US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which was run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1928.

Brzezinski's father was Tadeusz Brzeziński, a Polish diplomat who was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935 ; Zbigniew Brzezinski thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis.

The Second World War had a profound effect on Brzezinski, stating in an interview ; " The extraordinary violence that was perpetrated against Poland did affect my perception of the world, and made me much more sensitive to the fact that a great deal of world politics is a fundamental struggle.

When in 1959 Brzezinski was not granted tenure at Harvard, he moved to New York City to teach at Columbia University.

During the 1960 U. S. presidential elections, Brzezinski was an advisor to the John F. Kennedy campaign, urging a non-antagonistic policy toward Eastern European governments.

From 1966 to 1968, Brzezinski served as a member of the Policy Planning Council of the U. S. Department of State ( President Johnson's October 7, 1966, " Bridge Building " speech was a product of Brzezinski's influence ).

For the 1968 U. S. presidential campaign, Brzezinski was chairman of the Hubert Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force.

In his 1970 piece Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski argued that a coordinated policy among developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic inequality.

Also in 1978, Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II – an event which the Soviets believed Brzezinski orchestrated.

President Carter told reporters that the new Pope was a friend of Dr. Brzezinski.

In 1980, Brzezinski planned Operation Eagle Claw, which was meant to free the hostages in Iran using the newly created Delta Force and other Special Forces units.

Brzezinski was criticized widely in the press and became the least popular member of Carter's administration.

In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party.

This was a less violent outcome than Brzezinski and other observers anticipated.

However, Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against the Serb forces in the Bosnian war.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Brzezinski was criticized for his role in the formation of the Afghan mujaheddin network.

Brzezinski was a leading critic of the George W. Bush administration's " war on terror ".

His son, Mark Brzezinski ( b. 1965 ), a lawyer who served on President Clinton's National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe and who was a partner in McGuire Woods LLP, serves as the US ambassador to Sweden.

The SCC was always chaired by Brzezinski, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve.

Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of notes.

Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's independence but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition.

The Iranian revolution was the last straw for the disintegrating relationship between Vance and Brzezinski.

Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission to rescue the American hostages in March 1980, undertaken over his objections, was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinski and Vance.

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.

Brzezinski then attended Harvard University to work on a doctorate, focusing on the Soviet Union and the relationship between the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin's state, and the actions of Joseph Stalin.

Seeing the Soviet Union as having entered a period of stagnation, both economic and political, Brzezinski correctly predicted the future breakup of the Soviet Union along lines of nationality ( expanding on his master's thesis ).

Brzezinski continued to argue for and support détente for the next few years, publishing " Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe " in Foreign Affairs, and supporting non-antagonistic policies after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the grounds that such policies might disabuse Eastern European nations of their fear of an aggressive Germany and pacify Western Europeans fearful of a superpower condominium along the lines of the Yalta Conference.

In 1964, Brzezinski supported Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign and the Great Society and civil rights policies, while on the other hand he saw Soviet leadership as having been purged of any creativity following the ousting of Khrushchev.

Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks ( SALT ), whereas Brzezinski favored doing both at the same time.

Brzezinski believed that détente emboldened the Soviets in Angola and the Middle East, and so he argued for increased military strength and an emphasis on human rights.

" In September 2007 during a speech on the Iraq war, Obama introduced Brzezinski as " one of our most outstanding thinkers ," but some pro-Israel commentators questioned his criticism of the Israel lobby in the United States.

In a September 2009 interview with The Daily Beast, Brzezinski replied to a question about how aggressive President Obama should be in insisting Israel not conduct an air strike on Iran, saying: " We are not exactly impotent little babies.

Ian Brzezinski is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program and is on the Atlantic Council ’ s Strategic Advisors Group.

President Carter chose Zbigniew Brzezinski for the position of National Security Adviser ( NSA ) because he wanted an assertive intellectual at his side to provide him with day-to-day advice and guidance on foreign policy decisions.

Brzezinski also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action.

While he knew that Carter would not want him to be another Kissinger, Brzezinski also felt confident that the President did not want Secretary of State Vance to become another Dulles and would want his own input on key foreign policy decisions.

During the 1960s Brzezinski articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc and while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, persuaded President Johnson to adopt in October 1966 peaceful engagement as U. S. strategy, placing détente ahead of German reunification and thus reversing prior U. S. priorities.

While serving in the White House, Brzezinski emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive.

Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which was run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6.

* Profile: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Johns Hopkins University

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor at Columbia University and a Rockefeller advisor who was a specialist on international affairs, left his post to organize the group along with:

Among them are political economy scholar Francis Fukuyama, ( currently at Stanford University ); political scientist and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and military historian and former Counselor of the U. S. Department of State Eliot Cohen.

She attended some of the most prestigious French schools, such as the Institut d ' Etudes Politiques de Paris ( Sciences Po ), and began a master's program at Columbia University in New York in the academic year of 1972-1973, taking courses with Zbigniew Brzezinski.

In a speech given at Stanford University, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski related the following conversation with Deng Xiaoping:

In a speech given at Stanford University, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski mentioned a conversation that he once had with Deng Xiaoping.