Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (/ˈzbɪɡniɛv brəˈʒɪnski/ ZBIG-niev brə-ZHIN-skee; Polish: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński  [ˈzbʲiɡɲɛf kaˈʑimʲɛʂ bʐɛˈʑiɲskʲi]; born March 28, 1928) is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as a counsellor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966–1968 and held the position of United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. Brzezinski belongs to the realist school of international relations, geopolitically standing in the tradition of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman. Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China); the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II); the brokering of the Camp David Accords; the transition of Iran from an important U.S. client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic; encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union; the financing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there and the arming of these rebels to counter the Soviet invasion; and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999. Brzezinski is currently Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC News' This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and on MSNBC's Morning Joe, where his daughter, Mika Brzezinski, is co-anchor. In recent years, he has been a supporter of the Prague Process. His son, Mark Brzezinski, is an American diplomat and the current United States Ambassador to Sweden since 2011.