Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser in Jimmy Carter’s presidency before becoming a well-known expert and intellectual on foreign policy, died on Friday. His daughter, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, announced his death on social media. “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 him as the most inspiring, loving and devoted father any girl could ever have,” she wrote on Instagram.
Brzezinski served all four years of Carter’s administration and is best remembered for leading a hardline against the Soviet Union while pushing for closer relations with China. He also was the one who advocated for a commando mission to rescue the 52 American hostages held in the Iran hostage crisis that ended in failure.
Carter issued a statement praising Brzezinski shortly after his death. “Rosalynn and I are saddened,” Carter said. “He was an important part of our lives for more than four decades and was a superb public servant.” Former President Obama also mourned Brzezinski. “His influence spanned several decades, and I was one of several Presidents who benefited from his wisdom and counsel,” Obama said. “You always knew where Zbig stood, and his ideas and advocacy helped shape decades of American national security policy.”
Brzezinski endorsed Obama and had recently become a vocal critic of his successor, President Donald Trump. The last tweet he wrote on May 4 illustrates his frustration with the current White House: “Sophisticated US leadership is the sine qua non of a stable world order. However, we lack the former while the latter is getting worse.”
In February, Brzezinski wondered: “Does America have a foreign policy right now?”
