Green and Deadly Things

. A masterful and intimate biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser and one of America's leading geopolitical thinkers, by one of the best contemporary columnists and politicians. Brzezinski was a key architect of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which ended the Cold War. A native of Warsaw, the heart of turbulent Central Europe, Brzezinski turned his intense resentment at the destruction of his homeland at the hands of Nazi Germany and the Red Army into a relentless quest for freedom. Born in the year that Joseph Stalin consolidated power, and who died a few months after Donald Trump assumed the presidency, Brzezinski was influenced by, and in turn helped shape, the global power struggles of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As an advisor to the Presidents of the United States from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, and a leading foreign policy figure in the late 1970s under Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski turned his reputation as a scholar of Soviet affairs into influence in Washington. With Henry Kissinger, his archrival with whom he had a tense relationship, Brzezinski embodied the new generation of foreign-born scholars who were thriving in America's "Cold War university" and who were overthrowing the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant gentry in Washington who had long dominated American foreign policy. Brzezinski's influence, aided by his unusual friendship with Polish-born Pope John Paul II, stemmed from his knowledge of Moscow's "weak spot": the desire of its nationalities, such as the Ukrainians, and its satellite states, including Poland, to escape Moscow's grip. Neither a warmonger nor a pacifist, Brzezinski was a vocal critic of George W. Bush's war in Iraq and an early supporter of Obama. Because he bucked the trend in Washington by siding with factions, and was at times willing to abandon Democrats in favor of Republicans, Brzezinski is considered a marginal figure in history. Its historical role has been greatly underestimated. And in the almost movie-like course of his life can be found the grand narrative of the American century and the great power struggle that followed. About the Author Edward Luce Financial Times Edward Luce Edward Luce is the Financial Times' chief US affairs commentator and columnist. He is the author of three widely acclaimed books: The Decline of Western Liberalism (2017), A Time to Think: America in the Age of Decline (2012), and In Spite of It All: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007). He appears regularly on CNN, NPR, and MSNBC's "Morning Joe," as well