Brent Scowcroft

Brent Scowcroft KBE (/ˈskoʊkrɒft/; born March 19, 1925) is a retired United States Air Force Lieutenant General. He was the United States National Security Advisor under U.S. Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. He also served as Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon and as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He served as Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005 and assisted President Barack Obama in choosing his national security team.

Early life and education

Scowcroft was born March 19, 1925, in Ogden, Utah, to Lucile Scowcroft (formerly Ballantyne) and James Scowcroft, a grocer and business owner. He is a descendant of early 19th-century British immigrants from England and Scotland, along with immigrants from Denmark and Norway. He considers himself a "religious and cultural heritage" Mormon, if not a formal follower of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

National security

National security is a concept that a government, along with its parliaments, should protect the state and its citizens against all kind of "national" crises through a variety of power projections, such as political power, diplomacy, economic power, military might, and so on.

The concept developed mostly in the United States after World War II. Initially focusing on military might, it now encompasses a broad range of facets, all of which impinge on the non-military or economic security of the nation and the values espoused by the national society. Accordingly, in order to possess national security, a nation needs to possess economic security, energy security, environmental security, etc. Security threats involve not only conventional foes such as other nation-states but also non-state actors such as violent non-state actors, narcotic cartels, multinational corporations and non-governmental organisations; some authorities include natural disasters and events causing severe environmental damage in this category.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (/ˈzbɪɡnjɛv brɛˈʒɪnski/ ZBIG-nyev breh-ZHIN-skee;Polish: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński  [ˈzbʲiɡɲɛf kaˈʑimʲɛʂ bʐɛˈʑiɲskʲi]  Polish pronunciation ; born March 28, 1928) is a Polish-American political scientist and geostrategist, who served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966–68 and was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977–81. Brzezinski belongs to the realist school of international relations, standing in the geopolitical tradition of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman.

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 U.S. ally to an anti-Western Islamic Republic; encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union; the arming of the mujahideen in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

Brent

Brent is an Old English place name and surname. The place name can be from Celtic words meaning "holy one" (if it refers to the River Brent), or "high place", literally, "from a steep hill" (if it refers to the villages in Somerset and Devon, England) (Mills 1991). The surname often indicates that one's ancestors lived in a place called Brent.

Brent has also become a regularly used given name in some countries, being among the thousand most common names for boys born in the United States since 1933. When used as a given name today, Brent is sometimes a short form of Brenton, but this was probably not the original inspiration for Brent's use as a given name, since Brenton's own regular use as a first name came many years after Brent was established in that role.

References

A Conversation

A Conversation is a play by Australian author David Williamson. It was the second in his "Jack Manning trilogy" of plays about conferencing.

References