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.