Zbigniew Brzezinski, With Edward Luce

The President’s Inbox

Council on Foreign Relations

Politics, News:politics, News

4.5 • 698 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Edward Luce, U.S. national editor and a columnist for the Financial Times, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss what we can learn from the life, career, and writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter. Mentioned on the Episode: Edward Luce, In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism Edward Luce, Zbig, The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski: America's Great Power Prophet Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives For an episode transcript and show notes, visit The President’s Inbox at: https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/tpi/zbigniew-brzezinski-edward-luce

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the President's inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Marion David Boyes Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S.
0:09.5	Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is, the big new
0:15.6	Brunsky. With me to discuss what we can learn from the career and work of Zabigna Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, is Edward Luce.
0:33.2	Ed is the U.S. national editor and a columnist for the Financial Times.
0:44.9	A longtime journalist, he spent a year as a speechwriter during the Clinton administration for Larry Summers, the secretary of the treasury.
0:55.7	Ed is also a frequent guest on Morning Joe on MSNBC, and he has written four acclaimed books, one of which has just been released, Zabig, the life of Zabig Nubrizinski,
1:00.9	America's Great Power Profit. Ed, thank you for joining me on the President's Inbox.
1:02.8	Always a pleasure to be with you, Jim.
1:08.4	Ed, I want to congratulate you on the publication of Zabig. I was just looking at one review that called it magnificent. I think that's obviously
1:12.5	the kind of adjective any author wants to hear about his work. Where I'd like to start, though,
1:18.2	is with a little story, which is yesterday I was talking to a recent college graduate.
1:23.1	I said I was sitting down to talk to you about Zubigzynski, and the recent college graduate said to me,
1:29.0	who's that? So perhaps we could sort of set the table for maybe some of our younger members
1:33.8	listening to us as to exactly who's Zabigrishinsky was. Yeah, that's, I think, the correct starting
1:40.3	point. And I always applaud students and, and journalists who asked the most direct
1:45.7	question. And the answer to that is he was one of America's, you know, grand strategists during
1:51.7	the Cold War. He was National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter. But before and after that,
1:58.0	very much the rival to Henry Kissinger.
2:01.5	Some people have sort of compared that relationship, which spanned decades and was what I
2:06.8	call a frenomyship, to Amadeus Mozart with Salieri, and that Brzynski was always a bit behind.
2:14.3	But I think the reason why I believe this biography is merited is not just
2:19.6	because he hasn't had a full life biography, Brzynski, but because his contribution to the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Council on Foreign Relations, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Council on Foreign Relations and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.