and Omar Torrijos shake hands moments after the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties.]] The Torrijos–Carter Treaties (sometimes referred to in the singular as the Torrijos-Carter Treaty) are two treaties signed by the United States and Panama in Washington, D.C., on September 7, 1977, which abrogated the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty of 1903. The treaties guaranteed that Panama would gain control of the Panama Canal after 1999, ending the control of the canal that the U.S. had exercised since 1903. The treaties are named after the two signatories, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Commander of Panama's National Guard, General Omar Torrijos. Although Torrijos was not democratically elected as he had seized power in a coup in 1968, it is generally considered that he had widespread support in Panama to justify his signing of the treaties.

This first treaty is officially titled The Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal and is commonly known as the Neutrality Treaty. Under this treaty, the U.S. retained the permanent right to defend the canal from any threat that might interfere with its continued neutral service to ships of all nations. The second treaty is titled The Panama Canal Treaty, and provided that as from 12:00 on December 31, 1999, Panama would assume full control of canal operations and become primarily responsible for its defense.

History

Panamanian efforts to renegotiate the original Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty had been ongoing almost since it was first signed in November 1903, a few weeks after Panama obtained its independence from Colombia. However, activity to renegotiate or abrogate the treaty increased considerably after events in 1964 precipitated a complete breakdown in relations between the U.S. and Panama. On January 9 of that year, Panamanian students entered the canal zone to fly the Panamanian flag next to the American flag, as per a 1963 agreement to defuse tension between the two countries. Panamanians watching the event began rioting after the students raising the Panamanian flag were jeered and harassed by American school officials, students, and their parents. During the scuffle, somehow the Panamanian flag was torn. Widespread rioting ensued, during which over 20 Panamanians were killed and about 500 were injured. Most of the casualties were caused by fire from U.S. troops, who had been called in to protect Canal Zone property, including private residences of Canal Zone employees. January 9 is a National Holiday in Panama, known as Martyrs' Day.

The next day, January 10, Panama broke off republican relations with the United States and on January 19, President of Panama Roberto Chiari declared that Panama would not re-establish diplomatic ties with the United States until the U.S. agreed to begin negotiations on a new treaty. The first steps in that direction were taken shortly thereafter on April 3, 1964 when both countries agreed to an immediate resumption of diplomatic relations and the United States agreed to adopt procedures for the "elimination of the causes of conflict between the two countries". A few weeks later, Robert B. Anderson, President Lyndon Johnson's special representative flew to Panama to pave the way for future talks. Negotiations over the next years resulted in a treaty in 1967, but it failed of ratification in Panama.

Negotiations were resumed on February 15, 1977 and were completed by August 10 of that year. On the American side the negotiators were Ellsworth Bunker and Sol Linowitz; the Panamanian side of the negotiations were headed by RĂłmulo Escobar Betancourt. Senator Dennis DeConcini sponsored a critical amendment to the Panama Canal Treaty that allowed the Senate to come to a consensus on giving control of the Canal to Panama. A few days before final agreement on the treaties was reached, President Jimmy Carter had sent a telegram to all members of Congress informing them of the status of the negotiations and asking them to withhold judgment on the treaty until they had an opportunity to carefully study it. Senator Strom Thurmond responded to Mr. Carter's appeal by stating in a speech later that day, "The canal is ours, we bought and we paid for it and we should keep it".

Ratification

Both treaties were subsequently ratified in Panama by a two-thirds vote in a plebiscite held on October 23, 1977. To allow for popular discussion of the treaties and in response to claims made by opponents of the treaty in the U.S. that Panama was incapable of democratically ratifying them, restrictions on the press and on political parties were lifted several weeks prior to the vote. On the day of the vote, ninety-six percent of Panama's eligible voters went to the polls, the highest voter turnout in Panama up to that time. The neutrality treaty was of major concern among voters, particularly on the political left, and was one reason why the treaties failed to obtain even greater popular support.

The United States Senate advised and consented to ratification of the first treaty on March 16, 1978 and to the second treaty on April 18 by identical 68 to 32 margins. On both votes, 52 Democrats and 16 Republicans voted in favor of advising and consenting to ratification, while 10 Democrats and 22 Republicans voted against.

The treaties were the source of controversy in the United States, particularly among conservatives such as Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms who regarded them as the surrender of a strategic American asset to what they characterized as a hostile government. In the year preceding the final transfer of canal assets there was an effort in the United States Congress, notably House Joint Resolution 77 introduced by Helen Chenoweth-Hage, to declare the Carter-Torrijos treaties null and void. Despite the fact that the pullout of the United States is now complete, there are still organizations (primarily conservative ones such as the John Birch Society) that urge the United States to declare the treaty null and void, saying that the Spanish text is different from the English text. Support of HJR 77 was part of the 2000 platform of the Texas Republican Party but no longer appeared in the 2004 platform.

Possible sabotage

According to The New York Times, the day after the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty, Torrijos declared that his regime had contingency plans to sabotage the Canal if ratification had failed. In August 1990, the Chicago Tribune reported that documents captured by the U.S. military revealed that Torrijos had asked Manuel Noriega to prepare such plans. Noriega's handwritten notes on the plan were found during the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama.

These reports were confirmed in Noriega's book, America's Prisoner published in 1997. The contingency plan was code-named "Huele a Quemado" ("It smells like something's burning"). In Noriega's account, Panamanian military specialists had infiltrated the U.S. security cordon and lived for two months, posing as peasants and fishermen. They were prepared to assault the Canal and the Panama-ColĂłn railway with explosives and rocket launchers upon Torrijos' signal, to be broadcast as a coded message on the program of a popular radio personality.

In the book, Noriega also repeats the charge made by critics of U.S. foreign policy that the invasion of Panama under Operation Just Cause was launched primarily to circumvent the treaty.

Implementation

The treaty laid out a timetable for the transfer of the canal, leading to a complete handover of all lands and buildings in the canal area to Panama. The most immediate consequence of this treaty was that the Canal Zone, as an entity, ceased to exist on October 1, 1979. The final phase of the treaty was completed on December 31, 1999. On this date, the United States relinquished control of the Panama Canal and all areas in what had been the Panama Canal Zone.

As a result of the treaties, by the year 2000 nearly , including some 7,000 buildings, such as military facilities, warehouses, schools, and private residences, were transferred to Panama. In 1993, the Panamanian government created a temporary agency (Autoridad de la Región Interoceánica or "Interoceanic Region Authority", commonly referred to as ARI) to administer and maintain the reverted properties.

References

;Notes

;Bibliography

J. Michael Hogan; The Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy and the Evolution of Policy Southern Illinois University Press, 1986

Thomas Hollihan, "The Public Controversy Over the Panama Canal Treaties: An Analysis of American Foreign Policy Rhetoric," Western Journal of Speech Communication, Fall 1986, p. 371+

Mellander, Gustavo A.; Nelly Maldonado Mellander (1999). Charles Edward Magoon: The Panama Years. RĂ­o Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial Plaza Mayor. ISBN 1-56328-155-4. OCLC 42970390.

Mellander, Gustavo A. (1971). The United States in Panamanian Politics: The Intriguing Formative Years. Danville, Ill.: Interstate Publishers. OCLC 138568.

George D. Moffett III, The Limits of Victory: The Ratification of the Panama Canal Treaties Cornell University Press, 1985.

M. Noriega and P. Eisner. America's Prisoner — The Memoirs of Manuel Noriega, Random House, 1997.

David Skidmore, "Foreign Policy Interest Groups and Presidential Power: Jimmy Carter and the Battle over Ratification of the Panama Canal Treaties," in Herbert D. Rosenbaum and Alexej Ugrinsky, eds. Jimmy Carter: Foreign Policy and Post-Presidential Years Greenwood Press. 1994. pp 297–328

Craig Allen Smith, "Leadership, Orientation and Rhetorical Vision: Jimmy Carter, the 'New Right,' and the Panama Canal," Presidential Studies Quarterly, Spring 1986, p. 323+

;Newspapers

The New York Times, April 4, 1964. U. S. and Panama Sign Agreement to Restore Ties, Tad Szulc.

The New York Times, April 20, 1964. Andersen Goes to Panama as President's Special Envoy.

The New York Times, February 8, 1974. U.S. Agrees to Yield Sovereignty of Canal to Panama, David Binder.

The New York Times, August 9, 1977, Canal Negotiators Said to Seek Accord by Tomorrow, Graham Hovey.

The New York Times, August 11, 1977, U. S. and Panama Reach Accord to Transfer Canal by year 2000, Graham Hovey.

The New York Times, April 20, 1978, U. S. Was Prepared to Defend the Canal.

External links

Jimmy Carter Library

House Resolution 77

ARI homepage

Category:History of Panama Category:History of the Panama Canal Zone Category:Panama Canal Zone Category:Presidency of Jimmy Carter Category:Treaties concluded in 1977 Category:Treaties entered into force in 1978 Category:Treaties of Panama Category:Treaties of the United States Category:Panama – United States relations

Name	Zbigniew Brzezinski
Order	10th United States National Security Advisor
Term start	January 20, 1977
Term end	January 20, 1981
President	Jimmy Carter
Deputy	David L. Aaron
Predecessor	Brent Scowcroft
Successor	Richard V. Allen
Birth date	March 28, 1928
Birth place	Warsaw, Poland
Party	Democratic
Alma mater	McGill UniversityHarvard University
Profession	politician, critic

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (, pronounced ; born March 28, 1928) is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.

Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China), the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), the brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran from an important US client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing certain human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union, the financing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there (allegedly either to help deter a Russian invasion, or to deliberately increase the chance of such an intervention occurring—or for both contradictory reasons simultaneously being embraced by separate US officials) and the arming of these rebels to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing overt US control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

He is currently Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC News' This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and on MSNBC's Morning Joe, where his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, is co-anchor.

Biography

Early years

Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1928. His family, members of the nobility (or "szlachta" in Polish), bore the Trąby coat of arms and hailed from Brzeżany in Galicia. This town is thought to be the source of the family name. Brzezinski's father was Tadeusz Brzeziński, a Polish diplomat who was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935; Zbigniew Brzezinski thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis. From 1936 to 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

In 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to Canada. In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was agreed to by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; subsequently the two powers invaded Poland. The 1945 Yalta Conference between the Allies allotted Poland to the Soviet sphere of influence, meaning Brzezinski's family could not safely return to their country.

Rising influence

After attending prep school in Montreal, Brzezinski entered McGill University in 1945 to obtain both his BA and MA degrees (received in 1949 and 1950 respectively). His Master's thesis focused on the various nationalities within the Soviet Union. Brzezinski's plan for doing further studies in Great Britain in preparation for a diplomatic career in Canada fell through, principally because he was ruled ineligible for a scholarship he had won that was only open to persons with British subject status. Brzezinski then went on to attend Harvard University to work on a PhD, focusing on the Soviet Union and the relationship between the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin's state, and the actions of Joseph Stalin. He received his doctorate in 1953; the same year, he traveled to Munich and met Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, head of the Polish desk of Radio Free Europe. He later collaborated with Carl J. Friedrich to develop the concept of totalitarianism as a way to more accurately and powerfully characterize and criticize the Soviets in 1956.

As a Harvard professor he argued against Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's policy of rollback, saying that antagonism would push Eastern Europe further toward the Soviets. The Polish strike and Hungarian Revolution in 1956 lent some support to Brzezinski's idea that the Eastern Europeans could gradually counter Soviet domination. In 1957, he visited Poland for the first time since he left as a child, and it reaffirmed his judgment that splits within the Eastern bloc were profound.

In 1958 he became a United States citizen, although he probably also continues to be considered a Polish citizen under Polish law. Despite his years of residence in Canada and the presence of family members there, he never became a Canadian citizen.

In 1959 Brzezinski was not granted tenure at Harvard, and he moved to New York City to teach at Columbia University. Here he wrote Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, which focused on Eastern Europe since the beginning of the Cold War. He also became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and attended meetings of the Bilderberg Group.

During the 1960 US presidential elections, Brzezinski was an advisor to the John F. Kennedy campaign, urging a non-antagonistic policy toward Eastern European governments. Seeing the Soviet Union as having entered a period of stagnation, both economic and political, Brzezinski presciently predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union along lines of nationality (expanding on his master's thesis). and supporting non-antagonistic policies after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the grounds that such policies might disabuse Eastern European nations of their fear of an aggressive Germany and pacify Western Europeans fearful of a superpower condominium along the lines of the Yalta Conference.

In 1964, Brzezinski supported Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign and the Great Society and civil rights policies, while on the other hand he saw Soviet leadership as having been purged of any creativity following the ousting of Khrushchev. Through Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, Brzezinski met with Adam Michnik, then a communist party member and future Polish Solidarity activist.

Brzezinski continued to support engagement with Eastern European governments, while warning against De Gaulle's vision of a "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals." He also supported the Vietnam War. From 1966 to 1968, Brzezinski served as a member of the Policy Planning Council of the US Department of State (President Johnson's October 7, 1966 "Bridge Building" speech was a product of Brzezinski's influence).

Events in Czechoslovakia further reinforced Brzezinski's criticisms of the right's aggressive stance toward Eastern European governments. His service to the Johnson administration, and his fact-finding trip to Vietnam made him an enemy of the New Left, despite his advocacy of de-escalation of the US' involvement in the war.

For the 1968 US presidential campaign, Brzezinski was chairman of the Hubert Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force. He advised Humphrey to break with several of President Johnson's policies, especially concerning Vietnam, the Middle East, and condominium with the USSR.

Brzezinski called for a pan-European conference, an idea that would eventually find fruition in 1973 as the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Meanwhile he became a leading critic of both the Nixon-Kissinger détente condominium, as well as McGovern's pacifism.

In his 1970 piece Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski argued that a coordinated policy among developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic inequality. Out of this thesis, Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, serving as director from 1973 to 1976. The Trilateral Commission is a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics primarily from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three most industrially advanced regions of the capitalist world. Brzezinski selected Georgia governor Jimmy Carter as a member.

Government

Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential campaign to a skeptical media and proclaimed himself an "eager student" of Brzezinski. Brzezinski became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975. He became an outspoken critic of the Nixon-Kissinger over-reliance on détente, a situation preferred by the USSR, favoring the Helsinki process instead, which focused on human rights, international law and peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe. Brzezinski has been considered to be the Democrats' response to Republican Henry Kissinger. Carter engaged Ford in foreign policy debates by contrasting the Trilateral vision with Ford's détente.

After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski National Security Advisor. Earlier that year, major labor riots broke out in Poland, laying the foundations for Solidarity. Brzezinski began by emphasizing the "Basket III" human rights in the Helsinki Final Act, which inspired Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia shortly thereafter.

Brzezinski had a hand in writing parts of Carter's inaugural address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet dissidents. The Soviet Union and Western European leaders both complained that this kind of rhetoric ran against the "code of détente" that Nixon and Kissinger had established. Brzezinski ran up against members of his own Democratic Party who disagreed with this interpretation of détente, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), whereas Brzezinski favored doing both at the same time. Brzezinski then ordered Radio Free Europe transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies. West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt objected to Brzezinski's agenda, even calling for the removal of Radio Free Europe from German soil.

The State Department was alarmed by Brzezinski's support for East German dissidents and objected to his suggestion that Carter's first overseas visit be to Poland. He visited Warsaw, met with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (against the objection of the U.S. Ambassador to Poland), recognizing the Roman Catholic Church as the legitimate opposition to Communist rule in Poland.

By 1978, Brzezinski and Vance were more and more at odds over the direction of Carter's foreign policy. Vance sought to continue the style of détente engineered by Nixon-Kissinger, with a focus on arms control. Brzezinski believed that détente emboldened the Soviets in Angola and the Middle East, and so he argued for increased military strength and an emphasis on human rights. Vance, the State Department, and the media criticized Brzezinski publicly as seeking to revive the Cold War.

Brzezinski advised Carter in 1978 to engage the People's Republic of China and traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the two countries. This also resulted in the severing of ties with the United States' longtime anti-Communist ally the Republic of China. Also in 1978, Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II—an event which the Soviets believed Brzezinski orchestrated. President Carter told reporters that the new Pope was a friend of Dr. Brzezinski.

1979 saw two major strategically important events: the overthrow of US ally the Shah of Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Iranian Revolution precipitated the Iran hostage crisis, which would last for the rest of Carter's presidency. Brzezinski anticipated the Soviet invasion, and, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the PRC, he created a strategy to undermine the Soviet presence. See below under "Major Policies – Afghanistan."

Using this atmosphere of insecurity, Brzezinski led the US toward a new arms buildup and the development of the Rapid Deployment Forces—policies that are both more generally associated with Ronald Reagan now. In 1980, Brzezinski planned Operation Eagle Claw, which was meant to free the hostages in Iran using the newly created Delta Force and other Special Forces units. The mission was a failure and led to Secretary Vance's resignation.

Brzezinski was criticized widely in the press and became the least popular member of Carter's administration. Edward Kennedy challenged President Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, and at the convention Kennedy's delegates loudly booed Brzezinski. Hurt by internal divisions within his party and a stagnant domestic economy, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide.

Brzezinski, acting under a lame duck Carter presidency, but encouraged that Solidarity in Poland had vindicated his style of engagement with Eastern Europe, took a hard-line stance against what seemed like an imminent Soviet invasion of Poland. He even made a midnight phone call to Pope John Paul II—whose visit to Poland in 1979 had foreshadowed the emergence of Solidarity—warning him in advance. The US stance was a significant change from previous reactions to Soviet repression in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

In 1981 President Carter presented Brzezinski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

After power

Brzezinski left office concerned about the internal division within the Democratic party, arguing that the dovish McGovernite wing would send the Democrats into permanent minority.

He had mixed relations with the Reagan administration. On the one hand, he supported it as an alternative to the Democrats' pacifism, but he also criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly black-and-white terms.

He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and more so of Western European acquiescence to its imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed US vice-president George H.W. Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland that aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.

In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President's Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the United States National Security Council-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party. Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades. He said there were five possibilities for the Soviet Union: successful pluralization, protracted crisis, renewed stagnation, coup (by the KGB or Soviet military), or the explicit collapse of the Communist regime. He called collapse "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than protracted crisis. He also predicted that the chance of some form of communism existing in the Soviet Union in 2017 was a little more than 50% and that when the end did come it would be "most likely turbulent". In the event, the Soviet system collapsed totally in 1991 following Moscow's crackdown on Lithuania's attempt to declare independence, the Nagorno-Karabakh War of the late 1980s, and scattered bloodshed in other republics. This was a less violent outcome than Brzezinski and other observers anticipated.

In 1989 the Communists failed to mobilize support in Poland, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre. This served as an opportunity for him to ask the Soviet government to acknowledge the truth about the event, for which he received a standing ovation in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Ten days later, the Berlin Wall fell, and Soviet-supported governments in Eastern Europe began to totter.

Strobe Talbott, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for TIME magazine entitled Vindication of a Hardliner.

In 1990 Brzezinski warned against post–Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the Gulf War, arguing that the US would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the Arab world. He expanded upon these views in his 1992 work Out of Control.

However, in 1993 Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against Serbia in the Yugoslavian civil war. He also began to speak out against Russia's First Chechen War, forming the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin after Boris Yeltsin. In this vein, he became one of the foremost advocates of NATO expansion.

Post 9/11

After the September 11 attacks in 2001 Brzezinski was criticized, largely by the same people who had wholeheartedly supported his views and decisions, for his role in the formation of the Afghan mujaheddin network, some of whom later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda. He countered that blame ought to be laid at the feet of the Soviet Union's invasion, which radicalized the relatively stable Muslim society. However, Brzezinski is also accused of having "knowingly increased the probability that they (the Soviet Union) would invade" by supporting Afghan rebels before the invasion and drawing the Soviets into an "Afghan trap."

Brzezinski was a leading critic of the George W. Bush administration's "war on terror". Some painted him as a neoconservative because of his friendship with Paul Wolfowitz and his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. However, in 2004, Brzezinski wrote The Choice, which expanded upon The Grand Chessboard but sharply criticized George W. Bush's foreign policy. He defended the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and was an outspoken critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In August 2007, Brzezinski endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He stated that Obama "recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world." Also saying, "What makes Obama attractive to me is that he understands that we live in a very different world where we have to relate to a variety of cultures and people." In September 2007 during a speech on the Iraq war, Obama introduced Brzezinski as "one of our most outstanding thinkers," but some pro-Israel commentators questioned his criticism of the Israel lobby in the United States. This was interpreted by some supporters of Israel as supporting the U.S. downing Israeli jets to prevent an attack on Iran.

Personal life

Brzezinski is married to Czech-American sculptor Emilie Benes (grand-niece of the second Czechoslovak president, Edvard Beneš), with whom he has three children. His son, Mark Brzezinski (b. 1965), a lawyer who served on President Clinton's National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe, is a partner in McGuire Woods LLP. His daughter, Mika Brzezinski (b. 1967), is a television news presenter and co-host of MSNBC's weekday morning program, Morning Joe, where she provides regular commentary and reads the news headlines for the program. His son Ian served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO and was now a Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton. Ian Brzezinski is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program and is on the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Advisors Group. Key highlights of his tenure as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy (2001–5) include the expansion of NATO membership in 2004, the consolidation and reconfiguration of the Alliance’s command structure, the standing up of the NATO Response Force and the coordination of European military contributions to U.S. and NATO- led operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.

As Carter's National Security Advisor

President Carter chose Zbigniew Brzezinski for the position of National Security Adviser (NSA) because he wanted an assertive intellectual at his side to provide him with day-to-day advice and guidance on foreign policy decisions. Brzezinski would preside over a reorganized National Security Council (NSC) structure, fashioned to ensure that the NSA would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process.

Brzezinski's task was complicated by his (hawkish) focus on East-West relations in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights.

Initially, Carter reduced the NSC staff by one-half and decreased the number of standing NSC committees from eight to two. All issues referred to the NSC were reviewed by one of the two new committees, either the Policy Review Committee (PRC) or the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC). The PRC focused on specific issues, and its chairmanship rotated. The SCC was always chaired by Brzezinski, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve. Carter believed that by making the NSA chairman of only one of the two committees, he would prevent the NSC from being the overwhelming influence on foreign policy decisions it was under Kissinger's chairmanship during the Nixon administration. The SCC was charged with considering issues that cut across several departments, including oversight of intelligence activities, arms control evaluation, and crisis management. Much of the SCC's time during the Carter years was spent on SALT issues.

The Council held few formal meetings, convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the 8 years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Instead, Carter used frequent, informal meetings as a decision-making device, typically his Friday breakfasts, usually attended by the Vice President, the secretaries of State and Defense, Brzezinski, and the chief domestic adviser. No agendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of the decisions actually agreed upon. Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of notes. Brzezinski also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action. President Carter enjoyed these reports and frequently annotated them with his own views. Brzezinski and the NSC used these Presidential notes (159 of them) as the basis for NSC actions.

From the beginning, Brzezinski made sure that the new NSC institutional relationships would assure him a major voice in the shaping of foreign policy. While he knew that Carter would not want him to be another Kissinger, Brzezinski also felt confident that the President did not want Secretary of State Vance to become another Dulles and would want his own input on key foreign policy decisions.

Brzezinski's power gradually expanded into the operational area during the Carter Presidency. He increasingly assumed the role of a Presidential emissary. In 1978, for example, Brzezinski traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for normalizing U.S.-PRC relations. Like Kissinger before him, Brzezinski maintained his own personal relationship with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Brzezinski had NSC staffers monitor State Department cable traffic through the Situation Room and call back to the State Department if the President preferred to revise or take issue with outgoing State Department instructions. He also appointed his own press spokesman, and his frequent press briefings and appearances on television interview shows made him a prominent public figure, although perhaps not nearly as much as Kissinger had been under Nixon.

The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's "independence" but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition. An NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Only then did he decide to abandon SALT II ratification and pursue the anti-Soviet policies that Brzezinski proposed.

The Iranian revolution was the last straw for the disintegrating relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. As the upheaval developed, the two advanced fundamentally different positions. Brzezinski wanted to control the revolution and increasingly suggested military action to prevent Ayatollah Khomeini from coming to power, while Vance wanted to come to terms with the new Islamic Republic of Iran. As a consequence, Carter failed to develop a coherent approach to the Iranian situation. In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission to rescue the US hostages in March 1980, undertaken over his objections, was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinski and Vance.

Major policies

During the 1960s Brzezinski articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc and persuaded President Johnson, while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, to adopt in October 1966 peaceful engagement as US strategy, placing détente ahead of German reunification and thus reversing prior US priorities.

During the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of his political involvement, Brzezinski participated in the formation of the Trilateral Commission in order to more closely cement US-Japanese-European relations. As the three most economically advanced sectors of the world, the people of the three regions could be brought together in cooperation that would give them a more cohesive stance against the communist world.

While serving in the White House, Brzezinski emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive. With Jimmy Carter in Camp David, he assisted in the attainment of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. He actively supported Polish Solidarity and the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion, and provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union. He played a leading role in normalizing US-PRC relations and in the development of joint strategic cooperation, cultivating a relationship with Deng Xiaoping, for which he is thought very highly of in mainland China to this day.

In the 1990s he formulated the strategic case for buttressing the independent statehood of Ukraine, partially as a means to ending a resurgence of the Russian Empire, and to drive Russia toward integration with the West, promoting instead "geopolitical pluralism" in the space of the former Soviet Union. He developed "a plan for Europe" urging the expansion of NATO, making the case for the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states. He also served as William Clinton's emissary to Azerbaijan in order to promote the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline. Subsequently, he became a member of Honorary Council of Advisors of U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC). Further, he led, together with Lane Kirkland, the effort to increase the endowment for the US–sponsored Polish-American Freedom Foundation from the proposed $112 million to an eventual total of well over $200 million.

He has consistently urged a US leadership role in the world, based on established alliances, and warned against unilateralist policies that would destroy US global credibility and precipitate US global isolation.

Afghanistan

Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6. Part of the CIA program was led by their elite Special Activities Division and included the arming, training and leading of Afghanistan's mujahideen. This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces to overthrow the secular communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan government in Afghanistan, which had been destabilized by coup attempts against Hafizullah Amin, the power struggle within the Soviet-supported Parcham faction of the PDPA and a subsequent Soviet military intervention.

Years later, in a 1997 CNN/National Security Archive interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets in 1979:

We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again—for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.

Milt Bearden wrote in The Main Enemy that Brzezinski, in 1980, secured an agreement from King Khalid of Saudi Arabia to match US contributions to the Afghan effort dollar for dollar and that Bill Casey would keep that agreement going through the Reagan administration.

According to the "Progressive South Asia Exchange Net," claiming to cite an article in , U.S. policy, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy of aiming "to induce a Soviet military intervention." The article includes a brief interview with National Security Advisor Brzezinski, in which he is quoted as saying that the US provided aid to the mujahideen prior to the Soviet invasion for the deliberate purpose of provoking one. Brzezinski himself has denied the accuracy of the interview. According to Brzezinski, an NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Brzezinski has stated that the US provided communications equipment and limited financial aid to the mujahideen prior to the "formal" invasion, but only in response to the Soviet deployment of forces to Afghanistan and the 1978 coup, and with the intention of preventing further Soviet encroachment in the region.

According to Eric Alterman of The Nation, Cyrus Vance's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it" and President Carter has said it was definitely "not my intention" to inspire a Soviet invasion but to deter one.

The Soviet invasion and occupation killed up to 2 million Afghans. Brzezinski defended the arming of the rebels in response, saying that it "was quite important in hastening the end of the conflict," thereby saving the lives of thousands of Afghans, but "not in deciding the conflict, because actually the fact is that even though we helped the mujaheddin, they would have continued fighting without our help, because they were also getting a lot of money from the Persian Gulf and the Arab states, and they weren't going to quit. They didn't decide to fight because we urged them to. They're fighters, and they prefer to be independent. They just happen to have a curious complex: they don't like foreigners with guns in their country. And they were going to fight the Soviets. Giving them weapons was a very important forward step in defeating the Soviets, and that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned." When he was asked if he thought it was the right decision in retrospect (given the Taliban's subsequent rise to power), he said: "Which decision? For the Soviets to go in? The decision was the Soviets', and they went in. The Afghans would have resisted anyway, and they were resisting. I just told you: in my view, the Afghans would have prevailed in the end anyway, 'cause they had access to money, they had access to weapons, and they had the will to fight." The interviewer then asked: "So US support for the mujaheddin only begins after the Russians invade, not before?" Brzezinski replied: "With arms? Absolutely afterwards. No question about it. Show me some documents to the contrary." Likewise; Charlie Wilson said: "The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people's decision to fight ... but we'll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones."

One of the CIA's longest and most expensive covert operations was the supplying of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants. The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistani secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone. Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons. Together with similar programs by Saudi Arabia, Britain's MI6 and SAS, Egypt, Iran, and the People's Republic of China, The arms included Stinger missiles, shoulder-fired, antiaircraft weapons that they used against Soviet helicopters and that later were in circulation among terrorists who have fired such weapons at commercial airliners. Osama bin Laden was allegedly among the recipients of U.S. arms, although the US denies this and claims it did not support the "Afghan Arabs". with the last Soviets leaving on February 15, 1989.

A 2002 study found that, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, the United States had sought rapprochement with the Afghan government—a prospect that the USSR found unacceptable (especially as its own leverage over the regime was wearing thin). Thus, the Soviets intervened to preserve their influence in the country.

The early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country. The initial bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole, and the attacks of September 11 were all allegedly linked to individuals and groups that at one time were armed and trained by the United States and/or its allies, although this view has been disputed.

Iran

ian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, meeting with Arthur Atherton, William H. Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Jimmy Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, in 1977]] Facing a revolution, the Shah of Iran sought help from the United States. Iran occupied a strategic place in US policy in the Middle East, acting as an important ally and a buffer against Soviet influence in the region. The US ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, recalls that Brzezinski "repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully." These reassurances would not, however, amount to substantive action on the part of the United States. On November 4, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would "back him to the hilt." At the same time, certain high-level officials in the State Department decided that the Shah had to go, regardless of who replaced him. Brzezinski and US Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger (formerly Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford) continued to advocate that the US support the Shah militarily. Even in the final days of the revolution, when the Shah was considered doomed no matter what the outcome of the revolution, Brzezinski still advocated a US invasion to keep Iran under US influence. President Carter could not decide how to appropriately use force and opposed another US-backed coup d'etat. He ordered the aircraft carrier Constellation to the Indian Ocean but ultimately allowed a regime change. A deal was worked out with the Iranian generals to shift support to a moderate government, but this plan fell apart when Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers swept the country, taking power on February 12, 1979.

China

Shortly after taking office in 1977, President Carter again reaffirmed the United States' position of upholding the Shanghai Communique. The United States and People's Republic of China announced on December 15, 1978, that the two governments would establish diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. This required that the US sever relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan. Consolidating US gains in befriending communist China was a major priority stressed by Brzezinski during his time as National Security Advisor.

The most important strategic aspect of the new US-Chinese relationship was in its effect on the Cold War. China was no longer considered part of a larger Sino-Soviet bloc but instead a third pole of power due to the Sino-Soviet Split, helping the United States against the Soviet Union.

In the Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations dated January 1, 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The US reiterated the Shanghai Communique's acknowledgment of the PRC position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; Beijing acknowledged that the US would continue to carry on commercial, cultural, and other unofficial contacts with Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act made the necessary changes in US domestic law to permit unofficial relations with Taiwan to continue.

In addition the severing relations with the ROC, the Carter administration also agreed to unilaterally pull out of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, withdraw US military personnel from Taiwan, and gradually reduce arms sales to the Republic of China. There was widespread opposition in the US Congress, notably from Republicans, due to the Republic of China's status as an anti-Communist ally in the Cold War. In Goldwater v. Carter, Barry Goldwater made a failed attempt to stop Carter from terminating the mutual defense treaty.

PRC Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping's January 1979 visit to Washington, DC, initiated a series of high-level exchanges, which continued until the Tiananmen Square massacre, when they were briefly interrupted. This resulted in many bilateral agreements, especially in the fields of scientific, technological, and cultural interchange and trade relations. Since early 1979, the United States and the PRC have initiated hundreds of joint research projects and cooperative programs under the Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, the largest bilateral program.

On March 1, 1979, the United States and People's Republic of China formally established embassies in Beijing and Washington. During 1979, outstanding private claims were resolved, and a bilateral trade agreement was concluded. US vice-president Walter Mondale reciprocated vice-premier Deng's visit with an August 1979 trip to China. This visit led to agreements in September 1980 on maritime affairs, civil aviation links, and textile matters, as well as a bilateral consular convention.

Brzezinski is alleged to have encouraged China to support the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, as a counter to growing Vietnamese influence in Indochina, though he strongly denies this.

As a consequence of high-level and working-level contacts initiated in 1980, US dialogue with the PRC broadened to cover a wide range of issues, including global and regional strategic problems, political-military questions—including arms control, UN and other multilateral organization affairs, and international narcotics matters.

Cambodia

As part of a wider policy of forcing the Vietnamese out of Cambodia, the United States began funding anti-Vietnamese guerrilla groups. Between 1979 and 1981, the World Food Program, which was under US influence, provided nearly $12 million in food aid to Thailand. In January 1980, the US allegedly started funding Pol Pot while he was in exile. The extent of this support was $85 million from 1980 to 1986.

Brzezinski himself however denied that his administration helped China fund Pol Pot in a letter he sent to the New York Times in 1998. Other sources have also disputed the charge.

Arab-Israeli conflict

On October 10, 2007 Brzezinski along with other influential signatories sent a letter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice titled 'Failure Risks Devastating Consequences'. The letter was partly an advice and a warning of the failure of an upcoming US-sponsored Middle East conference scheduled for November 2007 between representatives of Israelis and Palestinians. The letter also suggested to engage in "a genuine dialogue with Hamas" rather than to isolate it further. with Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance at Camp David in 1977]] engages Brzezinski in a game of chess at Camp David]]

Ending détente

Presidential Directive 18 on US National Security, signed early in Carter's term, signaled a fundamental reassessment of the value of détente, and set the US on a course to quietly end Kissinger's strategy.

Nuclear strategy

Presidential Directive 59, "Nuclear Employment Policy", dramatically changed US targeting of nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union. Implemented with the aid of Defense Secretary Harold Brown, this directive officially set the US on a countervailing strategy .

Arms control

and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, June 16, 1979, in Washington D.C. Zbigniew Brzezinski is directly behind President Carter.]]

Academia

Brzezinski was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1953 to 1960, and of Columbia University from 1960 to 1989 where he headed the Institute on Communist Affairs. He is currently a professor of foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

As a scholar he has developed his thoughts over the years, fashioning fundamental theories on international relations and geostrategy. During the 1950s he worked on the theory of totalitarianism. His thought in the 1960s focused on wider Western understanding of disunity in the Soviet Bloc, as well as developing the thesis of intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union. During the 1970s he propounded the proposition that the Soviet system was incapable of evolving beyond the industrial phase into the "technetronic" age.

By the 1980s, Brzezinski argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadowed communism's end.

Public life

Brzezinski is a past member of the board of directors of Amnesty International, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, and the National Endowment for Democracy .

Quotes

"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."

"I once put it rather pungently, and I was flattered that the British Foreign Secretary repeated this, as follows: ... namely, in early times, it was easier to control a million people, literally it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill a million people. Today, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people. It is easier to kill than to control...."

"The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age." – The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 11, 2007.

"[President George W. Bush] has a vision which can be described with two other words: Manichaean paranoia ... the notion that he is leading the forces of good against the empire of evil, that in that setting, the fact that we are morally superior justifies us committing immoral acts. And that is a very dangerous posture for the country that is the number one global power. ... The fact is he squandered our credibility, our legitimacy, and even respect for our power." – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 14, 2007.

Benchmarks are targets that have to be fulfilled. They cannot be fulfilled in an indefinite period of time, so there are timetables in benchmarks.

"This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy."

* Memo to President Carter following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979)

"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."

* The Grand Chessboard (1997)

"A real cool cat."

describing Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev.

"I personally view with great skepticism all this talk about us creating an Iraqi national army, creating a nation, nation-building and so forth. The problem is we have smashed the state; we have given an enormous opportunity for narrow sectarian interests and passions to rise." – 2007 testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee

"Is Taliban a terrorism organization, or is it an ugly, medieval-type throwback of a purely local character?...Now, the Taliban does terrible things. I was talking to someone about this last night at dinner. And this person said 'yeah, but what about the horrible things they do to women,' and so forth. That's the painful part—but the same things happen in some other parts of the world. Are we going to go everywhere and tell them how to structure their social questions?" -On MSNBC's Morning Joe

Film appearance

Brzezinski appears as himself in the 2009 documentary film .

He also appears as himself in the 1997 documentary Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror, a film on the Stalinist purges directed by David Pultz and narrated by American actress Meryl Streep.

Bibliography

Major works by Brzezinski

The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956)

Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, Harvard University Press (1967), ISBN 0-674-82545-4

Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era, New York: Viking Press (1970), ISBN 0-313-23498-1

Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981, New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux (March 1983), ISBN 0-374-23663-1

Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest, Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press (June 1986), ISBN 0-87113-084-X

Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1989), ISBN 0-02-030730-6

Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century, New York: Collier (1993), ISBN 0-684-82636-4

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic Books (October 1997), ISBN 0-465-02726-1, subsequently translated and published in nineteen languages

The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Basic Books (March 2004), ISBN 0-465-00800-3

, Basic Books (March 2007), ISBN 0-465-00252-8

, Basic Books (September 2008), ISBN 0-465-01501-8

Other books and monographs

Russo-Soviet Nationalism, M.A. Thesis, McGill University (1950)

Political Control in the Soviet Army: A Study on Reports by Former Soviet Officers, New York, Research Program on the U.S.S.R (1954)

with Carl J. Friedrich, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956)

Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics, New York: Praeger (1962)

with Samuel Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR, New York: Viking Press (April 1963), ISBN 0-670-56318-8

Alternative to Partition: For a Broader Conception of America's Role in Europe, Atlantic Policy Studies, New York: McGraw-Hill (1965)

The Implications of Change for United States Foreign Policy, Department of State (1967)

International Politics in the Technetronic Era, Sofia University Press (1971)

The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan, New York: Harper and Row (1972), ISBN 0-06-010468-6

with P. Edward Haley, American Security in an Interdependent World, Rowman & Littlefield (September 1988), ISBN 0-8191-7084-4

with Marin Strmecki, In Quest of National Security, Boulder: Westview Press (September 1988), ISBN 0-8133-0575-6

The Soviet Political System: Transformation or Degeneration, Irvington Publishers (August 1993), ISBN 0-8290-3572-9

with Paige Sullivan, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Documents, Data, and Analysis, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe (1996), ISBN 1-56324-637-6

The Geostrategic Triad : Living with China, Europe, and Russia, Center for Strategic & International Studies (December 2000), ISBN 0-89206-384-X

Selected essays and reports

with David Owen, Michael Stewart, Carol Hansen, and Saburo Okita, Democracy Must Work: A Trilateral Agenda for the Decade, Trilateral Commission (June 1984), ISBN 0-8147-6161-5

with Brent Scowcroft and Richard W. Murphy, Differentiated Containment: U.S. Policy Toward Iran and Iraq, Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1997), ISBN 0-87609-202-4

U.S. Policy Toward Northeastern Europe: Report of an Independent Task Force, Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1999), ISBN 0-87609-259-8

with Anthony Lake, F. Gregory, and III Gause, The United States and the Persian Gulf, Council on Foreign Relations Press (December 2001), ISBN 0-87609-291-1

with Robert M. Gates, Iran: Time for a New Approach, Council on Foreign Relations Press (February 2003), ISBN 0-87609-345-4

References

Further reading

Avner, Yehuda, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, The Toby Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-59264-278-6

Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos, Kissinger and Brzezinski: The NSC and the Struggle for Control of U.S. National Security Policy, Palgrave Macmillan (June 1991), ISBN 0-312-05743-1

Patrick Vaughan (1999) "Beyond Benign Neglect: Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Polish Crisis of 1980." Polish Review (1): 3–28

Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Dreams and Reality, Toronto 1984, ISBN 0-9691756-0-4

Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Kanada, Kanada, Warszawa 1986, ISBN 83-7021-006-6

Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Korzenie sa polskie, Warszawa 1992, ISBN 83-7066-406-7

Aleksandra Ziółkowska Boehm: The Roots Are Polish, Toronto 2004, ISBN 0-920517-05-6

Andrzej Bernat, Pawel Kozlowski: Zycie z Polska, Warszawa 2004, ISBN 83-7386-084-3

External links

Brzezinski at Center for Strategic International Studies

Brzezinski at Jamestown

Brzezinski at the Trilateral Commission

The Modern History Project: Zbigniew Brzezinski

CNN Cold War – Profile: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski

Interview about US relations with China for the WGBH series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Profile: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Johns Hopkins University

Booknotes interview with Brzezinski on The Grand Failure, April 2, 1989.

Cold War: interview with Brzezinski, The National Security Archive, June 13, 1997.

Zbigniew Brzezinski. A geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, The Council on Foreign Relations, September 1997.

Brzezinski: NATO enlargement is central to secure Euro-Atlantic alliance, United States Information Service, October 10, 1997.

Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I started the Mujahedeen, CounterPunch.

Kissinger & Brzezinski discuss the surveillance plane standoff with China, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, April 4, 2001.

Geopolitically Speaking: Brzezinski on Eurasia Azerbaijan International, Winter 1995 (3.4).

Geopolitically Speaking: Brzezinski on the Caucasus Azerbaijan International, Summer 1997 (5.2).

Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy in Eurasia

Zbigniew Brzezinski. Confronting Anti-American Grievances, New York Times, September 1, 2002.

Neal Conan. Brzezinski discusses his participation in the 1978 Camp David, Talk of The Nation, National Public Radio, September 16, 2003.

Zbigniew Brzezinski. We are going to live in an insecure world, October 28, 2003.

Brzezinski on repercussions for diplomacy and the war on terror, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, March 19, 2004.

History Makers Series: Conversation with Brzezinski, The Council on Foreign Relations, March 24, 2004.

Zbigniew Brzezinski. Speaker's notes: Threats, Dangers, and Uncertainties, Johns Hopkins University. October 12, 2004.

Marie-Laure Germon. Brzezinski: "The Neo-Conservative Formula Doesn't Work", Le Figaro, October 18, 2004.

Brzezinski to chair RAND center for Middle East public policy advisory board, RAND Military Corporation, December 8, 2005.

Air Strike on Iran Could �Merit the Impeachment of the President’, April 26, 2006.

Former National Security Advisors Clash on Iraq Policy, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, February 1, 2007.

Brzezinski's Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 1, 2007

A road map out of Iraq, LA Times, February 11, 2007

Terrorized by 'War on Terror', Washington Post, March 25, 2007.

Brzezinski: U.S. in danger of 'stampeding' to war with Iran, CNN, September 24, 2007

Jimmy Carter Library & Museum

The Afghan War and The Grand Chessboard Three-part interview on The Real News (TRNN), January 13–17, 2010

Zbigniew Brzezinski discuses the end of the Soviet Union with Peter Krogh On Great Decisions,1992

Category:1928 births Category:Living people Category:American people of Polish descent Category:People from Warsaw Category:American anti-communists Category:Carter administration personnel Category:American anti-Iraq War activists Category:American political scientists Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Geopoliticians Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:Harvard Centennial Medal recipients Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Johns Hopkins University faculty Category:McGill University alumni Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People involved in the Soviet war in Afghanistan Category:American people of Polish descent Category:Polish anti-communists Category:Polish immigrants to the United States Category:Political realists Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:United States National Security Advisors Category:Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland) Category:Recipients of the Order of the Three Stars, 2nd Class Category:Recipients of the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Name	Christopher Hitchens
Color	silver
Caption	Hitchens speaking at TAM in 2007.
Birth name	Christopher Eric Hitchens
Birth date	April 13, 1949
Birth place	Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK
Occupation	Writer, journalist and pundit
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Nationality	American/British
Religion	None
Genre	Polemicism, journalism, essays, biography, literary criticism
Spouse	Carol Blue (1989–present)
Children	Alexander, Sophia, Antonia
Relatives	Peter Hitchens (brother)
Influences	George Orwell, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag Martin Amis, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins

Christopher Eric Hitchens (born 13 April 1949) is an English-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 he was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.

Hitchens is known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of, among others, Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Henry Kissinger. His confrontational style of debate has made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wing publications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a fatwÄ? calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The 11 September 2001 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, while Hitchens insists he is not "a conservative of any kind."

Identified as a champion of the "New Atheism" movement, Hitchens describes himself as an antitheist and a believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens says that a person "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct," but that "an antitheist, a term I’m trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there’s no evidence for such an assertion." He argues that the concept of god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book God Is Not Great.

Though Hitchens retained his British citizenship, he became a United States citizen on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial on 13 April 2007, his 58th birthday. His latest book, Hitch-22: A Memoir, was published in June 2010. Touring for the book was cut short later the same month so that he could begin treatment for newly diagnosed oesophageal cancer.

Life and career

Early life and education

His mother, Yvonne Jean (née Hickman), and father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service), and Eric a "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS Jamaica helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship Scharnhorst in the Battle of North Cape. he was educated at the independent Leys School, in Cambridge, and then later at Balliol College, Oxford. He was tutored there by Steven Lukes, and read philosophy, politics, and economics. Hitchens was "bowled over" in his adolescence by Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, R. H. Tawney's critique on Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and the works of George Orwell.

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, Hitch-22. These experiences continued in his college years when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.

In the 1960s, Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam war, nuclear weapons, racism, and "oligarchy", including that of "the unaccountable corporation". He would express affinity to the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 70s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but was expelled in 1967 along with the majority of the Labour students' organization, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam". Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, translator of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism. published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyite, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyite groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Journalistic career (1970–1981)

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree. His first job was with the London Times Higher Education Supplement, where he served as social science editor. Hitchens admits that he hated the job and was later fired, recalling that "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it." In the 1970s, he went on to work for the New Statesman, where he became friends with, among others, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. At the New Statesman, he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens' mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan,

American career (1981–present)

After emigrating to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for The Nation where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America. He became a Contributing Editor of Vanity Fair in 1992, writing ten columns a year. He left The Nation in 2002, after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow, in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities,

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus. Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he has two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens has continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan. He has visited all three countries in the so-called "Axis of Evil": Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. His work has taken him to over 60 countries.

In 1989 he met Carol Blue, a California writer, whom he later married and with whom he had a daughter, Antonia. In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Prior to Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir". In 2010, Hitchens attacked Vidal in a Vanity Fair piece headlined "Vidal Loco," calling him a "crackpot" for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Also, on the back of his book Hitch-22, among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red 'X' and a message saying "NO C.H."

His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.

In 2007 Hitchens' work for Vanity Fair won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary". He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in Slate but lost out to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. He won this award in 2011

Literature reviews

Hitchens writes a monthly essay on books in The Atlantic and contributes occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, is a collection of such works, and Love, Poverty and War contains a section devoted to literary essays. In Why Orwell Matters, he defends Orwell's writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left, many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.

During a three-hour interview by Book TV, he named authors who have had influence on his views.

Political views

The San Francisco Chronicle referred to Hitchens as a "gadfly with gusto". In 2009, Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media". However, the same article noted that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list", since it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism.

Socialism

Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of Reason magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist". In a June 2010 interview with the New York Times, he stated that: "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist". In 2009, in an article for The Atlantic entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was. Hitchens was an admirer of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs." In a 1997 essay, however, he distanced himself somewhat from some of Che's actions.

He continues to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men, and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia. Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi. In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues. He has also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".

Following the 11 September attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and of the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in The Nation. Chomsky responded and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky to which Chomsky again responded. Approximately a year after 11 September attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left The Nation, claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden, and were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues. This highly charged exchange of letters involved Katha Pollitt and Alexander Cockburn, as well as Hitchens and Chomsky.

Christopher Hitchens argued the case for the Iraq War in a 2003 collection of essays entitled , and has held numerous public debates on the topic with everyone from George Galloway to Scott Ritter. Though he admits to the numerous failures of the war, and its high civilian casualties, he sticks to the position that deposing Saddam Hussein was a long-overdue responsibility of the United States, after decades of poor policy, and that holding free elections in Iraq has been a success not to be scoffed at. He argues that a continued fight in Iraq against insurgents, whether they be former Saddam loyalists or Islamic extremists, is a fight worth having, and that those insurgents, not American forces, should be the ones taking the brunt of the blame for a slow reconstruction and high civilian casualties.

An updated summary of his views on Iraq and the War on Terror can be found in his memoirs Hitch 22.

Criticism of George W. Bush

Prior to 11 September 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush's "non-interventionist" foreign policy. He has also criticized Bush's support of intelligent design and capital punishment. In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the ACLU and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ACLU v. NSA, challenging Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.

Presidential endorsements

Hitchens would elaborate on his political views and ideological shift in a discussion with Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv. In this discussion Hitchens revealed himself as a supporter of Ralph Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, who was disenchanted with the candidacy of both George W. Bush and Al Gore. protest at the headquarters of the Commission on Presidential Debates]]

Hitchens made a brief return to The Nation just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for Bush; shortly afterwards, Slate polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens' vote as pro-John Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to "neutral", saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end".

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for Slate would state, "I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity." He was critical of both main party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. Hitchens would go on to support Obama, calling McCain "senile", and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin "absurd", calling Palin a "pathological liar" and a "national disgrace".

Blumenthal-Hitchens feud

Hitchens and Carol Blue chose to submit an affidavit to the trial managers of the Republican Party in the trial of impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the affidavit, Blue and Hitchens swore that their then-friend, Sidney Blumenthal, had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. This allegation contradicted Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial, and it resulted in a hostile exchange of opinion in the public sphere between Hitchens and Blumenthal. Following the publication of Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars, Hitchens wrote several pieces in which he accused Blumenthal of manipulating the facts.

Israel–Palestine

Hitchens has said of himself }}

A review of his autobiography, Hitch-22, in the Jewish Daily Forward, refers to Hitchens as "a prominent anti-Zionist" and says that he views Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians". Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well suggesting that his memoir was "marred by the occasional eruption of [his] anti-Zionism (reflecting his longstanding Palestinian blind spot)" The Jewish Daily Forward quotes him saying of Israel's prospects for the future, “I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable.” Hitchens has said that he isn't necessarily against Israel's right to exist, but has argued against what he calls its "expansionism" in the West Bank and Gaza and "internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". Hitchens collaborated on this issue with prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said, in 1988 publishing .

Domestic policy

Hitchens actively supports drug policy reform and has called for the abolition of the "War on Drugs" which he described as an "authoritarian war" during a debate with William F. Buckley. On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritizes in affirming that he believes a fetus should be regarded as an "unborn child", but opposes the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supports the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believes in access to contraceptives and reproductive rights as "the only thing that is known to cure poverty", and in order to prevent surgical abortion altogether.

Other

Other issues Hitchens has written on include his support for the reunification of Ireland, abolition of the British monarchy, and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.

Specific individuals

Over the years, Hitchens has become famous for his scathing critiques of public figures. Three figures â€” Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and Mother Teresa â€” were the targets of three separate full length texts, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Hitchens has also written book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (), George Orwell (Why Orwell Matters), and Thomas Paine ().

However, the majority of Hitchens's critiques take the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell, George Galloway, Mel Gibson, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, Daniel Pipes, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Cindy Sheehan.

Religion

at the "Is God Great?" debate in Alabama]] Hitchens often speaks out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he calls "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam". In his book, God Is Not Great, Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in The New York Times for his "logical flourishes and conundrums" to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in The Financial Times. God Is Not Great was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.

Hitchens contends that organized religion is "the main source of hatred in the world", "[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children", and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience". In God Is Not Great, Hitchens contends that;

"above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman [referencing Alexander Pope]. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone".

His book made him one of the four major advocates of the "new atheism", and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also serves on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. In 2007, Hitchens began a series of written debates on the question "Is Christianity Good for the World?" with Christian theologian and pastor, Douglas Wilson, published in Christianity Today magazine. This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their book tour to promote the book, film producer Darren Doane sent a film crew to accompany them. Doane produced the film Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" which was released on 27 October 2009.

On 26 November 2010 Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Canada at the Munk Debates, where he debated religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a Roman Catholic convert. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it. Preliminary results on the Munk website said 56 per cent of the votes backed the proposition (Hitchens' position) before hearing the debate, with 22 per cent against (Blair's position), and 21 per cent undecided, with the undecided voters leaning toward Hitchens, giving him a 68 per cent to 32 per cent victory over Blair, after the debate.

In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Hitchens has been accused by William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties of being particularly anti-Catholic. Hitchens responded, "when religion is attacked in this country [...] the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fair share". Hitchens has also been accused of anti-Catholic bigotry by others, including Brent Bozell, Tom Piatak in The American Conservative, and UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge. In an interview with Radar in 2007, Hitchens said that if the Christian right's agenda were implemented in the United States "It wouldn't last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part." When Joe Scarborough on 12 March 2004 asked Hitchens whether he was "consumed with hatred for conservative Catholics", Hitchens responded that he was not and that he just thinks that "all religious belief is sinister and infantile". Piatak claimed that "A straightforward description of all Hitchens’s anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine", noting particularly Hitchens' assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts should not be confirmed because of his faith. His great-great-grandfather was Nathan Blumenthal of Kempen, Prussia, who emigrated to Leicester. In Hitch-22, Hitchens detailed his Jewish ancestry: his matrilineal great-great-grandmother had converted to Judaism before marrying Nathan Blumenthal. According to Hitchens, in 1893, his maternal grandmother's parents were married “according to the rites of the German and Polish Jews. My mother’s mother, whose birth name was Dorothy Levin, was born three years later, in 1896.” Hitchens' maternal grandfather converted to Judaism before marrying Dorothy Levin.

In an article in the The Guardian on 14 April 2002, Hitchens stated that he could be considered Jewish because Jewish descent is matrilineal. Christopher denied having said this and broke off contact with his brother. He then referred to his brother as "an idiot" in a letter to Commentary, and the dispute spilled into other publications as well. Christopher eventually expressed a willingness to reconcile and to meet his new nephew; shortly thereafter the brothers gave several interviews together in which they said their personal disagreements had been resolved. They appeared together on 21 June 2007 edition of BBC current affairs discussion show Question Time. The pair engaged in a formal televised debate for the first time on 3 April 2008, at Grand Valley State University.

Health and lifestyle

Smoking and drinking

A June 2006 profile on Hitchens by NPR stated: "Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol â€” and his prodigious literary output." However, in early 2008 he gave up smoking, undergoing an epiphany in Madison, Wisconsin. His brother Peter later wrote of his surprise at this decision. It was while writing his memoir Hitch-22 that he resumed smoking cigarettes and continued until his cancer diagnosis. Hitchens admits to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule", noting that many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind".

Anti-war British politician George Galloway, on his way to testify in front of a United States Senate sub-committee investigating the scandals in the U.N. Oil for Food program, called Hitchens a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist ", to which Hitchens quickly replied, "only some of which is true". Later, in a column for Slate promoting his debate with Galloway which was to take place on 14 September 2005, he elaborated on his prior response: "He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a 'popinjay' (true enough, since the word's original Webster's definition is a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest)."

Oliver Burkeman writes, "Since the parting of ways on Iraq [...] Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker 'because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.' He drinks, he says, 'because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.'"

In the question and answer session following a speech Hitchens gave to the Commonwealth Club of California on 9 July 2009, one audience member asked what was Hitchens' favorite whisky. Hitchens replied that "the best blended scotch in the history of the world" is Johnnie Walker Black Label. He also playfully indicated that it was the favorite whisky of, among others, the Iraqi Baath Party, the Palestinian Authority, the Libyan dictatorship, and "large branches of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family". He concluded his answer by calling it the "breakfast of champions" and exhorted the audience to "accept no substitute".

In his 2010 memoir Hitch-22, Hitchens wrote: "There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully." He described his current drinking routine on working-days as follows: "At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker's amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No 'after dinner drinks' — ​most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. 'Nightcaps' depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there."

Reflecting on the lifestyle that supported his career as a writer he said:

"I always knew there was a risk in the bohemian lifestyle... I decided to take it because it helped my concentration, it stopped me being bored – it stopped other people being boring. It would make me want to prolong the conversation and enhance the moment. If you ask: would I do it again? I would probably say yes. But I would have quit earlier hoping to get away with the whole thing. I decided all of life is a wager and I'm going to wager on this bit... In a strange way I don't regret it. It's just impossible for me to picture life without wine, and other things, fueling the company, keeping me reading, energising me. It worked for me. It really did."

Cancer treatment

In June 2010, Hitchens postponed his book tour for Hitch-22 to undergo treatment for oesophageal cancer. He announced that he is undergoing treatment in a Vanity Fair piece entitled "Topic of Cancer". Hitchens said that he recognises the long-term prognosis is far from positive, and that he would be a "very lucky person to live another five years".

In April 2011, Hitchens was forced to cancel a scheduled appearance at the American Atheist Convention, and instead sent a letter that stated, "Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death." The note did not indicate if Hitchens' loss of voice was temporary or permanent.

Film and television appearances

As referenced from the Internet Movie Database, Hitchens Web or Charlie Rose. {|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |- ! Year ! Film |- |1984 |align="left" | Opinions: "Greece to their Rome" |- |1988 |align="left" | Frontiers |- |1993 |align="left" | Everything You Need to Know |- |1994 |align="left" | Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher |- |1994 |align="left" | Hell's Angel |- |1996 |align="left" | Where's Elvis This Week? |- |1996–2010 |align="left" | Charlie Rose (13 episodes) |- |1998 |align="left" | Princess Diana: The Mourning After |- |1999–2002 |align="left" | Dennis Miller Live (4 episodes) |- |2002 |align="left" | The Trials of Henry Kissinger |- |2003 |align="left" | Hidden in Plain Sight |- |2003–2009 |align="left" | Real Time with Bill Maher (6 episodes) |- |2004 |align="left" | Mel Gibson: God's Lethal Weapon |- |2004–2006 |align="left" | Newsnight (3 episodes) |- |2004–2010 |align="left" | The Daily Show (4 episodes) |- |2005 |align="left" | (1 episode, s03e05) |- |2005 |align="left" | The Al Franken Show (1 episode) |- |2005 |align="left" | Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope |- |2005 |align="left" | |- |2005–2008 |align="left" | Hardball with Chris Matthews (3 episodes) |- |2006 |align="left" | American Zeitgeist |- |2006 |align="left" | Blog Wars |- |2007 |align="left" | Manufacturing Dissent |- |2007 |align="left" | Question Time (1 episode) |- |2007 |align="left" | Your Mommy Kills Animals |- |2007 |align="left" | Personal Che |- |2007 |align="left" | Heckler |- |2007 |align="left" | In Pot We Trust |- |2008 |align="left" | Discussions with Richard Dawkins: Episode 1: "The Four Horsemen" |- |2008 | style="text-align:left;"| Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed |- |2009 |align="left" | Holy Hell |- |2009 |align="left" | Presidency |- |2009 |align="left" | Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" |- |2010 |align="left" | |}

Bibliography

1987 Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles, Chatto and Windus (UK)/Hill and Wang (US, 1988); 1997 UK Verso edition as The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece? (with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns)

1988 Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said) Verso, ISBN 0-86091-887-4 Reissued, 2001

1990 "The Monarchy", Chatto & Windus Ltd

1995 The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Verso

1999 No One Left to Lie To, Verso

2000 , Verso

2001 The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Verso.

2001 Letters to a Young Contrarian, Basic Books

2004 , Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-580-3

2005 , Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-06-059896-4

2007 , [Editor] Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6

2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion, Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84354-586-6

2008 (with Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman), New York University Press

2008 Is Christianity Good for the World? â€“ A Debate (co-author, with Douglas Wilson), Canon Press, ISBN 1-59128-053-2

2010 , Hachette Book Group, ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9

2011 ''Arguably: Writings on Love, War, God & Mammon, 1-4555-0277-4 / 978-1-4555-0277-6

References

External links

in 2007 in 2010

"Christopher Hitchens" feature story in Prospect magazine, May 2008

"Incendiary Author Spares No Targets" feature story in The New Zealand Herald, May 2008

Such, Such are His Joys David Brooks assessment in The New York Times, 1 July 2010

"Journalist Christopher Hitchens fully embraces the Bush war camp" from the World Socialist Website

Hitchens on Dying with Cancer – August 2010 video interview with The Atlantic

Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets' in The Guardian, 14 November 2010

"Christopher Hitchens’s Jewish Problem" feature article on Jewish Ideas Daily, 13 December 2010

Outspoken and outrageous: Christopher Hitchens a 60 Minutes profile aired March 6, 2011

;Articles by Hitchens

Contributor page for Vanity Fair

Index at The Atlantic

Christopher Hitchens Blog The Mirror (British tabloid)

Hitchens Web

Build Up That Wall â€“ Christopher Hitchens online directory

Hitchens articles at Slate

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