BOOK NOTES

Brzezinski's "Grand Chessboard" recognizes Ukraine's role

"The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" by Zbigniew Brzezinski. New York: Basic Books, 1997 and 1998, 223 pages, $26 (cloth)/$15 (paperback).

"The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" by Zbigniew Brzezinski was first released in hard cover in October 1997 by Basic Books and a year later was released in paperback. Though the book is not about Ukraine, Ukraine figures prominently in several chapters, including the proposal that a France-Germany-Poland-Ukraine alliance is critical to European stability and that such an alliance could be formed by 2015. Though published more than two years ago, Dr. Brzezinski's analysis of Ukraine's role and its relationship with Russia is still instructive and prescient.

In the book, Dr. Brzezinski, former national security advisor (1977-1981), offers a global vision for preserving and extending American preeminence into the 21st century, formulating a U.S. geostrategy for the four critical regions of Eurasia: Europe, Russia, Central Asia and East Asia. Dr. Brzezinski, notes "American foreign policy must remain concerned with the geopolitical dimension and must employ its influence in Eurasia in a manner that creates a stable continental equilibrium, with the United States as the political arbiter. Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played, and that struggle involves geostrategy."

The book received mixed reviews, many positive, though several negative from those that felt that it was not necessarily a good thing for the United States to continue to strive for a dominant global position, as well as criticism that critical areas, such as the Middle East, were under-emphasized. Others felt the book depicted Russia too harshly.

According to Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University and author of "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order": "'The Grand Chessboard' is the book we have been waiting for: a clear-eyed, tough-minded, definitive exposition of America's strategic interests in the post-Cold War world.

"A masterful synthesis of historical, geographical, and political analysis, it is geostrategic thinking in the grand tradition of Bismarck." The book may be ordered from Basic Books on the publisher's website: www.basicbooks.com.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 18, 2001, No. 7, Vol. LXIX

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