Five stories and the failures of diplomacy (including the moment when Kissinger will attack Portugal)
Given a suggestion to attack Portugal, the key moments in history when the creation of diplomacy assumed a prominent role for the UN. Some didn’t work, others were essential to avoid bigger disasters.
When British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to the UK on 30 September 1938, he was carrying the paper that would bring “peace for our time”. That was the promise that emerged from a meeting in Munich that brought together the prime ministers of the United Kingdom, France and Italy with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. After Germany occupied Austria, those European powers ceded three more occupations of the Sudetenland (territory between present-day Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland) and control of all Czechoslovakia to the Führer.
From the Munich Agreement that Hitler would no longer be territorial promises of marriage, which explained the triumphant Chamberlain, who returned it fervently a paper in the air leaving the house of the plane at the airport of He London. “I believe it is peace for our time,” she said. But he was wrong. Less than a year later, Germany invades Poland, and the United Kingdom was forced to declare war on the Third Reich.
The years of one of Japan’s bloodiest wars are over, and that is almost all the major European powers besides the United States.
Hitler’s Mistake
It could be said that Chambers made a mistake, until he was too much at war, but also Hitler had more years of war-a diplomatic error, which turned out to be definitive in the course of the war. Before the Soviet allies declared war on Germany, the chancellor also established a non-aggression agreement with the Union, in a pact that, together with Josef Staline, the countries undertook not to comply with a treaty against the other following years.
The Soviet Union saw France and the United Kingdom close the door of a United Kingdom, and ended up having an agreement that it would not be the country on Hitler’s list, not least because, with Poland conquered, the next border would be those of the Baltic and nearby Belarus, then soviet republics. The agreement was known among the highest diplomats of each country, the ministers of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov – who gave the name to the well-known cocktails used as weapons.
Peace between the two nations was guaranteed, or so it seemed. But Hitler’s imperialist vein would betray him: already with France and the Netherlands conquered, on December 18, 1940, Hitler gave the order for the launch of “Operation Barbarossa”, which took effect with the invasion of the Soviet Union. in June of the following year.
The still Germans of origin, but the Baltic countries, Belarus and Ukraine and the advance of countries (now St. Petersburg). A massive defeat for Germany and a blunder for Hitler, who ended up despising diplomacy (which avoided war for almost two years) and tried to extend himself beyond his real power.
When the United States wanted to “vaccinate” Portugal
In the middle of the Cold War, everything that smelled of communism put the United States on alert. With a Western Europe free of danger, it was with alarm that the North Americans received the news that Portugal had entered an Ongoing Revolutionary Process (PREC).
The possibility of a communist Portugal was a danger in several ways: a Soviet ally in NATO could infect other countries. For this reason, the United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, strongman of diplomacy with Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, will apply his theory of the “vaccine”: if Portugal fell into the hands of the communists, it could spread to Spain, Italy or Greece. A year after the carnation revolution, and in a meeting in the middle of the White House, the diplomat predicted: “In 1980 we may have communists ruling Portugal, Greece and perhaps Italy”.
But before that, it had to follow: “What are we going to do, of course, on the way to the NATO government? What are the effects of that in Italy? And in France? We probably have to attack Portugal, whatever the result, and expel it from NATO,” said Gerald Ford.
The international, in a race of race as of Henry Kissinger Portugal, which is a diplomatic war, which is explained by the audience with Pope Paul VI pressure one more think for the feared a civilian. And that was right around November 25, 1975, when a military movement came together to prevent the communist takeover of power. The intervention of the Group of Nine, made up of Armed Forces officers, was decided to avoid a military confrontation, namely between Armed Forces factions. Diplomacy, with the help of deterrence, worked in this case.
From World War I to the UN
After several years of several years of peace in Europe, a series of years, the longest then, led to war19. organization that can prevent further clashes.
The League of Nations was born in 1919, an organization by countries, whose objective was to maintain peace in the world.
Twenty years later, Nazi Germany put an end to the climate of peace, but the era of Nations was an idea that would come to fruition later, in 1945, with the formation of the United Nations (UN), which today has 193 members. , including Russia and Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the war on Ukrainian soil, the UN stance has been central to diplomacy. It is through evacuation agencies in the organization that several cities are organized, also being of help to many places in Ukraine, but also in Poland or Romania.
Recently, who was the most visible diplomat, the UN Secretary General, the Portuguese António Guterres, visited Russia, where he spoke with Vladimir Putin. From there on to Kiev to meet Volodymyr Zelensky.
In Syria, Ethiopia, Iraq and many other places, the UN has maintained its sphere of influence, moving through its diplomatic role beyond the military sphere.
Israel, a case of (un)success lasted
A country from scratch would never be an easy task, but it would be necessary to create an ethnic-religious group even more, with the aggravating factor that the area was tumultuous. In Israel, a country created in 1948, diplomacy left an intense presence several times, but sometimes the war was never able to do so at other times.
Diplomacy emerged in force early on. It is that the United States9 United in Palestine17, that of a home for the United States17. However, with the end of the Second World War, and with the millions of refugees that resulted from it, the United States, through President Franklin D. Roosevelt, assured the Arab countries that they would choose a position, not intervening without first listening to young people and Arabs. .
In the opposite direction came the United Kingdom, which had a colonial representative for the zone until May 1948, and was opposed to the creation of a State, be it Jewish or Arab, in Palestine.
It was Territory that came, in 1st territory, in 1947, to have an intervention of the city, deciding a decision between a Hebrew State and a Palestinian State, being that exactly, with the statute of Jerusalem, defined by the UN itself.
With both sides unhappy, a scenario was sown in which, on a regular basis, the armed conflict returns to the area. It is common to hear from time to time that a bomb has exploded in Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip. According to the Judaica project, almost 25 years Jewish/Israelis died 194 Arabs on the side/Estinian the casualties, already being from the virtual library since 78 thousand.