The Brzezinski/Obama Axis

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Barack Obama has chosen Zbigniew Brzezinski to advise him on Middle East policy. This bodes ill, and not only for Israel.

Back in 1985, I wrote an article on Brzezinski for The Intercollegiate Review. Before citing some of the more relevant passages of that article, it should be borne in mind that Brzezinski, a political scientist, served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. One does not have to read Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid to know that Carter is an anti-Semite. Brzezinski has earned the same reputation.

Not only has Brzezinski publicly defended the anti-Semitic canard that the relationship between America and Israel is the result of Jewish pressure, but he also signed a letter demanding dialogue with Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction. It behooves us to understand the mentality of Obama’s Middle East adviser—and more deeply than our so-called experts.

Long before he became Mr. Carter’s national security adviser, Brzezinski rejected what he and most political scientists term the “black-and-white” image of the American and Soviet political systems. “This image,” he says, “is held by traditional anti-Communists.” Brzezinski thus affirmed he is not quite an anti-Communist. In fact, he deplores anti-Communism as “a relic of the Cold War, of the age of ideology.”

Not only did Brzezinski reject the “black-and-white” image of the American and Soviet forms of government, he rejects the very notion of good and bad regimes! If you are shocked by Brzezinski’s moral relativism, ponder Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s confession in an interview with Ha’aretz in 2002 that his son Omri taught him “not to think in terms of black and white”—a statement uttered while suicide bombers were reducing Jews to body parts.

The influence of political scientists like Brzezinski is wide and deep. His moral relativism or neutrality prompts politicians to negotiate with and appease terrorist regimes. Mr. Obama may not be a moral relativist, but with Brzezinski as his adviser, he will be more disposed than other presidential candidates to appease Iran.

Since Brzezinski is a moral relativist, he denies the existence of objective or transhistorical standards for determining whether the way of life of one nation, group, or individual is morally superior to that of another. He is quite at home with the moral equivalency that has shaped US foreign policy toward Israel and Islamic dictatorships.

Brzezinski views history through the lens of Marxism, which, despite its atheism, has much in common with Islam. Both Communism and Islam are universalistic ideologies that reject the idea of the nation-state. Both do not regard adherence to treaties between nations as obligatory. Both Communism and Islam are militaristic and expansionist creeds that do not recognize international borders. Brzezinski’s globalism has become evident in Jimmy Carter. Under Brzezinski’s influence, Carter lowered the defense budget and pursued a soft line toward the Soviet Union. We can expect an Obama White House to pursue a very soft line toward Islam.

With Brzezinski as his national security adviser, Carter facilitated the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran. The Carter-Brzezinski axis is very much responsible for the Islamic revolution—the most dangerous revolution that has occurred in human history, a revolution that threatens the existence of every nation-state.

As a crypto-Marxist, Brzezinski deplores the nation-state. His book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, declares that “With the splitting and eclipse of Christianity man began to worship a new deity: the nation. The nation became a mystical object claiming man’s love and loyalty. The nation-state along with the doctrine of national sovereignty fragmented humanity. It could not provide a rational framework within which the relations between nations could develop.” Brzezinski sees the nation-state as having only partly increased man’s social consciousness and only partially alleviated the human condition.

“That is why Marxism,” he contends, “represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing and man’s universal vision.” Marxism, he says, “was the most powerful doctrine for generating a universal and secular human consciousness.” Embodied in the Soviet Union, however, Communism became the dogma of a party and, under Stalin, “was wedded to Russian nationalism.”

Although Brzezinski poses as a humanist, he makes a most inhumane statement by saying that: “although Stalinism may have been a needless tragedy, for both the Russian people and Communism as an ideal, there is the intellectually tantalizing possibility that for the world at large it was … a blessing in disguise.”

Brzezinski’s political mentality flagrantly contradicts the Judeo-Christian foundations of the American Republic. His mode of thought, like that of countless other American academics, is anti-American. An Obama-Brzezinski axis thus has revolutionary significance. It might accelerate the de-Americanization and decline of the United States.