Zbigniew Brzezinski, CSIS counselor and trustee, co chair on the CSIS Advisory Board, and former national security adviser to President Carter, was featured as a panelist at the May 2009 “U.S.-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium” symposium in Washington, organized by the Committee for International Trade, Council of Saudi Chambers (CIT) and the New America Foundation (NAF). He was part of the opening panel titled “A Forward Projection of What the Saudi-US Relationship Should Look Like and Needs to Achieve.”
The presentation is a part of a video of the complete panel discussion and Brzezinski’s portion starts at Time: 00:25:25.
Conference organizer Steve Clemons of the Foundation described the significance of the symposium this way:
“..Because of cultural dissimilarities and almost a purposeful “remoteness” that has become institutionalized in the US-Saudi relationship, except when behind closed doors — or perhaps in the privacy of the oval office or big estates here or there, or in Riyadh — the US-Saudi relationship remains “overly exotic” — and is not acted out in public view to the degree it should be. ”The conference that follows below will hopefully become a starting point for a more regular, public exchange of views on the key strategic and economic challenges that face the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the broader Middle East and international system. ”Whether many Americans want to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that the US-Saudi relationship is vital to America’s geostrategic and geoeconomic interests today — and like all diplomatic frameworks between key geostrategic players, this relationship as seen from both the American and the Saudi sides has warts and shortcomings. Nonetheless, it is not healthy to allow a vital relationship to be perceived and discussed through only very narrow lenses. ”What we have coming up on at this event is pretty significant in my view, and I am grateful to officials in the Obama administration and in the Saudi Kingdom — as well as other private sector speakers — for supporting the kind of open encounter we are promoting in this meeting..”
Speaker Biography:
The Honorable Zbigniew Brzezinski
Trustee & Counselor, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Chair, RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy
Former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter
Co-Author, America and the World: Conversations on the Future of US Foreign Policy
Zbigniew Brzezinski is a CSIS counselor and trustee and co chairs the CSIS Advisory Board. He is also the Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, D.C. He is co chair of the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus and is a former chairman of the American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee. He was a member of the Policy Planning Council of the Department of State from 1966 to 1968; chairman of the Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force in the 1968 presidential campaign; director of the Trilateral Commission from 1973 to 1976; and principal foreign policy adviser to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential campaign. From 1977 to 1981, Dr. Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Carter. In 1981 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in the normalization of U.S.-China relations and for his contributions to the human rights and national security policies of the United States. Dr. Brzezinski received a B.A. and M.A. from McGill University (1949-1989) and Harvard University (1953-1960). His most recent book is “America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy” (2008).
