Zbigniew Brzezinski: Baltics will come next after Ukraine

Polish TV channel TVN24 quotes Brzezinski’s recent commentary for CNN where he said that NATO should set up bases in the Baltic States.

“I expect a reaffirmation that NATO is an active and meaningful alliance, prepared to take what steps are necessary to defend its collective security.

“And that involves in the foreseeable future clearly some sort of decision to station on a permanent basis NATO forces, including Americans, including Germans, including Brits, including French, including even Italians who are now aspiring to a more active role in the Baltic states particularly. Maybe also in Poland,” Brzezinski said in the run up to the NATO Summit in Wales.

According to him, NATO must send a message “so that the Russians know that these [Baltic] states are not like Ukraine”, since “Putin clearly has indicated that if he succeeds in Ukraine, he’ll do the same to the Baltic states”.

Brzezinski also notes that Moscow tends to exaggerate the support it claims to enjoy in Beijing. On the contrary, according to the former presidential adviser, the Chinese are suspicious of Russia’s influence in global economy.

“The Russians are claiming privately that the Chinese are really supportive. My view is different,” Brzezinski said. “I think they’re worried. I think they know that if Putin’s adventurism produces a major conflict, there will be a very serious threat to global well-being. And that for them would be a fundamental disaster.

“I think the Chinese ought to become more active in telling Putin to lay off, that using force to change borders nowadays, so many decades after World War II, and then earlier World War I, is not the way to deal with international problems.”