Conclusions

Abstract

This study found that, despite Brzezinski’s attacks on Kissinger’s conceptions and approach to policymaking, they shared many views on world politics and strategy and tactics for achieving national goals. Both believed that international conflicts emanate from the divergent national interests. Conflict characterized Kissinger’s conception of peace/stability as well as his models of stable and revolutionary international systems. He conceived peace not as the avoidance of war but as stability based on an equilibrium of power and legitimacy; legitimacy being an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. In a stable system conflict is limited since states accept its framework and seek to adjust differences within it, while in a revolutionary system conflict is total since a major power is trying to change the system. Brzezinski did not explicitly define peace and did not develop models of international systems, but he shared Kissinger’s conception of peace and his belief that the revolutionary power is distinguished by its rejection of the existing international system and its search for absolute security/peace. Both agreed that the USSR and the PRC are revolutionary powers whose commitment to world-wide communist expansion has intensified traditional international conflicts. They also agreed that Soviet military power makes the USSR a greater threat to international stability than the PRC.