Ten Minutes with Brzezinski

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski joined Tom from Washington, D.C. this morning and shared his impressions of President Obama's first face-to-face meetings with Russia's leaders.

Brzezinski called it a "sober and realistic summit, one which didn't create undue expectations, but one which also marked some real progress.... There was, in a sense, an unstated agreement to disagree, and that's progress."  He went on:

I think what's going on is, in effect, a kind of an adjustment, particularly on the part of Russia, but also on the part of America, to new international realities. We have learned, rather painfully, in the course of the last eight years especially, that even if we are the only global superpower, we are not capable of unilateral action, of sustaining that. We simply don't have enough power to dictate to the world. And the Russians are learning that the days of their empire are over.

Here's the full interview with Brzezinski:

http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2009/07/onpoint_0707_brz.mp3
In the second half of the show, Stephen F. Cohen, professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, offered quite a different perspective.  It's worth a listen.