The past as present in regional and global threats the US, the UK, france, poland, the baltics, and the ongoing and potential german ouvertures toward russia (MDEM, NOVA law, 12th november, 2018

THE PAST AS PRESENT IN REGIONAL AND GLOBAL THREATS: the US, the UK, France, Poland, the Baltics, and the ongoing and potential German ouvertures toward Russia Armando Marques Guedes MD

THE PAST AS PRESENT IN REGIONAL AND GLOBAL THREATS: the US, the UK, France, Poland, the Baltics, and the ongoing

and potential German ouvertures toward

Russia

Armando Marques Guedes

MDEM, NOVA Law, November 12th, 2018

The legendary Krupp's Big Bertha, a German 42cm

howitzer used to crush the Belgian fortresses in 1914

Belgian refugees near Aydenarde, 1915

a muddy British outpost in Flanders, 1916

preparing to 'hop the bags' outside Beaumont Hamel 1st

Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers 1 July, 1916

Péronne during the Battle of the Somme, 1916 “Don't be angry, just

be amazed”, was the calling card left by Germans on the destroyed

town hall of Péronne after their withdrawal to the Hindenberg Line.

in the relative comfort of a German trench, before the Woodrow Wilson and US decision to enter the war

a mustard gas victim

the arrival of Trotsky to Brest-Litovsk, for the formal negotiations started on the 22nd December, 1917; the photgraph below is of the failed attempt at a first draft

of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty On the right hand side, a map of the territories ceded

by the bolchevicks to the Germans after the definitive Treaty, signed only on the 3rd March, 1917 The territorial losses were humiliating to the Russian soviets

President Woodrow Wilson announcing to the US Congress the official break of diplomatic relations

with Germany, 3rd February, 1917

American nurses arriving in England, en

route to France, late 1917

an American railroad artillery detachment ‘posed’ on a 14in

rail gun near Bassons, Gironde, France

an American dying of mustard gas

North-American soldiers, with characteristic energy and coordination, throwing hand-grenades into Austrian trenches at the Piave front, 18th September, 1918

US soldiers flowed into the French frontlines in waves of 10,000 per day, at a pace to which the Germans were not capable of responding On the11th

November 1918, the famous Hundred Day Offensive they were a parcel of had

definitely defeated the troops of the Kaiser and those of his allies

Randal Gray (1991), Kaiserschlacht 1918: The Final German

Offensive, Osprey, Campaingn 011

The entry of the USA into World War I spelt disaster for

Imperial Germany The massive superiority in men and

materials which the Americans could provide meant that if

Germany had any chance of winning the war she must do

so quickly Using special 'Stormtrooper' units and high

mobility tactics, the Germans came within a hair's breadth

of winning the war, providing a blow by blow account of

the daily events of the battle Although at first glance the

Kaiserschlacht was Germany's greatest success of the

First World War, in fact its ultimate failure consigned

Germany to inevitable defeat.

French children watching the advancing column of the US 101st Ammunition Train Soulosse, France, April 10, 1918

the Supply Train of the US 129th Infantry, 33rd Division, on the road at Bethincourt

one of the massive waves of American troops, here crossing the river Moselle, moving very steadily toward Germany

American Red Cross soldiers transporting wounded Germans to an hospital Picture taken in Varennes,

date unknown

victoriously back from the Western frontline

American officers toasting with captured

German beer steins

US battlefront storytelling: “and it was then that I burst out laughing and teasingly shouted to

him ”

Central Powers (orange) and Allies (green), in

early August, 1914

Powers Central (orange) and Allies (green), mid

1918

American Expeditionary Force North Russia, 1918

Russian prisioners of American soldiers,

1919, Arkhangelsk, North Western Russia

American troops in the port city of Vladivostok,

Siberia, 1918

l’Arc de Triomphe, very far back

no comments

the celebration of the Ribbentrop –Molotov Pact, with smiling Stalin

at the back, and avuncular Lenin up on the wall, in August 24, 1939

joint parade of the GermanWehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army, held on the 23rd

Setember 1939, at Brest, after the invasion of Poland At the center is brown Major General Heinz Guderian, to the right red Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein

breaking the Pact: why don’t we go to Russia? the

sprinting German Wermacht moving in

Hitler’s support at the rear

the parallel mobilization at the Soviet rear,

around the austere Kremlin

the ‘total mobilization’ orchestrated by

Stalin for the Great Patriotic War

in blue, the swath of territory controlled by the Axis –

in Europe – in 1941-1942, the peak of its expansion

Setember 1942, the maximum world spread of the Axis powers, continental on one case, maritime on the other

the greater east asia co-prosperity

sphere

just for the fun of it, let us compare these land and sea

‘empires’ to a maritimee one, the British Empire in 1915 (before the demise of the German colonies in 1919)

when everything seemed easy…

and even the North was covered

but things did not turn out as Berlin expected…

didn’t they know about General Winter?

really, didn’t they know?

a harsh climate, a though people with nothing

to loose, a ruthless leadership with all to loose

the turn-around: Soviet soldiers during the Batlle

of Stalinegrad, in January 1943; turning the tide

advancing, retaking land, and the inexorable Soviet

progression toward the West, in June 1943

North-Americans at dawn, waiting for factory gates to open so they could help in the war effort, right after Pearl Habour

a production line, in a US factory

one more, in another…

can do, will do, all of us

Stillwater, Oklahoma, 1943, helping out On the ground, the US

industrial might sent into battle almost 17 million soldiers, about

half of them into European theaters

of course, I shall do all I can

me too

here, there and everywhere

June 6, 1944, to Normandy

here we are; good morning Europe!

this is us

we came in force

really in force

in the Pacific too: really

1944, an Allied Blitzkrieg?

‘les américains’, on the move

all that jazz: GIs in France, 1944

on the road to victory, again, with des gendarmes and un

maquisard The policemen seem not to understand much

the roads to Paris and, fast, Paris

Germany with two fronts, again: the

encirclement

a three-dimensional encirclement;

Soviet planes prepared, 1944

lined up and ready to go; aligned

North-American bombers, waiting for their turn

battle-front, 30th June, 1943

battle-fronts, 1st January, 1944

battle-fronts, 15th December 1944, six months after

the June D-Day Normandy landings

Berlin, battle-fronts, 1st May 1945

Americans and Soviets meet up, East of the Elba, April

1945; a devastated Berlin street, May 1945

between despair and relief: young, very young German soldiers captured in Berlim, May 1945

the raising of the Soviet flag on the roof of the

German Reichstag, Berlin, May 1945

Poland, 1945, France, 1945: barbarism and war

Nuremberg: an impotent justice having to face, after the facts, the repugnant barbarity of those

who actually gave the orders

Polish General Jozef Pilsudski, the man who was closer to the

Intermarium, and what NATO is still lacking (in blue and green,

respectively) in 2012, against the map of what the Alliance was during

the Cold War

Poland and Sweden, 1600-1672

the Polish-Lithaunian Commonwealth at its largest, in

1648, part of Josef Pilsudski’s 20th Century dream

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from 1772 to

1795

connecting the seas: Miedzymorza, the Intermarium imagined as a federal political community vying to separate Germany from Russia

– as wished by General Josef Piłsudski (the Ukraine and Belarus are in

light green)

a variation on the Intermarium of Josef Pilsudski , in two

colours, as forecast in 2011 by George Friedman – as a barrier between Germany and the Russian Federation

Russian GDP during the tenure of her latest Presidents

Russia as a BRIC

chart of Russia's population; the green and red lines are mostly immigration, otherwise they would be down catastrophically (look at the blue line)

three scenarios for the Russian economy; all

pretty bad…

Russia's exchange rates in relation to $US;

not doing so well…

the nuclear club (declared, suspected, and potential) in 2018, and the estimated number of warheads (nukes) each of them holds on to

Jacques Chirac & Gerhard Schroeder, back in 2003: I speak, you “listen to me very carefully, as I shall say this only

once”

Jacques Chirac & Gerhard Schroeder, 2005

reversals: Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel,

2011

Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, 2011, at the

G-20 Summit: “bon, je… d’accord, d’accord”

Nicolas Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel, with Barack Obama, at the 2011 G-20 Summit

“got it?”

and now we are four: “look, this is how it is…”

actorship amd agency, a semiotic take: Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel, 2007

later in the same day: Vladimir Putin, Angela

Merkel, and George W Bush, 2007

Vladimir Putin vs Barack Obama

NATO enlargement, by year

Os últimos alargamentos da NATO

the old and the latest enlargements of NATO (desde

from the big bang in the mid-90s), also including the

ones still foreseen Maybe next month’s (20-21May 2012)

Chicago NATO Summit will clear this up; or maybe it

shall not

the threat revisited: in blue, once again, the teritory controlled by the

Axis, 1941-1942; compare this map with the one before, if you want

to understand Russia’s reaction to NATO’s eastwards enlargement

General Nikolai Makarov, 62 years-old, as Chief of the General Staff, in November, 2011,

as he warned, frontally, there would be a growing risk of local and regional nuclear conflagrations in the short term, along the Federation’s borders, as “a consequence” of the

“threatening” expansion of NATO into the periphery and the “near abroad” of Russia

Russian strategic depth, yes; US encirclement, no

Vladimir Putin, November 2011, marching back into

the future as the Federation President again

July 7th, 2017 Business Insider - "that time Putin

brought his dog to a meeting to scare Angela Merkel” Love-hate? Or just distrust and hatred?

a real 'entente cordiale’? Huuuuuum…

May 12 th , 2018 Germany moves closer to Russia: Merkel will visit Putin in Moscow

Merkel: “Trump's G7 message withdrawal is

‘sobering’ and ‘depressing’” Trump wants Russia back into a G8, and seems ready to recognize Crimea’s 2014-2015 annexation by the Kremlin, after it’s 2008 partition of a Georgia it invaded

July 7 th , 2018: the G7 Summit Merkel: Germany can’t rely 'on the superpower of the US' anymore

rewinding to 2017 Russian President ‘insulted’ by allegations of collusion between Moscow and Trump campaign Vladimir Putin says 'absurd' election meddling claims are designed to hurt Donald Trump, who he ‘admires’ The

admiration is mutual

moving forward in time: US President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki,

Finland, on July 16, 2018

July 30, 2018, check the facial expressions at the egregious 'Summit' A picture worth a thousand words Indeed.

TIME Magazine cover Trump-Putin fused, issue of

July 30, 2018, after the 'Summit'

November 11th, 2018, Paris Trump: Welcome! Macron is poker-faced Merkel in not too happy, but smirks Melania

looks partly concerned, but vaguely amused

Saturday, November 11th, 2018, in Paris to celebrate

the 100th anniversary of the 1918 Armistice

Paris, November 11th, 2018, at the meeting of Heads

of State, the first row Look who is there, in-between…

Merkel, Macron November 11th, 2018, in Paris

closer

then, in 2016-2017

now…

Russia's regrowth, d’aprés STRATFOR