Personal Tribute from EconVue expert Nicholas Benes to Zbigniew Brzezinski

Nicholas Benes, one of our experts on Japan at EconVue, lost his uncle Zbigniew Brzezinski yesterday. Here is his moving tribute:

My brilliant uncle Zbig, the deep-thinking strategist who would ask about my activities in Japan like a curious teenager and then pose the most insightful question possible, has passed away. He was a wonderful man, husband, father, thinker, and policymaker. On the policy front, his analytical mind and vision was quite a contrast to the current chaos. Even if you disagreed with his conclusions, you had to admire the power of his analysis and the dexterity with which he so clearly articulated it. He was forward-thinking to the very end. A quote from the article:

'Four years later, he once again assessed the United States’ global standing in “Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power.' Here he argued that continued American strength abroad was vital to global stability, but that it would depend on the country’s ability to foster “social consensus and democratic stability” at home.

Essential to those goals, he wrote, would be a narrowing of the yawning income gap between the wealthiest and the rest, a restructuring of the financial system so that it no longer mainly benefited 'greedy Wall Street speculators' and a meaningful response to climate change.

A United States in decline, he said — one 'unwilling or unable to protect states it once considered, for national interest and/or doctrinal reasons, worthy of its engagement' — could lead to a “protracted phase of rather inconclusive and somewhat chaotic realignments of both global and regional power, with no grand winners and many more losers.' "

The EconVue community joins together in offering Nick and his family our deepest condolences