Near the end of his presidency, Clinton did offer a comprehensive Middle East peace formula that was calibrated to moderates in both communities, but the Palestinian leadership insisted that the package was never spelled out in sufficient detail to give them enough confidence to sign onto it. According to Brzezinski, Clinton left office with the Israeli-Palestinian relationship worse off and the Middle East more volatile than when he has assumed the presidency.“His casual style and strategic timidity hurt the U.S.’s long-term interests, and he didn’t leave a historically grand imprint on the world,” Brzezinski charged. But Brzezinski saves some of his sharpest attacks for the younger Bush, blasting his presidency as a crushing failure. George W. Bush assumed office focusing on missile defense, military transformation and big power relationships, paying little attention to fighting terrorism or other transnational challenges. But after Sept. 11, 2001, Brzezinski says Bush became so preoccupied with terrorism that he lost sight of other issues. Brzezinski describes Bush’s decision to invade Iraq as a catastrophic mistake that has seriously damaged America’s image and power in the world. It has also been, in Brzezinski’s view, a geopolitical disaster that has diverted resources from the real terrorist threat brewing in Afghanistan and conversely increased terrorism in many parts of the world, most notably in Iraq. “We started a war of choice and on top of that, we started it on false assumptions which became politically effective because of widespread demagogy exploiting the element of fear,” he said.“September 11th was a horrible event, but the administration has certainly exploited it to instill a degree of fear that is historically unprecedented. Never in its entire history has America been so prone to fear and so subjected to such intensive brainwashing that we are going to get hit at any moment.And the fear of the unknown is the worst of all.” Brzezinski also disagrees with Bush for framing the battle against terrorism as a war. “The so-called war on terrorism is a fiction to some extent because the enemy is not a technique. The enemy has to be identified. It has been waged in America in such a way that has made it much more difficult to adopt a steady, persuasive and constructive world course which others could follow willingly and not by intimidation,” he said. The cumulative effect of these three presidencies has been less than inspiring, Brzezinski laments, and the nation’s moral standing has been badly tarnished, as has its reputation for basic competence.“The United States’s capacity to mobilize, inspire, point in a shared direction and shape global realities has significantly declined,” he concludes. Brzezinski says the United States has squandered two grand opportunities since fall of the Berlin Wall. First, it failed to capitalize on its post-Cold War victory to shape an Atlantic community with a shared strategic focus. Brzezinski notes that by not doing more to help the European Union and NATO expand, the United States missed an opportunity to create a transatlantic decision-making process to address peacekeeping and nonproliferation issues. Second, the country failed to move decisively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which could have made the Middle East more congenial to the United States. All of this has added up to a string of major geopolitical trends lining up against the United States, Brzezinski says, citing Islam’s growing hostility to the West, an explosive Middle East, an Iran dominant in the Persian Gulf, a disaffected Europe, a resentful Russia, China’s creation of an East Asian community, a more isolated Japan, a strong wave of anti-Americanism in Latin America, and the breakdown of the nonproliferation regime. Nevertheless, Brzezinski believes the United States will have another chance to lead the world again, in part because no other power is capable of playing the role that America can with its worldwide political clout, global military reach, powerful economy and peerless technological innovation. But he cautions that hard work lies ahead.“It will take years of deliberate effort and genuine skill to restore America’s political credibility and legitimacy,” he said, admitting that he’s not sure if the United States is structurally equipped for such an effort.“During the Cold War, we had a coherent policy in response to an overwhelm•ing challenge that was easy to perceive. Today the problems are so complex and so manifold and we’re still a democracy. Generating a sustainable and widely supported course of action is very difficult.” As a start, Brzezinski says the next U.S. president must describe to the American people the enormous challenges they face. “The public needs to understand the interrelationships between the complex traditional problems of power, such as those in the Middle East, and the new global problems that are beginning to confront us on an ominous scale — environment, climate, starvation, inequality — all in the context of a stirred-up and politically awakened mankind that craves dignity.That is a monumental task of public education that only a far-sighted and historically alert president can do,” he explained. “We’re now in a qualitatively new historical era and we can’t protect ourselves by becoming a gated community,” Brzezinski continued. “We have to be globally engaged, but not by domination but by persuading and by engaging others in a give and take.The world has become politically awakened. It’s a totally new era in world history. Never before has the world’s population become so politically activated as it is now.” Brzezinski was one of the first heavyweights in the U.S. foreign policy establishment to support Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for president. “I like and have enormous respect for John McCain. He is a true American hero. But he is a man of a previous era and I think it’s very difficult for him to break out of the mold,” Brzezinski said.“Sen. Obama is the kind of person who has the potential to do what is necessary.That is to say, sensing himself what is new about the historical era and seriously being able to articulate it effectively to the American public so he is able to bring people together on a trans-partisan basis.” But whether the next president is Obama or McCain, Brzezinski says the United States — and the world — is in desperate need of a successful U.S. president. “It is essential that America’s second chance after 2008 be more successful than the first — for there will be no third chance. America urgently needs to fashion a truly post-Cold War globalist foreign policy that tangibly relates American power to the aspirations of a politically awakened humanity.” John Shaw is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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