In a
book by french journalist Vincent Jauvert i'm reading, there is a transcript of an interview from 1998 with
Zbigniew Brzezinski:
When this interview came out in 1998, there was very little media coverage. Then, three years later, 9/11 happened, and someone reprinted the interview, which went viral for years - it is still often quoted today, a quarter of a century after its publication. Unfortunately, some have truncated the answers, others have changed the title of the article, in an attempt to implicate the CIA more than Brzezinski did in our exchange. When asked repeatedly about this interview, sometimes in a very aggressive manner, Zbigniew Brzezinski eventually blamed me for these alterations, for which I was in no way responsible. Here is the exact transcript of that interview, published on 15 January 1998:
Former CIA Director Robert Gates states in his memoir From the Shadows (Simon and Schuster): "US intelligence began assisting the Afghan mujahideen six months before the Soviet intervention. At the time, you were President Carter's security adviser, so you played a key role in this affair?
ZB: According to the official version of the story, CIA assistance to the Mujahideen began in 1980, that is, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. But the reality, kept secret until now, is quite different: it was indeed on 3 July 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive on clandestine assistance to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on that day, I wrote a note to the President explaining that I believed this assistance would lead to Soviet military intervention.
Despite this risk, you were in favour of this covert action. But perhaps you even wanted the Soviets to go to war and were trying to provoke it?
ZB: That's not quite the case. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we consciously increased the likelihood that they would do so.
When the Soviets justified their intervention by saying that they were fighting secret US interference in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. But there was some truth to it... Don't you regret anything today?
ZB: Regret what? This covert operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap, and you want me to regret that? The day the "Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in essence: "We now have the opportunity to give the USSR its Vietnam War." In fact, Moscow had to fight an unbearable war for the regime for almost ten years, a conflict that led to the demoralization and eventual breakup of the Soviet Empire."
You don't regret having promoted Islamic fundamentalism, having given weapons and advice to future terrorists?
What is more important in the history of the world? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few Islamic extremists or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?
"A few extremists"? But it is said over and over again: Islamic fundamentalism today represents a global threat!
Nonsense! It is said that the West should have a global policy towards Islamism. This is stupid: there is no such thing as global Islamism. Let's look at Islam rationally and not demagogically or emotionally. It is the world's leading religion with 1.5 billion followers. But what do fundamentalist Saudi Arabia, moderate Morocco, militaristic Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt or secularised Central Asia have in common? Nothing more than what unites the countries of Christendom...
After 9/11, some of Brzezinski's answers were considered glib, silly or irresponsible. It seems to me that they were perfectly in tune with the spirit of the times, which was America's strategic and moral hubris and which would lead to the moral and strategic disaster of the American invasion of Iraq five years later. VJ
/deepl
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