Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
clear sky
weather
OMAN
25°C / 25°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Cold War strategist Brzezinski dies at 89

1023899
1023899
minus
plus

WASHINGTON: Zbigniew Brzezinski, the hawkish Polish-born Cold War strategist and former top aide to US president Jimmy Carter, has died, his family said. He was 89.


“My father passed away peacefully tonight,” MSNBC journalist Mika Brzezinski said on Instagram late on Friday.


Born in Warsaw to a diplomat father, Brzezinski moved with his family to Canada in the late 1930s. He went on to attend McGill University in Montreal then earned a doctorate from Harvard, later becoming a US citizen.


After serving under president Lyndon Johnson, he went on to become Carter’s national security adviser during the Iranian hostage crisis.


He was a driving force behind the failed US commando mission to rescue the hostages, after which he resigned.  Nominally a Democrat, he leaned conservative on security matters. A tough critic of the Soviet Union, he also helped broker the Camp David accords and worked on normalizing relations with China.


Though a rigorous anti-communist, he held that US interests around the world should be addressed in terms of strategy and practicality, not ideology.


“He was an important part of our lives for more than four decades and was a superb public servant,” Carter said in a statement. He passed away in Falls Church, Virginia, his family said.


Brzezinski was an active professor and author well into his 80s. He did not support President Donald Trump’s election and criticized his foreign policy as vague.


In 2011, he penned Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, arguing that US strength abroad was key to global stability.


He developed his ties to Carter on the Trilateral Commission, the group David Rockefeller created in 1973 as a forum for political and business leaders from North America, Western Europe and Japan.


Brzezinski was the commission’s first director.    Tributes in his native land were effusive.


“The world has lost an outstanding intellectual, an experienced and effective diplomat, as well as an honorable man and a proud Pole,” Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said in a statement. Writing on Twitter, Polish President Andrzej Duda also paid tribute. — AFP


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon