"You have to ask yourself, 'What was the desire of the people who, after more than 40 years of Soviet oppression, became free?' They didn’t want to be pawns between a residual West that ended somewhere on the borders of the old West Germany and a resurgent Russia. They wanted to be part of the democratic West and, eventually, of the European Union. Those are perfectly legitimate aspirations. This is no threat to Russia –- except to those Russians who cannot conceive of Russia as anything else but a dominant empire that rules not only over the Russian people but over those adjoining Russian territory."
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Academics from the United StatesPolitical scientists from the United StatesDiplomats of the United StatesGovernment ministersPoliticians from the United States
Original Language: English
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Interview in The Huffington Post - NATO Should Stop Putin From Restoring Czarist Empire, Zbigniew Brzezinski Says (September 3, 2014). Commenting on criticisms of NATO expansion to Eastern Europe.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski
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Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (March 28, 1928 - May 26, 2017) was a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor in the administration of President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
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