# Quote — Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard

> In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geostrategy involves the purposeful management of geostrategically dynamic states and the careful handling of geopolitically catalytic states, in keeping with the twin interests of America in the short-term: preservation of its unique global power and in the long-run transformation of it into increasingly institutionalized global cooperation. To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

- Author: [Zbigniew Brzezinski](https://www.leafyquotes.com/zbigniew-brzezinski.md)
- Book: [The Grand Chessboard](https://www.leafyquotes.com/zbigniew-brzezinski/the-grand-chessboard.md)
- Page: 40
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski#The_Grand_Chessboard_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/zbigniew-brzezinski/the-grand-chessboard/in-brief-for

## More from this book

> Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.

p. 211 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/zbigniew-brzezinski/the-grand-chessboard/moreover-as-america.md)

> With the more endowed nations constrained by their own higher technological capacity for self-destruction as well as by self interest, war may have become a luxury that only the poor peoples of this world can afford.

p. 213 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/zbigniew-brzezinski/the-grand-chessboard/with-the-more.md)

> To put it very simply, anyone can become an American, but only a Chinese can be Chinese - and that places an additional and significant barrier in the way of any essentially national global hegemony.

p. 210 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/zbigniew-brzezinski/the-grand-chessboard/to-put-it-very.md)