Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981

Brzezinski argues that American foreign policy must blend a willingness to use power with a dedication to principle—rejecting both the morally insensitive realism of the Kissinger era and the excessive moralism he associates with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. He contends that the Carter administration's foreign policy failures stemmed from its failure to consistently apply this synthesis, swinging instead between moralistic restraint and belated assertiveness. The title itself is a policy prescription: power without principle is brutal, but principle without power is feckless .

Power and Principle is a memoir and bureaucratic history, not a theoretical treatise. It chronicles Brzezinski's daily battles within the Carter administration—over SALT II, the China card, the Iran hostage crisis, and the neutron bomb—rather than laying out a systematic framework for global strategy. Where The Grand Chessboard offers a prescriptive map of Eurasian power dynamics, this book is retrospective and personal, documenting how policy actually got made (or failed to) in the White House. The two works share Brzezinski's assertive instincts but operate in entirely different genres .

The memoir's candid and often venomous treatment of Brzezinski's colleagues made it a Washington sensation. He depicted Vance as representing a declining WASP elite whose values were 'of declining relevance' to global conditions, and he criticized Carter for lacking 'historical perspective' . Time magazine noted that rumors of its gossipy contents had 'enlivened Georgetown cocktail parties with outrage and titillation' . The book was widely read as a score-settling exercise, though Brzezinski insisted the substance of the policy debates mattered more than the personal attacks.

Brzezinski provides detailed accounts of five major Carter-era decisions: normalization of relations with China (where he played a key role), the Camp David accords, SALT II negotiations, the Iranian revolution, and the neutron bomb dispute with Europe . Throughout, he argues that Carter would have been more successful had he followed Brzezinski's tougher line more consistently—particularly in Iran, where Brzezinski favored backing a military coup against the revolutionary forces, and in Ethiopia, where he wanted to send warships to deter Soviet-Cuban intervention .

Contemporary reviewers were skeptical. MERIP argued that Brzezinski's alternatives were 'products of fantasy,' noting that by early 1979 a military coup in Iran was not feasible and that his proposal to deter Soviet-Cuban intervention in Ethiopia by sending warships was 'quite unconvincing' . Time observed that Brzezinski 'does not demonstrate how such actions could have been more effective' . Edward Luttwak, while broadly sympathetic to Brzezinski's critique of Carter, conceded that the memoir's self-justifications often reveal more about Brzezinski's grievances than about viable alternatives .

The Brzezinski-Vance conflict is the book's dramatic core. Brzezinski portrays Vance as the embodiment of a cautious, legalistic approach that repeatedly undercut American credibility—most critically during the Iran hostage crisis, when Vance favored concessions Brzezinski opposed . The rivalry mattered because it shaped actual policy outcomes: the administration often settled on jerry-built compromises that satisfied neither man, contributing to what critics saw as incoherence in Carter's foreign policy . The book is now a primary source for understanding how bureaucratic division can paralyze great-power strategy.