Abstract
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's Security Adviser between 1977 and 1981, is currently a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a Professor at Johns Hopkins University and used to teach at Harvard and Columbia.
‘The Grand Chessboard – American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives' was published in 1997. It is one of the most important books of international relations published after the end of the Cold War. Brzezinski's approach is different from Fukuyama's and Huntington's. According to Francis Fukuyama, the end of the Cold War is also the end of history (The End of History and the Last Man, 1992) because it generates a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government.
This is not the point of view of Samuel P. Huntington, who still considers the contemporary world as conflictual; instead of USA vs. USSR, it is going to be the West vs. the Islamic and Confucian world. Brzezinski does not try to describe the hypothetical new nature of international relations. His ambition is much more pragmatic.
“The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power [...]. It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book.”
This thesis is presented in the introduction. It is then developed in six chapters. The first chapter presents the characteristics of the American hegemony, which is a “hegemony of a new type”. The second chapter depicts “the Eurasian chessboard”. The third chapter qualifies Western Europe as “the democratic bridgehead”. The fourth chapter shows “the black hole” left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fifth chapter presents the geopolitical stakes of “the Eurasian Balkans”. The final chapter presents the US need for “the Far Eastern anchor”.
Tags: Francis Fukuyama,Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘The Grand Chessboard – American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives'
