Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
The culture of self-gratification and deregulation that began during the Clinton years and continued under President George W. Bush led to the bursting of one stock market bubble at the turn of the century and a full-scale financial crash less than a decade later.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how policies promoting self-gratification and deregulation led to significant economic issues.
Zbigniew Brzezinski points out that the cultural shift towards self-gratification and the deregulation of economic practices which started during the Clinton administration continued under George W. Bush, ultimately causing major financial instability and crises, including stock market bubbles and a full-blown financial crash. This highlights the dangers of prioritizing short-term personal or corporate satisfaction over sustainable financial regulation and responsibility.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the importance of regulation in preventing financial crises.
More from Zbigniew Brzezinski
All quotes →During the twentieth century, men fought on behalf of nationalism. Yet the wars they fought were also engendered by dislocations in world markets and by social revolution stimulated by the coming of the industrial age.
Constant reference to a 'war on terror' did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear.
Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.
The congressional role in declaring war is especially important not when the United States is the victim of an attack, but when the United States is planning to wage war abroad.
There may be circumstances in which damaging our relationship with countries over human rights is counterproductive and the benefits to human rights may be very small because of our limited capacity to enforce our stance. That was the dilemma the United States faced after Tiananmen Square.
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If we want corporations to act differently, we have to force them to do so through laws that are fully enforced and through penalties higher than the economic benefits of thwarting the laws.
Burdening people with debt is an old deal not a new deal.
An overwhelming number of economists, international civil servants, and policy-makers argue that a fragmentation of the Eurozone would cause a new depression and massive wealth destruction around the world. It would also end the period of economic integration that has characterized world politics since the end of the Cold War.
I think economics - and this is what I've tried to impart - has a tremendous amount of human interest in it.
Markets as well as mobs respond to human emotions; markets as well as mobs can be inflamed to their own destruction.
Developing economies may not have much control over the headwinds that they face today, but that does not mean that they are powerless. Much can be done not just to sustain moderate growth but also to secure a more prosperous and resilient future.