Brzezinski: Russian Proposal Saved US Off Hook, Kissinger: US Throwing Its Weight around

Local Editor

Calling President Barack Obama's actions against Syria "misconceived" and "badly calculated," President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski confirmed that the Russian proposal "gets us off the hook."

Appearing on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on Sunday Brzezinski and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger agreed that the United States and Russia share a common interest in avoiding American military action in the Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin saw a chance to "get into step with us by easing an immediate American difficulty, but solving a common problem," Kissinger said.
"Putin's biggest fear with Syria," Kissinger said, "is that it would lead to a radicalization of the region. Putin worries about increasingly hostile radical Muslims in the Caucasus who resent Russian involvement in the region."

"Putin also grabbed an opportunity to diminish America's standing as preeminent in the region," Brzezinski added.

Furthermore, Kissinger has "sympathy" with the standard viewpoint - as he called it - that America is always "throwing its weight around", but he asked Europeans to consider what the world would be like without America?
"It's true", he said, "we have attempted many things that have failed, but in the end it was better for the world that there were people that would attempt them", and "America did them believing that they were always helping", he continued.

On the authorization for military strikes on Syria, from Congress, and if US President Barak Obama was influenced by the decision taken by British Parliament, and David Cameron's actions, Kissinger answered honestly, "I have no idea".
However, he believed that balancing the "special relationship" between Britain and the US was what a succession of British leaders has tried to do since Winston Churchill uttered the expression, so "in those terms, David Cameron has acted in the best tradition".

Source: News agencies, Edited by website team