The Grand Chessboard

Reagan always gets the credit, but it was bipartisan.

Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Grand Chessboard strategy wrote a, wrote a bestselling book like twenty years ago about it called The Grand Chessboard.

They went in under Jimmy Carter and paid the Afghans billions, and that was billions then, so we're talking like ten times that, to start killing and attacking the Russians and, who had deals with the government, and kicked the government and the Russians out.

And then even when the Russians were kicked out, they started attacking up into the Russian border to lure the Russians in as a setup.

Reagan always gets the credit, but it was bipartisan.

Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard Strategy wrote a best-selling book like 20 years ago about it called The Grand Chessboard.

they went in under Jimmy Carter and paid the Afghans billions, and that was billions then, so we're talking like 10 times that, to start killing and attacking the Russians who had deals with the government and kicked the government and the Russians out.

And then even the Russians were kicked out, they started attacking up into the Russian border to lure the Russians in as a setup.

Please

... write another book later on, 'cause that book of his on the ch- uh, the, the, The Grand Chessboard, that was 1990s.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, yes, NATO's going to expand, but just to the three, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, this is very far from your borders.

Brzezinski, in 1997, as I mentioned, spelled out in a very clear article, not to mention his book, The Grand Chessboard, but in a clear article in Foreign Affairs, that it would be Ukraine's term, time for joining between 2005 and 2010.

So salami tactics, 2004, seven more countries.

Come in Romania, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia and Slovenia.

that because it's our job, we read documents and we read statements and plans.

And in this case, it's just absolutely fascinating to read Brzezinski's account of all of this in 1997.

The grand chessboard has the subtitle, The Strategic Imperatives of American Primacy.

So the idea is spelled out, not in the salami tactics way, but in the definition, the purpose and the results.

There's one thing that I really cleave to.

I read Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard, which came out, I guess, around 1994.

And he stated in the book, and this just caught me, because in 94, I mean, we really had no beef with much of the Mideast.

I mean, we went through the Iraq thing.

Not that Iran is bad in itself, but it's going to be used as a trigger to start a war that we are going to engage on the Eurasian continent, and we are not going to win this one.

Interesting.

By the way, if you do a search on the Grand Chessboard PDF, you can download the whole book from the CIA's website.

Really? Wow.

It's a whole new economy being created in Russia and China.

It's Brzezinski's middle space that he talked about in The Grand Chessboard, which is a great book for anyone to read.

He wrote it for his students at Columbia University.

And he sets all the foreign policy for the United States So it's very informative.

Welcome back to the Bullshit Filter, Ray, episode something.

But this is the Grand Chessboard episode three.

Yeah.

I think.

And in this miniseries, we're doing it by reading a book.

That came out nearly 30 years ago.

The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security director.

Well, he wasn't in 1997, but he was in the late 70s, early 80s.