Zbigniew Brzezinski

Born March 28, 1928, Brzezinski arrived in Washington as a counselor to Lyndon Johnson in 1966, then spent four years as Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor starting in 1977. In that stretch he orchestrated the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China while cutting ties with Taiwan, signed SALT II with the Soviets, and brokered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. He backed Eastern European dissidents and championed human rights as Cold War leverage, encouraged the Afghan mujahideen against Soviet forces, and oversaw the Torrijos-Carter Treaties ceding the Panama Canal. A political scientist in the geopolitical tradition of Mackinder and Spykman, he taught at Johns Hopkins, organized the Trilateral Commission, and became a fixture on PBS and MSNBC - where his daughter Mika co-anchored. He died May 26, 2017.