Editing Zbigniew Brzezinski (section)

==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. [[Ronald Reagan]] invited him to stay on as his National Security Adviser, but Brzezinski declined, feeling that the new president needed a fresh perspective on which to build his foreign policy.<ref>{{cite news|date=May 29, 2017|title=Reagan poprosił Brzezińskiego, by został także jego doradcą|publisher=TVN24.pl|url=http://www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-ze-swiata,2/john-hamre-reagan-chcial-by-brzezinski-zostal-jego-doradca,743913.html|access-date=June 1, 2017}}</ref> He had mixed relations with the [[Reagan administration]]. On the one hand, he supported it as an alternative to the Democrats' [[pacifism]]. On the other hand, he also criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly black-and-white terms.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}}

By the 1980s, Brzezinski argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadowed communism's end.{{cn|date=September 2024}}

He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of [[martial law in Poland]] in 1981, and more so of the Western European acquiescence to its imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed U.S. vice president [[George H. W. Bush]] before his 1987 trip to Poland that aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.{{Citation needed|date=May 2017}}

In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President's [[Chemical warfare|Chemical Warfare]] Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the [[U.S. National Security Council]]–[[U.S. Department of Defense|Defense Department]] Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the [[President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=PRESIDENT'S FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE ADVISORY BOARD: Records, 1981-1989 |url=https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/public/archives/textual/smof/pfiab.pdf |website=Reagan Library Archives}}</ref>

In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force, endorsing Bush for president, and 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". Conflicts such as Nagorno-Karabakh crisis and Soviet attempts to reinstate its authority in [[January Events (Lithuania)|Lithuania]] and other republics were much less violent than Brzezinski and other observers anticipated.{{Citation needed|date=May 2017}} In the event, the Soviet system collapsed totally after the abortive [[August coup]] of 1991 launched against Gorbachev failed.

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#The Fall of the Wall|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".<ref>{{Cite magazine|last1=Talbott|first1=Strobe|author-link=Strobe Talbott|last2=Zintl|first2=Robert|date=December 18, 1989|title=Vindications of a hardliner|url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,959391,00.html|magazine=Time}}</ref>

In 1990, Brzezinski warned against post–Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the [[Gulf War]],{{Citation needed|date=May 2012}} arguing that the United States 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''.{{Citation needed|date=May 2017}}

Brzezinski was prominently critical of the [[Clinton administration]]'s hesitation to intervene against the [[Army of Republika Srpska|Serb forces]] in the [[Bosnian war]].<ref>[https://archive.today/20120715143345/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n32_v11/ai_17210365/ "Brzezinski on isolation: former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski warns of the failures of Clinton foreign policy"], ''Insight on the News'', August 21, 1995</ref> 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]]. He wrote in 1998 that "Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire."<ref>"[https://web.archive.org/web/20140228190911/http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-27/the-new-great-game-why-ukraine-matters-to-so-many-other-nations The New Great Game: Why Ukraine Matters to So Many Other Nations]". Bloomberg. February 27, 2014.</ref> In 1997 he advocated for a "loosely confederated Russia — composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic" as a "decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Brzezinski |first1=Zbigniew |title=A Geostrategy for Eurasia |url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/1997-09-01/geostrategy-eurasia |work=Foreign Affairs |date=1 September 1997}}</ref> He later came out in support of the [[1999 NATO bombing of Serbia]] during the [[Kosovo war]].<ref>[http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/4378 "A conversation about Kosovo with Zbigniew Brzezinski"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121008003709/http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/4378|date=October 8, 2012}} ''Charlie Rose'', March 25, 1999</ref>