A Top Job for 'Vitamin Z'

One thing about U.S. foreign policy that is sure to change under Jimmy Carter's Administration is its accent -from Henry Kissinger's German to Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski's Polish. As the special presidential assistant for national security affairs, the brilliant 48-year-old Warsaw-born academic will share with Carter and incoming Secretary of State Cyrus Vance the primary responsibility for the conduct of America's foreign affairs. Whether he will overshadow Vance as McGeorge Bundy sometimes did Dean Rusk and Kissinger almost always did William Rogers, remains to be seen.

The author of half a dozen books (including The Soviet Bloc and Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics), Zbigniew Brzezinski (pronounced Zbig-nyeff Breh-zhin-skee) is one of the nation's top analysts of Soviet and East European affairs and of East-West relations.

Son of a diplomat, Zbig -as he is known to his colleagues -spent much of his childhood outside Poland. During the war years, the family lived in Montreal, where the senior Brzezinski served as Polish consul general, and remained there after the Communists took over Poland in 1945. A graduate of Montreal's McGill University, Zbig earned his doctorate in government at Harvard, then taught political science there from 1953 to 1960. In the meantime, he became a U.S. citizen and married Emilie ("Muska") Benes, grandniece of Eduard Benes, the Czechoslovak President who was forced out of office after the 1948 Communist putsch. After leaving Harvard, Brzezinski went to Columbia, where he now heads the Research Institute on International Change.

Affectionately called "Vitamin Z" by his secretaries at Columbia because of his intense energy, Zbig also has a self-deprecating sense of humor. Asked if he ever wrote fiction, he replied: "That depends on how you view my research."

Tutor's Role. For much of the past three years, Brzezinski has served as director of the Trilateral Commission, which seeks to further economic and political collaboration among North America, Western Europe and Japan (TIME, Dec. 20). He met Carter at a commission conference in 1973 and was one of the few who early took the peanut farmer's presidential aspirations seriously. Assuming a tutor's role, he began sending articles on foreign policy to Carter. Later he was head of the election campaign's 28-man task force on defense and foreign affairs.

Brzezinski has long been regarded as a hard-liner toward the Communists, yet he is far from a reflex cold warrior. He favors detente with Moscow but recommends greater caution and patience -and sometimes toughness -when negotiating with the Kremlin. Brzezinski also urges that the balance of power relationship with the Communist world no longer receive top priority. He calls for increased attention to the alliances with Western Europe and Japan, problems of the developing countries and global concerns like the environment and food supplies.

A harsh critic of what he calls "covert, manipulative and deceptive" diplomacy, Brzezinski is certain to advise Carter to bring not only the American public but also the allies into the early stages of policymaking. In a mock report card he drew up several years ago, he barely passed the Administration (marking it C) for its handling of relations with Europe, and gave it a D for its dealings with Japan. Brzezinski's most marked departure from Kissinger's approach may be in tone. While Kissinger with his cosmic sweep at times has seemed pessimistic about the U.S., Brzezinski insists he is optimistic. Says he: "I think we are on the upswing."

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