‘Zbig' Review: Kissinger's Chief Rival

Wall Street Journal

13-05-2025

Since the creation of the position of White House national-security adviser, more than two dozen people have filled the position. The two men best known for the job, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, held it in the 1970s. Both seemed straight from Hollywood central casting. They were foreign-born, Harvard-trained academics with elaborate geostrategic theories. Both dominated the administrations in which they served, and both outshined the secretaries of state with whom they worked. Kissinger has been the subject of dozens of books, but Brzezinski, his great rival, has received markedly less biographical attention.
Edward Luce, an editor and columnist with the Financial Times, corrects some of this disparity with 'Zbig.' There is a lot of ground to cover, and Mr. Luce does so ably in 560 tightly packed pages. Born in Poland, Brzezinski moved to Canada when his father, a diplomat, was posted to Montreal in 1938. Brzezinski published his first major work in 1960—'The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict'—and he was continually on the foreign-policy scene in one way or another from then until his death in 2017.
Mr. Luce is a regular guest on the show MSNBC's 'Morning Joe,' which features Joe Scarborough and his wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, Zbig's daughter. The father appeared frequently on the program, showing off his quick and biting wit. In his first on-air encounter with Mr. Scarborough, on the subject of Israel, Brzezinski told the host, 'You know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you.'
That Brzezinski would be both talented and difficult was foreseeable from his childhood. While Brzezinski's Canadian classmates listed as their interests 'Hollywood,' 'Eating,' 'Telling tales' and 'Yawning'—Zbig, age 10 or 11, wrote 'Europe (foreign affairs).' His rough edges also manifested early. Brzezinski's own mother wrote in her diary when he was 6, 'Zbysio, my son, why must you be so mean, so prickly.'