American political scientist and a Cold War-era White House foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzeziński has died at age 89.
“My father passed away peacefully tonight. He was known to his friends as Zbig, to his grandchildren as Chief and to his wife as the enduring love of her life. I just knew his as the most inspiring, loving and devoted father any girl could ever have,” Brzeziński’s daughter Mika wrote on Instagram early in the morning on May 27. Further reports note Brzeziński died at a hospital in Falls Church, Virginia.
Born in Warsaw in 1928 to a family of a Polish diplomat, he obtained a Ph.D. degree at Harvard University and devoted his life to U.S. foreign policies studies. From 1977-1981, Brzeziński served as national security adviser U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s, later joining the Pentagon strategy planning commission and foreign intelligence supervision in the 1980s.
During his long career, he gained a reputation of one of the most influential geopolitical strategists, and also one of the fiercest rivals of Communism and Soviet expansion in the world.
In post-Cold War time, Brzezinski became a dogged critic of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He strongly supported the EuroMaidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014 as a shift towards Western democracy and a break from the authoritarian Kremlin regime.
In 2006, he became an honorary professor at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
Amid Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its unleashing the war against the Donbas, Brzezinski warned of a possible new large-scale war in the heart of Europe and called Putin an “irrational megalomaniac leader.”
Although he was skeptical about the capabilities of Ukraine’s armed forces after they surrendered Crimea without a fight, Brzezinski later said he felt optimistic about reforms in the country’s military.
According to Brzezinski, Ukrainians deserve to be in Europe. He said they will get what they struggled for if they manage to fight graft. Russia would be forced to get over its loss of Ukraine, Brzezinski said in October 2014.
