Politics & Power Quote by Zbigniew Brzezinski

Brzezinski frames his challenge like a civic mirror: stop performing partisanship and start auditing power. The opening move is surgical. By insisting on “citizens, not as Democrats,” he tries to disarm the easy dismissal that any critique of an administration is just opposition theater. Coming from a consummate national security insider, that posture matters; it’s a warning issued from within the priesthood, not a protest shouted from outside the gates.

The real target is the emotional fuel of post-9/11 governance: fear as a policy instrument. “World power” signals the United States without naming it, and “global leadership” invokes a claim to moral authority, not just military capacity. Brzezinski is probing the contradiction at the heart of the era’s rhetoric: leadership is supposed to attract, reassure, and stabilize, yet fear and anxiety are corrosive solvents. They can mobilize at home in the short term, but they broadcast insecurity abroad, encouraging allies to hedge and adversaries to test limits.

His question is rhetorical, but it’s not soft. The subtext is that an empire of dread becomes strategically clumsy: it overreacts, overreaches, and mistakes compliance for legitimacy. Brzezinski is also defending an older vision of American power rooted in confidence, restraint, and persuasion. If your story to the world is permanent emergency, you’re not leading; you’re managing a panic, and eventually exporting it.