As American foreign policy hinges more and more on the gut instinct of one person—President Donald Trump, of course—it’s tempting to wonder how policymakers from a previous generation might think about the White House today. Would Henry Kissinger have preferred a smaller National Security Council, for example? But surely, a figure of his stature and media savviness would have clashed with the current occupant of the Oval Office?

While there are several tomes on Kissinger, his contemporary and sometime rival, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has not been profiled as much. The journalist Edward Luce seeks to change that in his new biography, Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America’s Great Power Prophet, which draws on remarkable access to personal diaries and letters to recount the life of one of the great figures in U.S. foreign-policy history. Luce joined FP Live host Ravi Agrawal to discuss Brzezinski’s life, legacy, and how he would gauge geopolitics today.

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