We owe radical Islamist militancy to Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who passed away on May 26, 2017 at the age of 89, was one of the U.S.'s most highly praised foreign and security policy gurus of the past half-century.

Considered the "Democrats' answer to the Republicans' Henry Kissinger" in the early stages of his career, in the Cold War atmosphere of the late 1960s, Brzezinski was a staunch supporter of the "Rollback" policy of Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles. That policy held that antagonism would only push Eastern Europe closer to the Soviet Union, and Brzezinski became one of the supporters of the "détente" policy within U.S. administration circles in the 1970s.

In the meantime he maintained his contacts with Eastern Europe, especially in his native Poland. The Polish service of the CIA-operated Munich-based Radio Free Europe (RFE) was one of those key channels from the 1950s. Another contact from the 1960s was Adam Minchnik, who would later become one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement in Poland together with Lech Walesa. Solidarity played a key role in the disintegration of the Soviet Union, along with the election of Polish bishop Karol Jozef Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in October 1978. 

That was the year when Brzezinski's political views started to change. He was appointed as National Security Adviser by U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1977, but by the following year - while Carter's Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was pressing to maintain the "détente" policy of avoiding antagonism and promoting strategic arms limitation talks with the Soviets - Brzezinski was arguing that too much détente had allowed the Soviets to gain ground in the Middle East and Africa. Some antagonism might therefore be needed, especially in the Middle East.

Two dramatic...