Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Adviser to former US President Jimmy Carter, passed away on 26 May 2017 in Virginia. He was 89.
Brzezinski served as the National Security Adviser to Carter during chaotic years of the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s.
Born on 28 March 1928, Zbigniew Brzezinski was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counsellor to former US President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968.
From 1977 to 1981, he served as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor.
Major foreign policy events during his time in office included:- The normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China,
- The signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty,
- The brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran from an important US ally to an anti-Western Islamic Republic,
- Encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and
Emphasizing human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union, among others.
He was one of the few foreign policy experts to warn against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 1981, President Carter presented Brzezinski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
