Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain, along with Egypt, broke diplomatic relations with Qatar on June 5 and simultaneously announced a trade embargo. The trade restrictions include closing airspace to Qatari planes and banning Qatari seaborne vessels. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from Qatar, which represent 30 percent of global LNG trade, as well as smaller amounts of crude oil and LNG by-products are affected.

As the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), it was my honor and great pleasure to work closely with Dr. Brzezinski. Among the products of our work together were two video projects, one on his advice for young people, and one looking more broadly at the state of the world. In our many conversations, I saw Dr. Brzezinski’s love of the counterintuitive observation that led to deep insight. He had many of them. At the same time, I saw his remarkable ability to talk with you in a way that conveyed complete honestly and complete intimacy, as if there were no one else in the world with whom he’d rather share time right then. While his rivals criticized him for arrogance, I always found him searching for people and information that would help him refine his ideas. His commitment to intellectual rigor sometimes made him an outsider in governmental discussions, and his commitment to having a practical impact made him an outsider in academic ones. For me, he was an inspiration.

Someone, perhaps, is very rich today because he or she placed a $2 bet on November 9 that President Donald Trump’s first overseas trip would be to Saudi Arabia. Less than 18 months ago, Candidate Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Now, President Trump is rushing to the cradle of Islam. The strange secret is that, despite his campaign rhetoric, he will be welcomed warmly. The important thing is that he not be too comfortable.

The wide array of military-led republics in the Middle East would certainly have you believe otherwise, as would many of the monarchies that would prefer a world in which politics play a small role. Yet, the “win” column for military victories is small. Arguably, the Jordanian army defeated a Palestinian state-within-a-state in 1970, and Israel ended a similar Palestinian presence in southern Lebanon in 1982 (inadvertently ushering in an 18-year Israeli intervention). Each solved a particular problem for an individual government, but neither brought a conflict to a close.