MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. In its new National Security Strategy, the United States has markedly diverged from expansionist foreign policy principles laid out by American politician and political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski in the 1990s, Fyodor Lukyanov, research director of the Valdai Discussion Club, said.
On December 5, the White House released an updated National Security Strategy of the United States. The document declares Washington’s departure from believing it is solely responsible for the world order, indicates a desire to achieve strategic stability in relations with Russia and notes the remaining contradictions with Europe.
"Brzezinski’s 'grand chessboard' metaphor has been so ingrained in our memories since the 1990s that it is mentioned at any opportunity. He passed away eight years ago. I think and as far as I remember he was in his right mind until the very last minute. Just a few days before his death, he participated in a conference in Washington. If someone had told him back then that in a few years the US National Security Strategy would state, firstly, that NATO should not expand - it’s enough, time to stop - and secondly, that civilizational factors should be taken into account, as it happened in this document, I think he wouldn't have believed it or would have passed away in a state of deep disappointment," Lukyanov noted at the Valdai conference titled "Security in Eurasia: From Concept to Practice."
According to him, such a shift was "hard to imagine" just recently. "Nevertheless, it is happening. It doesn’t mean that this document, released in the US, is a direct guide to action. Everything will change. But the very fact that it is being discussed now at a quite high level as a matter of course demonstrates how much things have changed. And, apparently, everything will continue to change," the expert concluded.
"And in this context, our wonderful intellectual dreams about Eurasian security, which we have been pursuing for the past few years, are turning from mere exercises into a necessity," he continued. "How will this gigantic territory, where one way or another so many issues, conflicts and opportunities converge, be organized? No one will succeed in bypassing the Eurasian mass, the Eurasian massive territory. It is always part of any strategy, one way or another."
In this regard, the Eurasian community is only in the very beginning of this journey, Lukyanov believes. "It is quite difficult even to formulate the specific objectives facing Eurasian security. And it is even more unclear how to combine them. Some people say that there were successful examples of European security 30, 40, 50 years ago, so why don’t we try to transfer them to the Eurasian territory? In my opinion, it is a complete dead end, nothing transfers anywhere," the expert noted. "That won’t happen this way. And how it will happen is, in fact, why we have gathered here today," he said, addressing the conference.
Brzezinski’s concept
The idea of American politician and political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski that the West should not allow Ukraine to remain in Russia’s sphere of influence, because it would supposedly cement Moscow’s "imperial status" and enable it to confront the West, was first expressed in his seminal article The Premature Partnership in 1994 and developed in The Grand Chessboard in 1997. The book became one of the foundations of Atlantic elite’s conceptual vision of relations with Russia, the goal was to establish sustainable control of the West over the entire Eurasian post-Soviet territory.
Brzezinski, in particular, believed that if Ukraine were completely separated from Russia, it would weaken the latter and supposedly lead to the "democratization" of Ukraine. He naturally relied on economic data on Ukraine in the 1990s, including its enormous post-Soviet economic capacities and 40-million population. These ideas seeped into the worldviews of the modern Euro-Atlantic elite, including EU Defense and Space Commissioner Andrius Kubilius and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.