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Title: The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives by Zbigniew Brzezinski ISBN: 0-465-02726-1 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.18 (22 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Justification for American Supremacy or a Point of View?
Comment: An in-depth analysis of the current Eurasian geo-pilotical situation and an interesting reading despite its strong American bias. The book is a multifacetous look at the modern balance of power in a region that Brzezinski considers vital for the world stability--Eurasia--and all this in view of the tremendously global American supremacy. With its marked pro-American orientation, it is clearly aimed at US rather than foreign audience, and is a good example of the use of ideology as a political tool and an instrument for mobilization of public support for the cause of "the first, only and last" global superpower. By emphasizing the significance of the US as the world's largest peacekeeper and stressing its mission as a guarantor of global stability a multitude of times, this book seeks to justify the monopolarity of the modern political world, in which all de jure and de facto political actors should coordinate their actions with America.
Brzezinski tries to explore the unique situation of each one of them and to offer some viable solutions for their problems; I do think, though, that most of the times he is looking for possible channels for American influence under the cover of global well-being. Some of the solutions he offers presume hard-to-envision developments, such as Russia willingly dropping its imperial aspirations towards former spheres of influence and becoming a benevolent strategic partner of the United States; others are viable and should be duly taken into consideration by geostrategists. Nevertheless, as the very end of the book he offers an insightful look into the future of the world, and admits some week points in the American position while exploring the possible outcomes of the US global leadership.
Although it can hardly offer much new information to readers more advanced in the studies of international relations, it still provides an opportunity to look at different aspects of policy making in regions of great importance spotlighted in Brzezinski's discussion, and will definitely be useful to beginning IR students, as well as to everybody interested in a more detailed look at the regional and global politics. Although I am not questioning Brzezisnki's name and his significance as a geopolitical scientist, for non-American readers I would recommend getting other view-points as well.
Rating: 5
Summary: America's Master of Strategy on Eurasian Center of Gravity
Comment:
Anyone concerned with America's national security should be reading this book. The fact that it is four years old (older if one considers the intellectual gestation period), simply adds historical proof that its author is, as the Chinese have noted publicly, America's greatest strategist.
This book is written in plain English. That alone sets it apart from the next level down. This is a carefully presented essay that makes eminent sense. It deals with the most important region in the world: the troubled Eurasian land mass. Rich in resources, rife with ethnic conflict and water scarcity issues, it is surrounded by major powers with global ambitions: France and Germany to the West, Russia to the North, China to East, and Iran and Turkey to the South. A number of clearly presented maps add considerable value to the book.
With a level of calm and reason that is rare in books of this sort, Brzezinski provides an understandable yet sophisticated articulation of a real-world "grand strategy" essential to the future of America in this new century. His strategic vision honors both France and Germany as co-equal and vital elements of a new European community; shows how the larger Europe (ultimately co-equal to America) is essential to the salvation of Russia; makes the case for an American-Chinese strategic accommodation as the anchor for America's involvement in Eurasia; carefully integrates America's direct and special relations with Japan, Korea, and India as the bowl beneath China and Eurasia, and then concludes with decisive evaluations of the future importance of drawing Turkey into the European community while encouraging Iranian-Turkish collaboration and Iranian commercial and commodities channels from Eurasia out to the world. In passing, the author validates Australia's new strategy of working closely with Indonesia to resolve the latter's many ethnic issues while establishing a southern line against excessive Chinese influence in the region.
There are numerous subtle and deep insights throughout the book, from the observation that war may now be a luxury only the poorest of nations can afford, to why China should consider America its natural ally and why Russia is at risk of becoming genetically Asian instead of European within a generation or two. The author proposes a new Trans-Eurasian Security System (TESS) that engages Russia, China, Japan and America-one would assume that at some point Turkey, Iran, and the new Europe would be included. The author gores a number a sacred oxen, including those associated with the demonization of Iran (this should end) and the exaggeration of China as a global threat (it will at best be a regional super-power at the high end of Third World per capita earnings). While other poor Nations have defeated America decisively (Viet-Nam, for example), the author deliberately itemizes China's 3 million men under arms, it's 9,400 tanks and 5,224 fighters, as well as its 57 surface ships and 53 submarines, and offers his final judgment that China and America have too many common interests to permit a demonization of China to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it might if China were confronted across the board and denied its reasonable historical claim to having influence over the region that hosts the "Middle Kingdom."
A special note is in order about the importance of this book as an antidote to two viral infections now afflicting many otherwise excellent thinkers. This book is a marvelous, deeply grounded treatment of the historical constancy of strategy qua "enduring interests" and grand players-as much as one may wish to speculate about the globalization and localization of international politics, Brzezinski puts it all in a grand strategic context that is compelling in its logic as well as its understanding of the deep cultural threads that we must weave together if we are to survive one another's less enlightened machinations. Another strength of the book is its avoidance of the technophilia that has corrupted strategic thinking at the highest levels. The Revolution in Military Affairs and the "systems of systems", while well-intentioned, are both devoid of serious strategic reasoning-as Colin Gray among others have pointed out, technology is not strategy, nor does it follow that strong technology will defeat an enemy with weak technology but a stronger strategic culture and the ability to wage war by means other than force on force.
This book, together with Colin Gray's "Modern Strategy", Robert Young Pelton's "World's Most Dangerous Places", the two books by Robert Kaplan on his travels in the Eurasian region, and both Michael Klare's book on "Resource Wars" as well as Marc de Villier's book on "Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource", will make any intelligent person as conversant as they need to be with the most pressing geopolitical issues of our time. If one adds Joe Thorton's book on Pandora's Poison, David Helvarg's book on "Blue Frontier: Saving America's Living Seas", Larrie Garrett's book "Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health", and William Shawcross on "Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords, and a World of Endless Conflict", the lesser but still vital long-term issues of the environment, public health, and ethnic conflict will be fully appreciated.
I mention all these books deliberately, to make the point that it is Brzezinski's book that is both the foundation and the capstone for integrating the analysis from these other diverse renditions into a grand strategy. No one else has done it. He is America's foremost strategist and likely to remain so for some time to come.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Grand Chessboard - Revisited
Comment: When the power elite write, you better pay special attention to the wording because for better or worse, most are damn brilliant and some possibly dangerous. All through the book I found myself being lulled into the author's vision of "utopia" where American dominance rules on a global scale, tenfold over what it is now, mainly through a system of homogenized regional powers which would extend its hold into the resource rich area of Eurasia and the Middle East. However, Brzezinski's grasp on the mindsets of nations is so staggering that one cannot help but be respectful of his writing per se, even if the book has all the trademarks as the blueprint for the New World Order.
The author is not shy about making his objective known but his wording is such that the reader's apprehensions are assuaged with new mottos skillfully interwoven into his keen insight. Convinced that without American global dominance, the world would decay into international anarchy, the former national security advisor and Trilateral member envisions an assimilation that combines the age old imperial doctrine of "divide, conquer, and rule" veiled with what he terms consolidation of "geopolitical pluralism" and tempered to produce what he envisions as "hegemony of a new type".
Brzezinski's rational, however charming as it may be presented, is flawed as he fails to take into consideration one vitally important and likely scenario. Namely, that future generations of government will always use that power wisely and for the global good. If one ignores the old adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely" then one miscalculates on a global scale
In the end however, no matter whether you agree or disagree with his ideas, the final result is a double-edged sword capable of producing polar results by however the wielding power sees fit. Nothing demonstrates this more dramatically than America's achievements with it's foothold in Japan and Europe after WWII, versus the completely counter productive blowback in Afghanistan where it was Brzezinski himself who convinced the Carter administration to secretly fund the Mujihadeen via the CIA.
That intervention who as now everyone knows produced both Osama and the mutated Taliban, betrayed the strategy behind the book's most quoted paragraph when he wrote:
"To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."
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Title: The Geostrategic Triad : Living with China, Europe, and Russia by Zbigniew Brzezinski ISBN: 089206384X Publisher: Center for Strategic & International Studies Pub. Date: 18 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership by Zbigniew Brzezinski ISBN: 0465008003 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century by Zbigniew Brzezinski ISBN: 0684826364 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.75 |
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Title: The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, John Leonard ISBN: 0930852400 Publisher: Progressive Daily News Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus by Robert D. Kaplan ISBN: 0375705767 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 23 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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