China ties are too valuable for the US to throw away on a whim
Zbigniew Brzezinski explains why Washington needs Beijing to assert itself globally, in a recent interview that also covers alleged Russian meddling in the US election, Trump and Taiwan
You’ve long spoken about the “political awakenings”, from the Arab Spring to the Maidan protests in Ukraine, as a new element affecting world affairs. Now, a different form of awakening is sweeping Western democracies – populism that seems to have an affinity for Vladimir Putin. What is that about?
I think the affinity for Putin is overblown, largely promoted by self-serving journalists. Certainly, some individual leaders of these movements profess admiration for his strongman approach to governance, but I see little evidence of some kind of popular groundswell in any serious country. Populist movements in the European democracies are the result of confusion and liberation. Europeans are liberated from the past of a continent divided by the cold war and now integrated economically, which has brought new challenges.
So there is confusion, and little agreement, about where they are headed in the future. As a consequence, we are getting a hysterical mess in which the recourse to violence, I’m afraid, will play an ever greater role. The situation will become more dangerous as time goes on.
Much of the above is also applicable to the current state of the American democracy. Instead of clear-headed leadership, we have sloganeering and an intensifying inclination towards domestic violence.
The CIA and FBI have accused Russia of trying to tip the recent US election in Donald Trump’s favour. President Obama has implicated Putin directly. Is Russia the culprit? Does Putin play that kind of direct role?
