Edward Luce’s Zbig and the Sanitising of Imperialist Strategy-A Hagiography for the “Cold War Prophet

Edward Luce’s Zbig, published in 2025 and widely praised across the American foreign-policy community, is more than just a biography. It serves as an ideological gesture aligned with Washington’s growing rivalry with Russia and China. Positive reviews in Foreign Policy, celebratory discussions at the Aspen Institute, and its strategic rise on the New York Times bestseller list highlight the book's political role more than its content.

Luce, a Financial Times columnist and descendant of British colonial officials, creates a text that enhances the self-image of America's ruling class. He portrays Zbigniew Brzezinski not as a supporter of imperialist violence, but as a “prophet” whose warnings shed light on current threats. This approach is part of a larger effort to rehabilitate Cold War ideologues, framing them as valuable sources of insight for today's great-power conflicts.

This review assesses Zbig not merely as a historical contribution but as a political artefact. It contends that Luce’s book sanitises Brzezinski’s reputation, hides the human toll of his policies, and reflects the liberal-imperialist intelligentsia’s ideological views. Zbig is a hagiography that elevates imperialist strategy to a form of statesmanship and portrays mass violence as just the unavoidable noise of geopolitical strategy.

The marketing around Zbig reveals much about its intentions. Brzezinski is portrayed as a “great power prophet," someone who “saw the Soviet threat more clearly than most". His “diligence” and “faith in America" are framed as qualities to emulate today. Susan Glasser’s jacket blurb openly states the political aim: this is “history that matters more than ever,” considering the "resurgent threat from Russia." Such language is deliberate. It positions Brzezinski as a figure whose Cold War-era worldview can be adapted for current times. Ultimately, Luce’s biography is part of a larger ideological effort to justify the resurgence of great-power rivalry as a natural aspect of American foreign policy.

Timing is crucial. As Washington expands its involvement in a NATO-Russia proxy conflict in Ukraine and prepares for possible clashes with China, Brzezinski’s revival supports these actions by framing them as part of a long-standing tradition of strategic foresight. Eliminating Luce’s overly admiring tone clarifies his career’s focus. A member of Poland’s diplomatic elite and strongly opposed to Moscow, he turned personal animosity into a geopolitical tactic. His transition from academia to the National Security Council stemmed from his ability to identify and exploit global tensions to maintain American dominance.

Brzezinski pressed the Carter administration to back the Shah’s suppression of the revolution, endorsing a brutal crackdown that led to thousands of deaths. His stance was driven by imperialist motives rather than democratic ideals: safeguarding a vital American ally. Brzezinski’s significant role in covertly supplying arms to the Afghan mujahideen defines his legacy. He later claimed that he began supporting Islamist fighters before the Soviet invasion not to stop it, but to lure Moscow into a Vietnam-like conflict. This strategy resulted in a prolonged war that claimed over a million Afghan lives, devastated the country’s social fabric, and created the conditions for al-Qaeda’s rise. Luce treats this as strategic brilliance. In reality, it was a policy of calculated devastation.

Guatemala

Brzezinski supported counterinsurgency programs that empowered death‑squad regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere. These campaigns of terror claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Luce relegates this violence to background detail, treating it as an unfortunate but necessary component of Cold War strategy. None of this amounts to prophecy. It is the record of a man who treated entire populations as expendable instruments in a geopolitical chess match.

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s involvement in Guatemala is one of the least‑discussed but most revealing episodes of his tenure as Carter’s National Security Advisor. It exposes the core contradiction of Carter‑era foreign policy: human‑rights rhetoric at the podium, counterinsurgency strategy in practice.

By the late 1970s, Guatemala was in the grip of a state terror apparatus. The army and security forces, long supported by U.S. training and intelligence, were carrying out assassinations, disappearances, and scorched‑earth campaigns against indigenous communities and leftist movements. Publicly, the Carter administration expressed concern. Privately, it saw Guatemala as a strategic bulwark against revolutionary movements sweeping Central America.

Brzezinski’s own meetings with Guatemalan officials capture this duality. He spoke of “profound change” in the region and insisted the “status quo cannot be maintained,” but framed reform not as justice for Guatemala’s population, but as a way to prevent revolution and preserve U.S. influence. His language was liberal; the underlying logic was imperial.

The archival record goes further. In 1980, Brzezinski chaired a Special Coordination Committee meeting reviewing CIA covert action proposals for Central America, including Guatemala. The committee approved expanded operations in neighbouring countries and discussed similar programs for Guatemala, deferring only pending field assessment. The intent was clear: prepare covert action “in good time” so it could “have impact as situations become more critical.”

Guatemala was not an afterthought. It was part of a regional counterinsurgency strategy designed to contain social revolution through intelligence liaison, media manipulation, and support for authoritarian allies.

Brzezinski’s role in Guatemala shows the continuity of U.S. policy: behind the language of democracy lay a commitment to preserving American dominance, even at the cost of mass repression. Any honest assessment of his legacy must include Guatemala—not as a footnote, but as a case study in the lethal convergence of liberal rhetoric and imperial strategy.

Luce’s main narrative contrast is between Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger. Brzezinski is depicted as the idealistic liberal internationalist, a principled strategist committed to democracy and human rights. Conversely, Kissinger is shown as a cynical realist. However, this distinction dissolves on closer examination, as both men worked within a shared ruling-class consensus: preserving American dominance at all costs. Their differences were mainly stylistic rather than substantial.

Brzezinski’s language on democracy acted as a cover for policies similar to Kissinger’s, including coups, covert operations, proxy wars, and the systematic suppression of movements challenging US dominance. Luce’s biography tones down Brzezinski’s own candid admissions regarding the strategic use of violence, portraying him more as a hesitant strategist than a passionate architect of intervention.

The idea of the “good strategist” is central to establishment historiography. It enables liberal-imperialist thinkers to disassociate from the more openly cynical Cold War figures while maintaining the core reasoning behind American dominance.

The Grand Chessboard: Empire Without Apology

Luce’s book covers Brzezinski’s later work as a consultant and geostrategist only briefly. However, publications like The Grand Chessboard are crucial for understanding his perspective. In these, he openly guides policymakers on managing Eurasia as a strategic battleground for American influence, viewing nations and peoples as pieces to be moved. This was not a shift from his earlier work but its logical extension. Brzezinski’s worldview remained consistent: he saw the world as an arena of strategic rivalry, with the United States needing to lead. Luce’s purposeful omission avoids challenging the central myth of the liberal prophet, as recognising Brzezinski’s clear imperialism would weaken it.

The core issue with Zbig is methodological. Luce reduces the extensive violence of late-20th-century US foreign policy to a psychological story of a talented émigré navigating bureaucratic rivalries and social intrigue. The millions affected by Brzezinski's policies are just distant numbers. This reflects the usual approach of establishment biographies: history told from the perspective of the State Department, strategic insights emphasised, human suffering downplayed, and imperial violence depicted as necessary.

Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard stands as one of the clearest articulations of post‑Cold War American imperial strategy, precisely because it dispenses with the usual moralising language of “democracy promotion” and speaks in the idiom of raw geopolitical power. Written at the height of the unipolar moment, the book codifies a worldview long embedded in the U.S. national security establishment: that global stability is synonymous with American primacy, and that primacy must be actively maintained through strategic intervention across Eurasia.

At the centre of Brzezinski’s argument is the conviction that Eurasia — stretching from Western Europe to China is the decisive arena of world politics. Whoever controls or dominates this vast landmass controls the world. The United States, as the sole superpower of the 1990s, must therefore prevent the emergence of any rival capable of consolidating Eurasian power. This is not framed as a temporary necessity but as an enduring imperative. The book identifies “geostrategic players” (Russia, China, Germany, France) and “geopolitical pivots” (Ukraine, Azerbaijan, South Korea, among others) whose alignment or destabilisation can shift the continental balance. These states are treated less as sovereign actors than as pieces on a board whose movement must be managed to preserve U.S. hegemony.

Brzezinski’s earlier role in arming the Afghan mujahideen foreshadows the logic of The Grand Chessboard. The covert war in Afghanistan was designed to weaken the Soviet Union indirectly, using local forces as instruments in a larger geopolitical contest. In the book, this method becomes a general principle: exploit regional conflicts, cultivate dependencies, and intervene militarily, economically, or politically wherever a rival might gain strategic advantage. The rhetoric of human rights or democracy is largely absent; what matters is maintaining the structural conditions of American dominance.

The enduring significance of The Grand Chessboard lies in its candour. It reveals the continuity of U.S. strategy from the Cold War to the present: containing Russia, managing Europe, encircling China, and treating the post‑Soviet space as a zone of strategic manipulation. In doing so, it exposes the imperial logic beneath the liberal veneer of American foreign policy. Far from being an artefact of the 1990s, Brzezinski’s doctrine remains a blueprint for the geopolitical interventions of the twenty‑first century.

Against Myth, For Historical Truth

The timing of Zbig's publication and recognition is intentional. Brzezinski’s rehabilitation aims to serve immediate political goals by normalising great-power conflicts as a typical role for American leaders, framing Cold War strategies as models for current policies, hiding the severe human toll of the interventions he supported, and providing ideological justification for escalating tensions with Russia and China. In this context, Luce’s biography contributes to a greater ideological effort: creating a historical narrative that supports today’s imperialist ambitions.

A true assessment of Brzezinski’s career and the imperialist violence it represents must come from outside the framework favoured by Luce and his endorsing institutions. The goal isn’t to rehabilitate Cold War strategists but to reveal the ongoing imperialist logic from the late twentieth century to today. Brzezinski wasn’t a prophet; he was an empire technician. Luce’s biography reads like a hagiography meant to hide this truth, especially when the ruling class needs such concealment.

📚 Primary Sources

• Luce, Edward. Zbig: The Strategy and Statecraft of Zbigniew Brzezinski. New York: Basic Books, 2018. (Authorised biography; central to your critique.)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York: Basic Books, 1997. (Foundational statement of post‑Cold War U.S. strategy.)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983. (Carter-era policymaking from Brzezinski’s perspective.)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power. New York: Basic Books, 2012. (Late-career restatement of his geopolitical worldview.)

📚 Secondary Sources: U.S. Imperial Strategy & Geopolitics

General Imperial Strategy

• Bacevich, Andrew. American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. Henry Holt, 2000.
• Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. W.W. Norton, 2001.
• Gowan, Peter. The Global Gamble: Washington’s Faustian Bid for World Dominance. Verso, 1999.
• Harvey, David. The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Geopolitical Theory (Brzezinski’s Intellectual Lineage)

• Mackinder, Halford. “The Geographical Pivot of History.” The Geographical Journal 23, no. 4 (1904): 421–437.
• Spykman, Nicholas. The Geography of the Peace. Harcourt, Brace, 1944.
• Kissinger, Henry. Diplomacy. Simon & Schuster, 1994.

📚 Afghanistan, Cold War Covert Strategy, and Brzezinski’s Role

• Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden. Penguin, 2004.
• Cordovez, Diego, and Selig S. Harrison. Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal. Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Yale University Press, 2000.

📚 Critical Marxist & Left Analyses of U.S. Strategy

• Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. Metropolitan Books, 2003.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Empire of Capital. Verso, 2003.
• Callinicos, Alex. Imperialism and Global Political Economy. Polity, 2009.
• Ali, Tariq. The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. Verso, 2002.
• Prashad, Vijay. The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. New Press, 2007.

📚 Useful Scholarly Articles

• Gaddis, John Lewis. “A Grand Strategy of Transformation.” Foreign Policy, no. 133 (2002): 50–57.
• Cox, Michael. “The Empire’s Back in Town: Or America’s Imperial Temptation — Again.” International Affairs 80, no. 1 (2004): 1–27.
• Smith, Tony. “The End of the Unipolar Moment? Obama and the World.” Survival 52, no. 5 (2010): 75–96.

📚 On Political Biography as Ideology

• Schudson, Michael. The Power of News. Harvard University Press, 1995.
• Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent. Pantheon, 1988.
• Gitlin, Todd. The Whole World Is Watching. University of California Press, 1980.