opposition to the politics of George Bush and his forever war against terrorism that brought the US to war and destabilized the "Balkans of Central Asia". The editorial line of Western mainstream media is such that comments adverse to policy are filtered and other opinions are amplified.

In 2014, he advocated sanctioning Russia for its annexation of Crimea but also giving it guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO.

Very affected by the election of President Trump in 2016, in May 2017, twelve days before his death, Brzezinski launched a last tweet: "Sophisticated leadership is the sine-qua-non condition of a stable world order".

The NATO and EU expansion agenda presented in this book are too well validated later to be the fruit of a historical concordance. This book was used by Washington as a roadmap for its Eastern Europe policy, which brings us to the current Ukrainian contention.