Volume 30, Number 14 · September 29, 1983
In Search of a Foreign Policy
By Stanley Hoffmann
Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981
by Zbigniew Brzezinski
Farrar Straus and Giroux, 587 pp., $22.50
Hard Choices: Critical Years in America's Foreign Policy
by Cyrus Vance
Simon and Schuster, 541 pp., $19.95
Thinking About National Security: Defense and Foreign Policy in a Dangerous World
by Harold Brown
Westview Press, 288 pp., $17.95
Zbigniew Brzezinski's fate, ever since his student days at Harvard, has been to be compared to Kissinger. His own 'memoirs of the national security adviser' are very different from those of his formidable predecessor. Henry Kissinger's memoirs are a monument carefully erected as an appeal to history. Reading them is like following a proud architect who points out the grandeur of his conception, the vistas outside, the spacious rooms inside, a sumptuous gallery of portraits, and an odd philosophical library. Brzezinski's recollections are straight and swift. Indeed, they remind one of a fighter plane that flies much of the way on automatic pilot, strafing enemy targets, and also, here and there, in passing, hitting friendly positions.
Review, 7545 words
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