"The last time I met with Zbigniew Brzezinski in Washington 15 years ago. He was already hopelessly old at that time. But he met with the Ukrainian delegation quite vigorously and rigidly. He understood Ukraine better than anyone in Washington and knew well its problems and risks, but then the tone was set by our Ukrainian diaspora, which was densely populated in the State Department and in the media and public opinion of the United States. And he was already quite old and not under authority. Brzezinski was terribly displeased at meetings with us when Ukrainian politicians dumped their petty squabbles on him and complained to each other. He was irritated by the demonstration by our politicians coming to America, empty patriotism, Galician provincialism and demonstrative (unproductive) hatred of Russia. During our meetings, he demanded clear analyzes, political assessments of the situation and proposals. But our politicians simply did not understand what he wanted from them. In many ways, they remained pro-Soviet people who switched to the Ukrainian language and dressed in embroideries. The incompetence and provincialism of our politicians irritated him. Brzezinski, after all, was a wise and old man, and understood the value of time and political talent. Again and again he tried to somehow rally the Ukrainians to solve the acute problems of our country. I repeat, he understood the role of Ukraine in future geopolitical situations better than others in Washington, but even then he suspected that Ukraine would suffer for a long time. Alas, he was right.

The era of Zbigniew Brzezinski ended very long ago. But without this man, the West would not sooner be able to defeat the USSR. It was a born anti-communist, but terribly clever. Instead of banal anti-Sovietism and ideological theses that dominated the politics of the 20th century in the USSR, the US, Germany and Japan, he relied on geopolitical strategies. He proposed to defeat the USSR not by force of arms, as the American hawks reckoned, but through the struggle of the images of life of the USSR and the West, and also with the use of the fundamental contradictions of the Soviet system. And this he succeeded in. Without it, the West would never have dared to make the Polish Cardinal Wojtyla the Pope. It was a very strong and unexpected political move. He managed to find the weakest link in the chain of countries of the socialist camp led by the USSR - it was his homeland - Poland. It was he who invented the unity of the natural anti-Sovietism of the Poles, Catholicism and the working class (three in one!) In the activities of the non-opposition party, and the broad popular movement - "Solidarity". As you know, the results were staggering. The example and experience of Poland was later used in "Perestroika" and ended, first by the collapse of the socialist camp, and then by the USSR. By the way, only now, 40 years later, other powerful political forces have applied this systemic approach, in combining the ideology of anti-globalization, Islamic fundamentalism and social issues in the activities of Al Qaeda and IGIL.

Just as his theory of "local wars" that was actively used by the United States and the USSR in the 1970s has now revived in the 21st century, not from the US but from Putin's Russia in aggression against Ukraine and in Syria. In those years, the world could no longer afford the real threat of nuclear war, so the world battle of the USSR and the West went in several directions. This is an economic and scientific and technical competition between the two systems, the support of ideological terrorist organizations, the arms race and the practice of local wars (Vietnam, the Middle East, Angola and Afghanistan). As we can see, the political history of the world is moving in a spiral, and what Brzezinski struggled with all his life again threatens the whole world. But politician and political scientist of the scale of Zbigniew Brzezinski already or not yet, "- summed up Nebozhenko.