Zbigniew Brzezinski Quote

You have to ask yourself, 'What was the desire of the people who, after more than 40 years of Soviet oppression, became free?' They didn't want to be pawns between a residual West that ended somewhere on the borders of the old West Germany and a resurgent Russia. They wanted to be part of the democratic West and, eventually, of the European Union. Those are perfectly legitimate aspirations. This is no threat to Russia –- except to those Russians who cannot conceive of Russia as anything else but a dominant empire that rules not only over the Russian people but over those adjoining Russian territory.

Interview in The Huffington Post - NATO Should Stop Putin From Restoring Czarist Empire, Zbigniew Brzezinski Says, September 3, 2014. (Commenting on criticisms of NATO expansion to Eastern Europe)