The Grand Chessboard: A Geopolitical Mastermind Overtaken by History

Political forecasts invariably remain open to question, at least until events put them to the ultimate test. In the Were They Right? series, we take a retrospective journey, revisiting the analytical record to examine what leading strategists foresaw before confronting those predictions with the realities that ultimately unfolded.

Today, we turn a critical lens on Zbigniew Brzezinski, assessing the theoretical framework of his seminal work, The Grand Chessboard, against the political, military, and geopolitical realities of the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict that has profoundly reshaped the contours of the international order.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was one of the foremost geopolitical thinkers to shape the doctrine of U.S. foreign policy during the latter half of the twentieth century and the post-Cold War era. He served as U.S. National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter and played a pivotal role in weakening the Soviet Union by helping to design strategies of strategic attrition, most notably in Afghanistan. Drawing on his Polish heritage, Brzezinski also possessed an unusually deep, almost instinctive, understanding of Russia’s strategic culture, historical mindset, and enduring imperial ambitions.

In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Brzezinski departs from conventional state-centric analysis. Rather than treating states as isolated political entities or viewing military power alone as the primary unit of analysis, he adopts a spatial geopolitical framework rooted in the classical geopolitical tradition, drawing heavily on Halford Mackinder’s Heartland theory.

He views Eurasia, stretching from Lisbon in the west to Vladivostok in the east, as a vast and intricate chessboard upon which the major contests of global power are ultimately decided. At the heart of his analytical framework is the concept of geopolitical pivots: states whose strategic significance derives less from their intrinsic power than from their geographic position. Control over these pivotal states, he argues, has the potential to fundamentally alter the balance of power across Eurasia and, by extension, the international system.

Brzezinski’s central proposition is that the durability of American primacy as the world’s sole superpower rests on a single overriding strategic imperative: preventing the emergence of any rival power, or coalition of powers, capable of dominating Eurasia and displacing U.S. influence from the continent. Within this geopolitical framework, he identified Ukraine as the most consequential and strategically sensitive geopolitical pivot of the post-Cold War era.

Brzezinski argued forcefully that without Ukraine, Russia would cease to be a Eurasian empire and would instead be reduced, however reluctantly, to a regional Asian power, constrained by geography and consumed by persistent struggles in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Conversely, if Russia were to regain control of Ukraine, with its vast agricultural wealth, industrial base, large population, and commanding strategic position on the Black Sea, it would once again acquire the demographic, economic, and geographic foundations needed to rebuild a major empire capable of challenging both Europe and the United States. Put simply, whoever controls the Ukrainian pivot shapes Russia’s future identity and, by extension, the balance of power across Eurasia.

Brzezinski’s vision was far more than an abstract academic exercise. It was a remarkably prescient reading of the geography of power and the fault lines of geopolitical competition. When measured against the complex realities of the Russia-Ukraine war, the political and military trajectory of the conflict has largely unfolded along the geographic logic he outlined, validating his identification of Ukraine as the pivotal arena of imperial rivalry and reaffirming the enduring influence of geography on strategic outcomes, regardless of the passage of time.

Ukraine as an Imperial Pivot and Russia’s Strategic Red Line

The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022 underscored the striking prescience of Brzezinski’s geopolitical diagnosis, formulated more than two decades earlier. Moscow’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion was not simply a border dispute or a contest over economic resources. Rather, it reflected an existential struggle over Russia’s imperial identity, precisely the strategic dynamic that Brzezinski warned would emerge if Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation were fundamentally contested.

The Kremlin came to embrace, almost literally, the strategic logic Brzezinski had articulated. From Moscow’s perspective, Ukraine’s departure from the Russian sphere of influence and its integration into the Western camp would sever Russia’s historical connection to Kyivan Rus’, widely regarded as the historical cradle of Russian statehood, and extinguish any realistic prospect of restoring Russia’s imperial stature. The essays published by Vladimir Putin in the months leading up to the war, denying the existence of a distinct Ukrainian national identity, effectively translated Brzezinski’s theory into political doctrine. From the Kremlin’s perspective, Russia cannot regard itself as either historically or geopolitically complete without bringing this pivotal geopolitical axis back under its control.

NATO Enlargement as a Strategic Imperative

Brzezinski argued that filling the security vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe was not a matter of strategic choice, but of geopolitical necessity. In his view, enlarging NATO to incorporate Poland and the Baltic states was essential to pre-empt any future resurgence of Russian nationalism and revisionism. That vision was ultimately realised through successive rounds of NATO enlargement, transforming the Alliance’s eastern flank into the first line of strategic deterrence.

The course of the current war has reinforced the strategic logic behind that expansion. Although NATO’s enlargement served as both a provocation and a pretext in Moscow’s eyes, it was precisely this enlarged security architecture that prevented the conflict from spilling over into neighbouring European states. The war has remained confined to Ukrainian territory for one overriding reason: the surrounding states are protected by NATO’s Article 5 collective defence guarantee, exactly as Brzezinski’s geopolitical logic would have anticipated.

Containing Russia and Denying Access to Warm-Water Seas

Brzezinski argued that losing Ukraine would push Russia strategically northward and eastward, diminishing its role as a European power. The current war has vividly illustrated that logic through the fierce contest for control of Ukraine’s coastline, particularly around Mariupol and Russia’s repeated efforts to seize Odesa. Western support for Ukraine has been driven in no small part by the strategic imperative of preventing Russia from consolidating its grip over the northern Black Sea, reflecting Brzezinski’s contention that maritime dominance in this region is indispensable to projecting Russian power into the Balkans and the Mediterranean.

Despite Brzezinski’s exceptional accuracy in identifying “where” the defining geopolitical contest would unfold, his temporal and political assumptions proved less durable. A strategic framework conceived to preserve uncontested American primacy has collided with a far more fluid and contested international environment. Rather than reinforcing a unipolar order, the evolving geopolitical landscape has generated countervailing coalitions and unexpected strategic realignments, demonstrating that the global chessboard has become far too complex to be shaped by a single dominant player.

The Illusion of Enduring Unipolarity

Brzezinski’s greatest analytical blind spot stemmed from the historical moment in which his framework was conceived: the height of America’s Unipolar Moment in the late 1990s. His central premise was that the United States would remain the unrivalled steward of the global chessboard for decades to come, and that the international order would continue to operate on terms largely defined by Washington.

The outbreak of the war in Ukraine, however, left little doubt that the world had indeed entered an era of multipolarity. Washington was no longer able to impose its diplomatic and economic will unilaterally, a reality reflected most clearly in the stance of the Global South. Major powers such as India, Brazil, and South Africa, along with several of the United States’ traditional partners in the Middle East, declined to join the Western sanctions against Russia. This demonstrated that the global chessboard had expanded and could no longer be directed from the White House alone.

The Myth of an Anti-Hegemonic Coalition

In one passage of the book, Brzezinski warned of the potential emergence of what he termed an “anti-hegemonic coalition” comprising Russia, China, and Iran. He nevertheless reassured readers that such an alignment was highly unlikely, arguing that the three countries lacked a shared ideological foundation and that, provided the United States played its cards wisely, it would prevent any meaningful convergence between them.

The reality today forcefully refutes this assumption. Rather than preventing such a coalition, the war in Ukraine has acted as the catalyst accelerating strategic coordination among Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. China has become Russia’s economic and technological lifeline, while Iran has supplied it with effective swarms of unmanned aerial systems, most notably the Shahed family, which have reshaped the tactics of the war. Even North Korea has entered the equation, providing the Russian military with millions of artillery shells. An integrated Eurasian bloc, militarily and economically, has thus taken shape, one whose weight and speed of formation under Western pressure Brzezinski failed to anticipate.

The Resilience of the Russian Economy in the Face of Western Financial Pressure

Brzezinski assumed that America’s economic and financial power would be sufficient to bring any defiant state on the global chessboard to its knees. The prevailing expectation was that excluding Russia from the SWIFT financial system and freezing its central bank’s assets would trigger the immediate collapse of the Russian economy, and perhaps even spark domestic unrest. Instead, Russia demonstrated unexpected economic resilience, circumventing sanctions by establishing new trade channels and selling its energy exports in roubles and yuan to Asian markets. This exposed the limits of the dollar’s effectiveness as a strategic instrument of coercion in a world where alternatives have become increasingly diverse.

Beyond the broader transformations in the structure of the international system, Brzezinski’s analytical framework rested on a set of classical assumptions about the behaviour of the actors on the geopolitical chessboard, whether allies, adversaries, or buffer states. The dynamics of the war and the strategic behaviour of states, however, exposed the fragility of these assumptions. They demonstrated that allies may be constrained by economic interests, while the “pawns” may refuse to play a passive role, undermining several of the central premises on which his framework was built.

Europe as a Self-Reliant Spearhead

Brzezinski assumed that a united, prosperous, and stable Europe would serve as the ideal strategic bridge for consolidating American influence across Eurasia. In his framework, Europe would be an ally capable of shouldering the security burden and providing a credible deterrent against Russia. What his analysis failed to account for, however, was the economics of energy and the depth of commercial interdependence.

Europe, led by Germany as the continent’s industrial powerhouse, had already demonstrated in the run-up to the war that it had willingly tied itself to an overwhelming dependence on Russian gas supplies through pipelines such as Nord Stream. This dependence left Europe politically vulnerable, hesitant, and divided in the early stages of the crisis. The depth of this economic interdependence came close to paralysing Western decision-making, while the war exposed Europe’s continuing military and strategic dependence on the American security umbrella, rather than the resilient and self-reliant strategic partner Brzezinski had envisioned.

The Ability to Direct the Pawn

Brzezinski’s analytical framework treats Ukraine as a passive geopolitical pawn, a static piece to be moved across the chessboard by the major players, the United States and Russia, to contain or weaken the opposing side. What he did not anticipate, however, was the agency of the pawn itself and its capacity to break free from this passive role.

Ukraine, however, demonstrated a fierce national resolve and fighting spirit that neither Washington nor Moscow had anticipated. The Ukrainian leadership did not merely absorb the blows or wait for direction; it exerted considerable political and moral pressure on the West, while skilfully leveraging the information war to press its allies into providing unprecedented levels of military support. Ukraine thus evolved from a mere buffer state, or a square on the chessboard, into an active political actor capable of shaping events and compelling the major powers to adjust their strategies in response to its resilience on the battlefield.

The Myth of Democratic Transformation as a Regional Contagion

Brzezinski based part of his optimism on the assumption that the success of the democratic capitalist model in Ukraine would spread into Russia by contagion, gradually dismantling the authoritarian system in Moscow from within and by peaceful means. Events, however, have shown that authoritarian regimes are capable of insulating themselves through information control and security measures. They have also exploited the perceived Western threat to strengthen domestic support for the leadership, recasting the conflict from a war of choice into a narrative of national survival and the defence of the motherland against an existential Western threat.

Zbigniew Brzezinski displayed remarkable insight in his reading of the geography of war and the strategic significance of place. Where his analysis fell short was in anticipating the logic of time and the future balance of power. His assessment of Ukraine’s geopolitical importance was strikingly accurate, so much so that his words seem almost as though they were written amid today’s battlefield realities. Ukraine has indeed proved to be the pivotal axis upon which Russia’s imperial ambitions either break or advance, a conclusion that the course of the war in Ukraine has fully borne out.

However, in constructing his broader strategy around the permanence of absolute American primacy, he underestimated both the inevitability of the rise of other great powers, particularly China, which has redefined the very concept of power, and the capacity of Washington’s rivals to coalesce into a cohesive countervailing bloc driven by shared strategic interests rather than common ideology. Brzezinski read the chessboard with exceptional brilliance and identified the strategic significance of its key squares with remarkable precision. Yet, like many who emerged from the Cold War convinced of America’s enduring supremacy, he assumed that a single player would continue to move the pieces indefinitely.

Therefore, a fair and balanced assessment of Brzezinski’s thesis falls into two distinct parts: an exceptionally accurate geopolitical forecast of the Russia-Ukraine dilemma, coupled with a profound failure to anticipate the speed and direction of the international system’s transformation. The broader strategic lesson is equally clear: geography is constant and gives rise to enduring strategic realities, but the balance of power is fluid and shaped by complex dynamics. Imperial powers may compete for centuries over the same strategic axis and the same geographic space, yet the rules of the game, the identity of new players, and the sources of their power inevitably evolve beyond the confines of the old chessboard.