By George Friedman – Nov. 12, 2019 Geopolitical Future

Thirty years ago, on Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. This was the beginning of a period that would change the world. When the last remnants of the wall came down in November 1991, it began four months that transformed all that had gone before. On Dec. 31, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist; then on Feb. 7, 1992, the Maastricht Treaty was signed, creating the European Union. Like 1918 or 1945, this four-month period marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. It is 30 years since the beginning of this transition and its meaning is only now becoming visible.

Turning Points of the 20th Century

Europe in the 20th century had four turning points. The first came in 1918 with the end of World War I. It was also the end of Imperial Europe. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires all collapsed after the war, and the British Empire was not far behind. Nations like Poland that had been buried within one or more empires emerged as independent republics, some for the first time in centuries. Some were forged together into multinational states, like Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia. The borders of others, like Hungary, were dramatically changed. Defeated Germany survived. Throughout Europe, the republican form of government took hold and, with it, supposedly liberal democracy. Emperors did not reemerge, but liberal democracy took hold only intermittently.

This was an era in which Europe as a whole was in a state of shock over what it had done to itself in World War I. The nations that were shed by the fallen empires clung to national identities from centuries before, but were not at all certain what they were now that they had reemerged into history, frequently with multiple nationalities sharing the same state.

This era ended in 1945. World War I originated in the unification of Germany. This was previously a region of fragmented duchies, which joined together under the management of Prussia and formed an empire under the House of Hohenzollern. From unified Germany’s inception, it was strong economically and militarily, but not strong enough to feel secure. With France on one side and Russia on the other, Germany could not survive a simultaneous attack from east and west, launched at a time of France’s or Russia’s own choosing. Germany was forced to conclude that it would have to launch a war at a time of its own choosing, knocking France or Russia out of the war first, then dealing with the other at its leisure. And, thus, the Schlieffen Plan was executed in 1914. It failed, leading to the end of empires.

During the interregnum between the two world wars, Germany emerged again, going from a cripple in 1932 to the dominant military power on the Continent by 1938. It faced the same strategic problem it had faced before 1914, and was defeated, as it had been in 1918. This ushered in the third epoch in 20th-century Europe: the time of Soviet-American hegemony. World War II ended with the Americans and Soviets meeting on the Elbe River and dividing Europe roughly along the lines they had conquered it. The Soviets held the band of countries from Poland to Bulgaria, and the Americans and their British allies held everything to the west.

The Era of the Iron Curtain

This was the time when Europe as a whole lost control of its fate. For Europe, ever since 1914, its fate had been war, the overriding question was whether, or more truly when, the Soviets and the United States would take Europe into war. The question of war and peace had been decided in London, Paris and Berlin. Now the question was decided in Washington and Moscow. It would be too much to say that Continental Europe constituted colonies. It would be more accurate to say that these were sovereign nations trapped in a geopolitical reality that tied their hands in relation to the world and cost them their empires. Europe was sovereign, but only in a very limited sense. The era of failed or monstrous states had put them in a position where no one, not even they themselves, trusted them to use full sovereignty wisely.

Europe was therefore divided by what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the Iron Curtain. Each side – the American-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact – prepared for a war that was fought everywhere except in Europe. As the European empires collapsed, the Americans and Soviets competed over who would inherit these empires. The issue was less who would control a country and more who would be stopped from controlling a country. The U.S. had little interest in Congo or Vietnam themselves; it had an interest in blocking the Soviets, and vice versa.

This diversion bought Europe time to recover, and it was in the interest of the United States to help it to recover. The Soviets were poor but powerful, and they controlled their region with tanks and few economic incentives. The Americans were powerful and rich, and they had far more to offer their zone, from the Marshall Plan to favorable trade relations. With these offerings Europe rebuilt itself, using American money and European intellectual capital. Germany retook its position as the most economically dynamic nation in Europe, this time abandoning strategic interests in favor of a purely economic Germany. Apart from the fear of war, which died down eventually, this was the happiest this part of Europe had been since 1914.

The other Europe, the one to the east, was less happy. Part of it was the ever-present Soviet power; the other and perhaps greater part was the penury in which this part of the Continent lived. The difference between a department store in Warsaw or Budapest and one in Frankfurt or Rome was startling. The simple fact was that the opportunities of life, from travel to luxury, ground on the Eastern Bloc, as much as ideology and freedom did.

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    Autumn colors are visible in Naruko Gorge, photographed as a train crosses the iron bridge, in Japan’s Miyagi prefecture. #

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    Participants wearing historical costumes ride their high-wheel bicycles during the annual penny-farthing race in Prague, Czech Republic, on November 2, 2019. #

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    A couple rests in a garden during a cold autumn day in Srinagar, Kashmir, on November 6, 2019. #

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    A stand of ginkgo trees, photographed in late autumn in Handan, in China’s Hebei province, on November 7, 2019 #

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    Swans fly over Loch Faskally, Pitlochry, Scotland, on October 24, 2019. #

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    An autumn-colored leaf floats on a pond in a park in Dortmund, Germany, on October 23, 2019. #

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    People enjoy colorful muhly grass in Seoul, South Korea, on October 16, 2019. #

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    Champagne vineyards are pictured on October 25, 2019, near the village of Damery, France. #

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    A grove of Euphrates poplar trees grows in the Taklamakan desert in Bazhou, Xinjiang, China, on October 23, 2019. #

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    A Turkish Van cat named Su is photographed after it won the International Happy Cats Tournament at the Van Cat Research and Application Center of the Yuzuncu Yil University in Van, Turkey, on November 7, 2019. #

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    A view of leaves swirling in Yedigoller (Seven Lakes) National Park in Bolu, Turkey, on November 8, 2019. #

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    A wild boar runs through a forest in the Taunus region near Frankfurt, Germany, on November 9, 2019. #

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    Fall foliage in Central Park in Manhattan, photographed on October 28, 2019. #

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    A wild squirrel in a park in Kiev, Ukraine, seen on November 2, 2019. #

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    Tourists take photos of a dog among the leaves of ginkgo trees in Quzhou County, in China’s Hebei province, on November 10, 2019. #

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    A view in Suryeom-dong Valley on the way to Yeongsiam, in Inje County, Gangwondo, South Korea, on October 23, 2019 #

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    A homemade steam train, designed by Pavel Chilin, rides on a makeshift railway in the settlement of Ulyanovka, in Russia’s Leningrad region, on November 4, 2019. #

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    A view of a river and its surroundings during autumn in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on November 7, 2019 #

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    The Angel of the North is shrouded in early morning mist in Gateshead, England, on November 9, 2019. #

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    Autumn leaves are reflected on Loch Faskally, in Pitlochry, Scotland, on October 24, 2019. #

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    Young bears are seen near Lake Nemrut in Bitlis, Turkey, on October 23, 2019. #

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    Reeds in late autumn in Yichun, Heilongjiang province, China, on October 27, 2019 #

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    Women hold hands in a park during an autumn day in Prague, Czech Republic, on October 20, 2019. #

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    Birds feed on branches during the first snow of the season in Tacheng, Xinjiang province, China, on November 5, 2019. #

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    The Atlantic

Very informative lecture/discussion by ahmet yayla, former chief of the anti-terror department in Turkey who now resides in U.S
Watch this, very informative..about Erdogan regime’s networks in the US, and his attempt to build influence in D.C…and his connections to various islamists in the US and elsewhere…
Ν.Μ.

The Nwe York Times

Few thought it would arrive so quickly. Now we’re facing consequences once viewed as fringe scenarios.

By Eugene Linden

Mr. Linden has written widely about climate change.

• Nov. 8, 2019

For decades, most scientists saw climate change as a distant prospect. We now know that thinking was wrong. This summer, for instance, a heat wave in Europe penetrated the Arctic, pushing temperatures into the 80s across much of the Far North and, according to the Belgian climate scientist Xavier Fettweis, melting some 40 billion tons of Greenland’s ice sheet.

Had a scientist in the early 1990s suggested that within 25 years a single heat wave would measurably raise sea levels, at an estimated two one-hundredths of an inch, bake the Arctic and produce Sahara-like temperatures in Paris and Berlin, the prediction would have been dismissed as alarmist. But many worst-case scenarios from that time are now realities.

Science is a process of discovery. It can move slowly as the pieces of a puzzle fall together and scientists refine their investigative tools. But in the case of climate, this deliberation has been accompanied by inertia born of bureaucratic caution and politics. A recent essay in Scientific American argued that scientists “tend to underestimate the severity of threats and the rapidity with which they might unfold” and said one of the reasons was “the perceived need for consensus.” This has had severe consequences, diluting what should have been a sense of urgency and vastly understating the looming costs of adaptation and dislocation as the planet continues to warm.

In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group of thousands of scientists representing 195 countries, said in its first report that climate change would arrive at a stately pace, that the methane-laden Arctic permafrost was not in danger of thawing, and that the Antarctic ice sheets were stable.

Relying on the climate change panel’s assessment, economists estimated that the economic hit would be small, providing further ammunition against an aggressive approach to reducing emissions and to building resilience to climate change.

As we now know, all of those predictions turned out to be completely wrong. Which makes you wonder whether the projected risks of further warming, dire as they are, might still be understated. How bad will things get?

So far, the costs of underestimation have been enormous. New York City’s subway system did not flood in its first 108 years, but Hurricane Sandy’s 2012 storm surge caused nearly $5 billion in water damage, much of which is still not repaired. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey gave Houston and the surrounding region a $125 billion lesson about the costs of misjudging the potential for floods.

The climate change panel seems finally to have caught up with the gravity of the climate crisis. Last year, the organization detailed the extraordinary difficulty of limiting warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), over the next 80 years, and the grim consequences that will result even if that goal is met.

More likely, a separate United Nations report concluded, we are headed for warming of at least 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That will come with almost unimaginable damage to economies and ecosystems. Unfortunately, this dose of reality arrives more than 30 years after human-caused climate change became a mainstream issue.