The Myth of the Grand Chessboard: Geopolitics and Imperial Folie de Grandeur
Brzezinski himself has recognized how his gratuitous machinations in Afghanistan in 1978-79 produced the responses of al Qaeda and jihadi terrorism. Asked in 1998 whether he regretted his adventurism, Brzezinski replied:
"Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'"
Nouvel Observateur: "And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?"
Brzezinski: "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"
When he was asked whether Islamic fundamentalism represented a world menace, Brzezinski replied, "Nonsense!"
* Le Nouvel Observateur, January 15-21, 1998. In his relentless determination to weaken the Soviet Union, Brzezinski also persuaded Carter to end U.S. sanctions against Pakistan for its pursuit of nuclear weapons (David Armstrong and Joseph J. Trento, America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise (Steerforth, 2007). Thus Brzezinski’s obsession with the Soviet Union helped produce, as unintended byproducts, both al Qaeda and the Islamic atomic arsenal. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: basic Books), xiii, 30, 40.
[10] Memorandum of February 18, 1992,
https://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb245/index.htm
[11] For specific parallels to The Grand Chessboard, see Scott, Road to 9/11, 191-2.
[12] "Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance," DefenseLink,
https://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45289, emphasis added.