FT: Zbigniew Brzezinski: Cold War mastermind, Carter’s hawk, and prophet of today’s chaos

Zbigniew Brzezinski—Washington hawk, Soviet Union doom prophet, and the intellectual Cold Warrior behind Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy—is the focus of this episode of the Rachman Review, featuring FT columnist Edward Luce. Drawing from his newly published biography, Luce explores how "Zbig" armed the mujahideen, opened the door to China, and foresaw both the Soviet collapse and the post-Cold War hubris that birthed today’s global turmoil. From the Iran hostage crisis to nuclear near-misses, we revisit the man once vilified as Darth Vader by the left—who would later become their unlikely ally. His legacy stretches from Kabul to Kyiv, from the Panama Canal to the Taiwan Strait.