Leadership Quote by Zbigniew Brzezinski

Brzezinski is doing something more surgical than calling for bipartisanship: he is proposing a wedge strategy dressed up as civic virtue. "Let's cooperate" is the velvet glove; the real move is "challenge the administration to cooperate with us", a phrase that flips the burden of reasonableness onto the White House. If they refuse, they look rigid. If they accept, they validate the critics. Either way, Brzezinski wins leverage.

The subtext is a map of internal fracture. By naming "moderates" inside the administration and suggesting they are "not fully comfortable", he’s inviting them to imagine themselves as a quiet majority trapped by a louder faction. It's an offer of face-saving defection: you don't have to denounce your team; you only have to "cooperate" with outsiders in the name of steadiness. That's classic Brzezinski, the Cold War strategist who understood institutions as ecosystems of competing tribes, not monoliths.

Context matters: this is the language of a Washington veteran speaking to other insiders, not a stump-speech appeal to voters. "Tendencies that have prevailed in recent times" is deliberately vague, a diplomatic euphemism that signals alarm without triggering a defensive lockdown. He’s warning that the center is being dragged, but he refuses to name the draggers, because naming them would force the moderates to choose sides publicly.

The intent, ultimately, is to create a coalition of the uneasy: opposition plus the administration’s nervous professionals. Cooperation isn’t the endpoint; it’s the instrument.