Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century

by Zbigniew Brzeziński

If America is to reassert its moral legitimacy, Brzezinski argues, it must address its basic dilemmas, including deepening poverty, inadequate health care and education, a greedy wealthy class opposed to progressive taxation, and the mass media's promotion of sex and violence. In the new world of rival global power clusters, Brzezinski urges a greater role for the United Nations and "redistribution of responsibilities" within the trilateral nexus of Europe, America and East Asia ( Publisher’s Weekly ).

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Society

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski was a Polish-American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. Known for his hawkish foreign policy at a time when the Democratic Party was increasingly dovish, he is a foreign policy realist and considered by some to be the Democrats' response to Republican realist Henry Kissinger.

Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China), the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), the brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran to an anti-Western Islamic state, encouraging reform in Eastern Europe, emphasizing human rights in U.S. foreign policy, the arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet-friendly Afghan government, increase the probability of Soviet invasion and later entanglement in a Vietnam-style war, and later to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

He was a professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appeared frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Reviews

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brzeziński was a Polish-American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. Known for his hawkish foreign policy at a time when the Democratic Party was increasingly dovish, you might expect some of that hawkishness to surface here. However, instead he promotes spiritual renewal and international cooperation. The POV here is that we close out the 20th Century as proof of the failure of totalitarianism and need a spiritual/philosophical approach to a world economy to promote peace and stability in the future. Here is an example prescription for global improvement, emphasized in the text:

The needed correction will not come from a catalog of polity recommendations. It can only emerge as a consequence of a new historical tide that induces a change both in values and in conduct; in effect, out of a prolonged process of cultural self-reexamination and philosophical reevaluation, which over time influences the political outlook both of the West and of the non-Western world. That process can be encouraged by an enlightened dialogue but it cannot be politically imposed.

First published in 1993, this is overshadowed by the collapse of the USSR and competition with Japan. Still, most of it is perceptive, convincing and obviously drawn from decades of thought and observation. Of course, a resurgent Russian Bear was a concern even then, and it is interesting to consider Putin's Russia in light of Brzeziński's thoughts:

A Russian variant of fascism is unlikely to go quite as far as nazism, with its unique racial obsessions. Unlike communism or nazism, Russian fascism would express itself through authoritarianism rather than totalitarianism, through chauvinism rather than ideology, and through statism rather than collectivism. It would not even have to proclaim itself to be fascism or embrace overtly the earlier Fascist doctrines. More likely, it would be fascism primarily in practice: the combination of dictatorial rule, state domination over a partially private economy, chauvinism, and emphasis on imperial myths and mission. That mixture would then fill the void of the black hole that bolshevism created in Russia, creating the conditions of coercive order—even if no longer of coercive utopia—that democracy and the free market may not have been able to ensure. The reincarnation of a form of fascism, if it should ultimately occur, is not likely to be confined to Russia alone. It would almost certainly spread to some of the non-Russian former Soviet republics, whose internal difficulties are likely to be no less intense and whose democratic prospects are even bleaker than Russia's. It could also infect the politically more unstable portions of Central Europe, especially if the postcommunist trans-formation in that region were to falter, and even spread to some portions of Western Europe. The rebirth of fascism, more generally, would represent the defeat of the pluralistic and pragmatic vision of reality which rejects the notion that certainty, unanimity, and discipline from the top down are the hallmarks of a healthy society.

The reincarnation of the Fascist phoenix in Russia would not only represent a supreme historical irony. With its potential for contagion, a new form of fascism would also pose a vengeful challenge to the quest for international cooperation. It would represent a catastrophically infectious failure of the democratic alternative as the path to the future, while a nationalistically motivated Russia, driven by a renewed imperial instinct and thus most likely engaged in intensifying conflicts with its neighbors, would inevitably become a destructive force contributing to a world increasingly unable to control its destiny.

Speaking of contemporary topics, he then saw the Islamic world as both out of reach of a healthy relationship with the West, but also incapable of organized action:

The West should understand that the I billion Moslems mill not be impressed by a \Vest that is perceived as preaching to them the values of consumerism, the merits of amorality, and the blessings of atheism. To many Moslems, the West's (and especially America's) message is repulsive. Moreover, the at-tempt to portray "fundamentalist- Islam as the new central threat to the West—the alleged successor in that role to communism—is grossly oversimplified. Politically, not all of Islam—in fact, relatively little—is militantly fundamentalist; and there is precious little unity in the political world of Islam. That philosophically much of Islam rejects the Western definition of modernity is another matter, but that is not a sufficient basis for perceiving a politically very diversified Moslem world—which ranges from black West Africa, through Arab North Africa and the Middle East, Iran and Pakistan, Central and South Asia, all the way to Malaysia and Indonesia—as almost ready to embark (armed with nuclear weapons) on a holy war against the West. For America to act on that assumption would be to run the risk of engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

...in the Islamic world a more cohesive as well as more assertive religious orientation is generating a defensive outlook, determined to exclude the "corruptive" influence of the West while seeking to promote both the revival and the renewal of the long-dormant Moslem civilization. Religion and politics are thus combining in an effort to provide an Islamic alternative, in which technological but not cultural modernity is assimilated into a value system guided by religious criteria. In so doing, Islam is repudiating a condition of supremacy by an alien culture that it perceives as simultaneously corrupt philosophically, exploitative economically, and imperialistic politically.

Islam thereby responds to the sense of frustration not only among the politically awakening Arab masses but also among the even more numerous non-Arabic Moslems of Asia as well as of the growing number of Africans and even black Americans (together soon amounting to more than I billion people) who feel themselves denigrated in a world still largely dominated by the richer, white, and quasi-Christian West. The Islamic world is deeply aware of the massive attack on its values and traditions, especially in America, which happens to be the spearhead of the modernist revolution and where anti-Moslem expressions often assume crude forms. Islam's current success as a proselytizing faith is in pan derived from such resentments, but it is due even more to its offer of a comprehensive vision of an alternative way of life.

Thus in different ways, the spreading concern in the richer countries with ecology (the new faith of the prosperous) and of the great religions with social injustice conspire to help elevate the problem of inequality into the central issue of our times. But while religions can intensify the worldwide concern with the issue of inequality, it is far from clear whether they can provide a concrete model as the answer to the felt need for an effective and globally appealing social order. Christianity can perhaps stir the West's conscience and Islam can mobilize Moslem resentments. But neither at this stage offers a practical response to the central dilemma. There is neither a viable Christian economic model nor an Islamic example of a modern society. At the same time, the failure of communism as an economic system has placed in disrepute any utopian attempt at the implementation of coercive egalitarianism.

If you were to pick this up in your hand, it may be worth it just to read the brief, summary-like "Part V: The Illusion of Control". Among enumerated points, it touches more briefly on the Islamic world as well as Europe:

...
5.A shapeless Moslem crescatt, spanning North Africa, the Middle East (except for Israel), perhaps Turkey (especially if it is rebuffed by Europe), the Persian Gulf states and Iraq, and through Iran and Pakistan running northward to embrace the new Central Asian states, all the way to the frontiers of China. It will share in common many of the same aspirations and resentments (especially against the West) but will also be subject to foreign intrusion and will continue to lack any genuine political or economic cohesion.

6. Perhaps a Eurasian cluster, a geopolitical "black hole," dominated by a Russia that for some time to come will be struggling to define itself, and covering much of the territory of the former Soviet Union, but overlapping in an imprecise and probably tense manner with three of the above clusters: Europe, Asia, and Islam.
...

As I mentioned, there is a lot about Japan that seems irrelevant now or at least dwarfing more relevant consideration of China that includes this:

In contrast, China may have that mantle of leadership thrust upon itself. China, just by being itself, defies the world of in-equality. It is a giant, embracing more than I billion people engaged in a sustained and, so far at least, successful effort to struggle against inequality. It is also more than just a nation-state in a world of nation-states. It is the only state that is at the same time a genuinely distinct civilization. It is certainly much more so than Russia. It thus stands in a somewhat unique relationship to the rest of the world, part of it and yet apart from it.

Over the centuries, that isolation was in large degree self-imposed. It was in part an expression of cultural self-sufficiency and of cultural superiority. China felt that it did not need the world, that in many respects it was above it, and that any attempt at expansion and cultural proselytizing would be pointless. It was also in part defensive, the reaction of a people deeply convinced of their cultural superiority and inclined to defend themselves against barbarian inroads by building walls and closing doors. Even Chinese communism was much less activist on the global scale than its Soviet counterpart, driven by Russian messianism. But that isolation was also a function of distance, geography, and language, all of which (as in the case of Japan) reinforced the self-contained and isolated character of the Chinese civilization.

That self-exclusion is fading. In the modern world, China cannot isolate itself. The world, through mass communications, impacts now on China and China, in turn, increasingly impacts on the world. What happens in China is increasingly visible and important, not only to its immediate neighbors but even to more distant continents. And if China should prove successful in creating, on the scale of more than I billion people, a politically viable and, socially, a reasonably adequate society, it will inevitably become, whether it wishes to or not, the focus of significant and growing global interest. For the poorer portions of mankind, starved for a relevant historical guideline, this could be the case even without any Chinese effort to articulate and to propagate ideologically the essence of the Chinese model.

Much, therefore, depends on two broad considerations: what actually happens in China, and how China then chooses to conduct itself on the world scale. ....

Considering the whole globe, his metaphysical summary is:

Moral guidance ultimately has to come from within. The modern age, initiated by the French Revolution, placed a premium on the certainties of the so-called objective truth, spurning subjectivity as irrational. The failure of the most extreme perversion of that mode of political thought—namely, of the totalitarian metamyth—has lately prompted an extreme swing in the pendulum of fashionable postmodern thought: from the intellectuals' fascination with "scientific" Marxism as the epitome of "objective truth" to their currently antithetical embrace of uninhibited relativism. But neither response is likely to provide the framework for a world that has become politically awakened and active. The alternative to total control cannot be amoral confusion out of control.

The global crisis of the spirit has to be overcome if humanity is to assert command over its destiny. The point of departure for such self-assertion must be awareness that social life is both objectively and subjectively too complex to be periodically redesigned according to utopian blueprints. The dogmatic certainties of the modern age must yield to the recognition of the inherent uncertainty of the human condition. In a world of fanatical certitudes, morality could be seen as redundant; but in a world of contingency, moral imperatives then become the central, and even the only, source of reassurance. Recognition both of the complexity and the contingency of the human condition thus underlines the political need for shared moral consensus in the increasingly congested and intimate world of the twenty-first century.

[Pat Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose this book out of our bookshelves. I thought it might be fiction. It wasn't but I read it anyway. It is a lecture on the global situation and where it might go at the era of the Soviet breakup. It was a little interesting since it was written in that time and now we are in the 2025 times. If you are wondering, he did say that a conflict between Russia and Ukraine was very possible as well as a handful of other countries. He said that one of our problems in the US is our constant consumption of whatever pleases us and the effects that would have on our likelihood of being the world's leader in the future. He also mentioned the likelihoods of China, Japan, and Western Europe becoming the leader. It seems that all of us fall short. In the US, our consuming of the worlds riches while a good portion of the world is close to if not actually enduring extreme poverty. Also the poverty we have in this country and the divide which was growing then too will hold us back. The age of instant news will show the world to itself and the rest of the world will be able to see the hypocrisy of us when we preach the opposite and do what we do. Sound familiar? Anyway, history is already writing itself, in spite of those trying to unwrite or rewrite it so there are disappointments in reading about the world's current behaviors compared to what the author thought. It was worth reading though.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Out of Control" is a book written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-American political scientist, and geostrategist. The book was published in 1993, and it examines the challenges that the United States was facing at the time due to the rapid changes occurring in the international system following the end of the Cold War.

In "Out of Control," Brzezinski argues that the post-Cold War era is characterized by a growing sense of disorder and unpredictability, which threatens the stability of the global system. He identifies several key factors contributing to this instability, including the rise of nationalism and ethnic conflict, the proliferation of advanced technologies, the erosion of state power, and the emergence of non-state actors.

Brzezinski contends that the United States must adapt to this new environment by adopting a more strategic and proactive approach to global affairs. He argues that the United States should prioritize strengthening its alliances, promoting economic integration, and investing in new technologies to maintain its competitive edge in the world.

Overall, "Out of Control" is a thought-provoking analysis of the challenges facing the United States and the global system in the post-Cold War era. It remains a relevant and insightful read for anyone interested in international relations and global politics.

GPT

[Lucille Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brzezinski provides many valuable potentials of the issues that the twenty-first century faces. Unfortunately, owing to his intellectual heritage in political realism, he holds a lot of assumptions in racial and ethnic issues that cloud a sensible and nuanced view of those issues. Predating the publication of Huntington's Clash of Civilizations but having seen an advanced copy, Brzezinski praises the text but refuses to acknowledge how internal tensions within the racial groupings proposed by Huntington might induce conflict in themselves (like we see today between Iran and Saudi Arabia). It is in fact those oversights and assumptions that ignored the reality of national and ideological issues that Brzezinski did identify in his own homeland but not abroad that leads this book, unfortunately, to have fallen to the same ideological morass that led to the oversights in American power that lead us to our current geopolitical moment.

[Sadegh .Sm · Rating 4 out of 5]

خارج از کنترل- برژینسکی
[آمریکا:] باید بپذیرد که جامعه ای که به هیچ یک از ویژگی های مطلق اعتقاد ندارد(حاصل دید سکولاریسم) بلکه در عوض رضایت فردی را هدف قرار می دهد، جامعه است که در معرض تهدید فساد و زوال قرار دارد