These Studies on Security contain only the results of my scientific views, research, analyses and models. In other words, they provide a SUMMARY of my MAJOR contributions to the Science of Security.
STUDY 28. GEOPOLITICAL TRENDS IN THE THREE DECADES AFTER THE END OF THE COLD WAR
Eight main and eight additional geopolitical trends in the first three decades after the collapse of the socialist camp and the end of the bipolar system are systematized. They define the geostrategic coordinate system in which both the international security and the national security of each country are located, including, of course, the national security of Bulgaria.
The following monograph of mine is devoted to a detailed analysis of the leading geopolitical trends in the three decades after the end of the Cold War:
Николай Слатински. Сигурността – животът на Мрежата. София: Военно издателство, 2014.
[Nikolay Slatinski. Sigurnostta – zhivotut na Mrezhata. Sofia: Voenno iztadelstvo, 2014].
Nikolay Slatinski. Security – the Life of the Network. Sofia: Military publishing house, 2014 (in Bulgarian)
As analyzed in these Studies, human civilization is undergoing an extremely large-scale, comprehensive and profound change. It is a multi-directional, multi-layered and multi-faceted transformation – systemic, structural and security-related, political, economic and financial, energy, environmental and informational, social, cultural and ethno-religious. This epochal change, this epic transformation has four leading dimensions, each of which can be seen as our entry into a qualitatively new type of society, namely: the Globalized Society, the Postmodern Society, the Network Society and the Risk Society.
We have already talked in detail about the Postmodern Society, the Network Society and the Risk Society. And here we will talk about the Globalized Society and rather about the leading trends in the increasingly globalized world – in the three decades after the end of the Cold War.
In fact, compared to the other three dimensions of transformation, the Globalized Society has been studied in the most depth and detail. There are two main theses:
• Globalization trend is the only significant trend, it is the Trend in international relations and all others are sub-trends i.e. its consequences;
• The trend of globalization, although extremely important, although leading, is only one of the key, system- and structure-forming trends in the modern world.
The Globalized Society is coming to replace the Regionalized Society. Then the world was divided into separate geopolitical regions, differing in the main dimensions of their social development – political, economic, financial, religious, social, cultural, ecological, security-related, etc. Without having a completely independent existence, these regions were perceived as separate parts of the world – internally much more similar in identity, much more similar in worldview, much more similar in social development, much similar in standard of living than the others. Such geopolitical regions were: North America (USA and Canada); Latin America; Europe; the Soviet Union; Hindustan (mainly India); China; Southeast Asia and the South Pacific Rim (excluding China); Australia and New Zealand; and Africa.
For the sake of completeness, let us say that the Regionalized Society replaces the Localized Society, in which the local/local characteristics were in the foreground and they were not yet – in a political, military, economic, ethno-religious, social and spiritual sense – united in a single geopolitical region. In other words, the explanatory scheme here is the transition:
Localized society → Regionalized society → Globalized society.
For some scientists, the process of globalization has never stopped and has been a leading feature of human civilization since ancient times. According to other scientists, the third or fourth wave of globalization is now underway. In any case, today's globalization is fundamentally different, with a different scale, with a different speed and with different consequences. If earlier globalization was much more a MEANS of humanity to compact the geographical space and to find new opportunities for exchange (commercial, technological, cultural, etc.), then modern globalization is much more the GOAL of humanity in its development.
Globalization means that:
→ all major processes (political, military, economic, financial, energy, trade, environmental, informational, cultural, ethnic, religious, identity, security-related, related to crime and terrorism, etc.);
→ in every single dimension (global, continental, regional, national, subnational, local, etc.);
→ become increasingly transboundary or supraboundary (transnational or supranational, transstate or suprastate);
→ proceed at an increasingly high speed;
→ involving more and more participants (actors, players, subjects);
→ creating more and more connections/ties (mutual dependencies, mutual impacts, mutual influences) between different social units and agents (individuals, groups of individuals, communities, societies).
Globalization, therefore, can be described by four „Hyper-„: Hyper-Permeability, Hyper-Conductivity, Hyper-Participation, Hyper-Connectivity.
• HYPER-PERMEABILITY OF BORDERS (i.e. the transboundary or supraboundary, transnationality or supranationality, transstate or suprastate of all main processes and in all dimensions);
• HYPER-CONDUCTIVITY OF THE ENVIRONMENT (i.e the ever-increasing speed at which are spreading all main processes and in all dimensions);
• HYPER-PARTICIPATION OF ACTING PERSONS (i.e. actors, players, subjects in all main processes and in all dimensions);
• HYPER-CONNECTIVITY (HYPER-CONNECTION) of SOCIAL UNITS-AGENTS (i.e. the extremely growing mutual dependencies, mutual impacts and mutual influences between different social agents – individuals, groups of individuals, communities, societies – in all main processes and in all dimensions).
What is happening in the world, where is it going, what are the main trends in it, what are the prospects for it – this is the subject of analysis by various political headquarters, scientific institutes, universities, expert think-tank centers. The world has always, even in ancient times, for example once in Hellas, been studied, at least thought of and perceived as our common abode – of course, within the limits of our conception of it, i.e. as far as our knowledge of hiitm has extended, the so-called „Oikumena“.
Explanation:
Think-tank – analytical center, „reservoir for thoughts“, „factory for thoughts“, research institute; non-governmental organization, a group of researchers for the production of analyses, strategies, policy papers, etc.
Oikumena – the inhabited earth, the part of the world that has been assimilated and inhabited by mankind. This term was introduced by the ancient Greek geographer, historian and writer Hecataeus of Miletus (550/540 – 490/480/479) to denote the part of the Earth known to the Greeks until then, centered in Hellas (ancient Greece). Initially, it covered the lands inhabited by Hellenic communities (tribes), and later included the rest of the lands known to mankind.
Note. Clarifications for which no source is explicitly indicated are based on texts and definitions for them in Wikipedia.
Here we will give our systematization of the leading trends in the Globalized Society. When conducting it, the following principles should be taken into account:
⁕ First, these trends are objectively existing, external to Bulgaria and independent of it. For our country, they are like natural phenomena – they exist regardless of our desire and are not influenced by our moral assessment of them, so there is no point in being angry with them or hating them. It is necessary to minimize, if possible, the negative consequences of them and to optimize, if possible, the positive effects of them.
In this sense, relative to these trends, we are like in a Newtonian space-time continuum. In other words, for Bulgaria, they have an absolute character and form a multidimensional space through which the trajectory of Bulgarian politics passes – foreign, domestic, national and civil security, defense and public order politics.
In our country, it is generally accepted that Bulgaria is a relatively small country. Although talking about Bulgaria as a „small country“ is actually somewhat incorrect. In Europe, on a European scale, we are a completely normal country in terms of population and area. It is enough to compare ourselves with a number of European countries, and we will be convinced that we consider ourselves in vain, underestimate ourselves and self-pityingly present ourselves as too small and insignificant, while at the same time there are countries and peoples no bigger than us who know their meaning and value, interests and cost, and uphold them with character and vision.
In order to understand where Bulgaria falls, we will use the classification of countries in the international security system in terms of their power, coming from the science of Geopolitics. According to this classification, countries are divided into six categories:
• „Great powers“ – these are states that shape the world order and without them not a single problem of global security can be solved;
• „Regional powers“ – these states, conditionally speaking, are the great powers in the respective region;
• „States with limited resources for influence“ – such are most of the states in the world, whose role and importance are only (or at least primarily) in their region, and outside of it, hardly anyone takes much notice of them, regardless of their claims;
• „Mini-states“ – these states are so small and insignificant that they cannot play any special role noticeable to the naked eye;
• „Failed states“ – disintegrating or disintegrated states that have become territories where there is no central authority and/or where different factions wage war on an all-against-all basis;
• „Rrogue states“ – the world community has categorically denied such states equal participation in international relations, punished them with isolation, branded them as criminal regimes and pariahs, suspended their membership in leading processes and organizations or even excluded them from them.
Bulgaria falls into the category of states with limited resources for influence. For such states, the science of Geopolitics recommends that the real, reasonable and pragmatic goals and priorities of their foreign policy be centered and focused in their region. For Bulgaria, more specifically, this region is the amazing triangular space, the peaks of which abut and even get stuck in some of the most explosive, turbulent zones of increased insecurity and incurable instability – the Western Balkans, Transcaucasia and the Middle East. The limitation of our resources, of our power, strength and capacity means, among other things, that in these ongoing stormy, dramatic and not fully aware of us processes of globalization, in this transnationality of such sharp, dynamic and unpredictable developments, Bulgaria cannot respond to the challenges and manage the risks to its security alone, in isolation.
Unlike Bulgaria, there are countries - the great powers and those with supra-regional ambitions (such as Turkey) that can influence the trends we study, and sometimes even – partially – change them. Such countries are like in Einstein's space-time continuum - for them these trends or some of them are relative.
Unlike Bulgaria, there are countries – the great powers and those with supra-regional ambitions (such as Turkey) that can influence the trends we study, and sometimes even – partially – change them. Such countries are like in Einstein's space-time continuum – for them these trends or some of them are relative.
Explanation:
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) – one of the greatest scientists of all time, an English physicist, mathematician and astronomer. For him, Time and Space are absolute and immutable objects, providing the framework in which the processes of the material world take place.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) – a brilliant German theoretical physicist. For him, Time and Space are relative and are connected in an integrated, unified and interdependent four-dimensional continuum, i.e. here one can speak of four-dimensional Space-Time.
Continuum – a sequence of objects between which there is no division or difference.
Vision – perception and intentions, having a strategic nature; an idea of the future, of the meaning of existence, of the purpose and of what a state (society, community, corporation) strives for.
Pariah, pariahs – one of the lowest castes in India. Caste is an ancient Indian form of social division of society, a specific expression of social inequalities. „Pariah“ is used in the sense of disenfranchised people, despised, rejected by society.
Suspend – cancel, interrupt, suspend (maybe temporarily), remove.
Table 1. Comparative data on area and population between Bulgaria and some European countries
⁕ Second, these trends will be studied as a whole. They will be considered here one at a time, one by one, but they must be thought of together – like the rainbow. The rainbow consists of different colors and is generally perceived as a unique natural phenomenon. It would not be correct to take one of these trends and analyze it in isolation from the others, to study its consequences as the only possible ones and to look only at them. We are talking about a complex of trends and they undoubtedly influence each other – the effects of one can be „extinguished“ or be „ignited“ by the effects of others. In other words, they will be thought of holistically but viewed reductionistically.
Explanation:
Holism – the organism is an organic whole that cannot be reduced to the simple sum of its constituent parts; priority of the whole over its individual parts; a comprehensive approach to objects and phenomena. Holistic – whole, entire.
Reductionism – a principle according to which complex phenomena can be explained using laws inherent in their simpler component parts; reducing the complex to the simple and the higher to the lower (reduction). Understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the relationships of their parts or to simpler things.
⁕ Third, these trends will be ordered for methodological reasons rather than for importance – for example from least important to most important or vice versa. An order of importance could be made, but such an effort would require either some intuitive consideration of their importance or the development of evaluation criteria.
⁕ Fourth, these trends will be understood and evaluated with the mind and senses of the Bulgarian. The approaches and analyzes of an American, Chinese, Turkish, Russian scientist would be very different, the division and arrangement of trends would certainly be radically different, each of them would give them both a different division and a different arrangement (i.e. there is a geopolitical apperception specific and determinable from the location of the observer).
⁕ Fifth, these trends should be seen as challenges – they are related to the response that will be given to them. The challenge is a trend, a process, a phenomenon, an event or an action, that in relation to the system (state, corporation, society, community, individual) has an objective character and the effects (consequences) of which depend on the response that will be given to it. If the response is correct (adequate), then the benefits (positive consequences) of the challenge are maximized and the damages (negative consequences) are minimized, but if the response is incorrect (inadequate), then the benefits (positive consequences) of the challenge are minimized and the damages (negative consequences) are maximized (see Study 4).
We can give the following metaphorical (yet – we doubt not – realistic) example of what a challenge is and how it depends on the response that will be given to it.
Very strong winds blew over a village. Here is the behavior of the inhabitants of this village:
‣ One of them started whining in the kitchen in front of his wife, telling her how capable he was, what plans he had, how he was truly born for great things, but unfortunately, just now, when his hour had come to show his enormous potential, those cursed winds blew and he couldn't even show his nose outside! But if only the winds stop, he will prove – to his wife, to the neighbors, to the whole village, what great deeds he is capable of!
‣ Another sat with his faithful friends in the village pub, singing patriotic, very patriotic songs, the wine was flowing, the oaths sounded every hour that now he would lead the squad to deal with these winds – enslavers and people's tyrants, false conductors of foreign interests. But nothing more than that – he was sitting in the pub, his head felt lighter, his legs softened. The wine was flowing, the songs were more and more revolutionary and decisive.
‣ The third said that here with these two bare arms and his youthful heart he will go out on the hill to deal with the winds. He put on a new shirt – to be visible from afar, stored two revolvers on his bare waist and climbed up the hill. And the winds blew him away, and people are still looking for him in vain where he was taken and they don't know if he was or wasn't, if he was there or wasn't there.
‣ The fourth declared that he would not allow the winds to change his way of life; he was born here, he lived like this and he will stay here and continue to live like this, because he does not allow any winds to tell him how to live, what to believe in and what to defend. While he continued to live in the old way, as in the times before the winds, they blew the straw from the roof of his house, and the clothes that hung in the yard, and his children to distant lands.
‣ The fifth began to persistently build a fortress wall, a wall around his house to stop the winds. He built the wall, raised the wall tirelessly, and while he was building on one side, the winds knocked it down on the other. But he worked hard and did not give up, believing that one day he would surround his house and live behind the wall, and the wall would protect him from the force of the winds.
‣ The sixth suffered stoically the adversities and damage from the winds, but he hoped that his brothers in the other villages, when they learned what had befallen his village, would come and together, as before, as they always helped each other, would put an end to the adversities from these damned winds. And he clenched his teeth, waited, hoped, because he was convinced that sooner or later help from outside, brotherly support would come and save him from the natural disaster. As far as we know, he's only gotten quite old from waiting.
‣ And the seventh convened the family council, the wife turned on the laptop, the children studied the wind rose, and he, based on these analyses, built a windmill in the right place (in the postmodern version – a wind park for the production of electricity from wind energy). And the winds blow, blow and rage, but the maximum they do is turn the wings (fins) of the windmill and grind wheat for the family, relatives, people and homeland......
That's how, with the same winds over the village, different people take different actions – they give different answers to the same challenge. And as always, the vast majority of the villagers suffer from this challenge, whine and do nothing, but, thank God, there are those who make it work for the good of the people...
Explanation:
Apperception – conditioning of the direction of perception and the content of perception by the objects and phenomena of the external world, by experience, knowledge, interests and worldview, as well as by the mental state of the person at the time of perception; conscious perception as opposed to unconscious.
Wind rose – a diagram used in meteorology and town planning. Expresses the mode of winds at a given place for a certain period of time. The vectors depend mainly on the frequency and mean speed of the winds in the respective directions.
Let us now turn to the leading geopolitical trends in global security. We will divide them into two groups.
→ In the first group are the eight main, key, most significant geopolitical trends that directly and immediately determine contemporary global and regional development and international and national security.
→ In the second group are the eight additional, concomitant, essential trends that also (although to a lesser extent than the first eight) influence contemporary global and regional development and international and national security.
MAIN GEOPOLITICAL TRENDS
IN GLOBAL SECURITY
● TREND 1. Deepening of civilizational contradictions North – South (i.e. between rich and poor countries) and West – East (i.e. between democratic and non-democratic countries)
The leading content and main meaning of this trend is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; the gulf between them increasingly turns out to be an abyss (i.e. bottomless). Here we are talking about civilizational contradictions, i.e. the differences between rich and poor countries are turning from a severe quantitative problem irreversibly into a qualitative problem. There are two radically different worlds that see processes and events in an increasingly antagonistic and irreconcilable way, and find it increasingly difficult to develop common approaches, less and less share common values. Their social optics are radically different: one world, figuratively speaking, has turned the binoculars on one side and sees big things small, and the other – on the other side and sees small things big. Moreover, the First World in this division, the world of rich countries, is constantly tempted to give in to self-satisfaction and the saturation of its psychological desires, formed by the spiral of new and new needs constantly created and stimulated by ubiquitous advertising. And the Second World, the world of poor countries, is increasingly susceptible to discouragement, which leads it to colossal despair and to escalating resentment.
Along with this, in democracies democracy deepens, consolidates and continues to work effectively, while in non-democratic states it becomes a formal procedure, serving primarily to strengthen and perpetuate the power of the ruling elites, many of whom behave like elected aristocrats and senators for life.
Very often there is a coincidence between the North and the West, and between the South and the East. Usually rich countries are democracies. And as a rule, poor countries are undemocratic. This leads there to the superimposition of acute social problems and populist, controlled democracy, to forceful (authoritarian and totalitarian) government mechanisms.
For every country, especially in a region like ours, the consequences will be severe if, in both civilizational contradictions, it ends up on the right side of the dash, i.e. in their section, becoming part of the South (the poor) and of the East (the undemocratic) at the same time and for a long time.
Every North has its islands of South – of poor and miserable, destitute people. And every South has its islands of North – of rich and self-satisfied, over-satisfied strata of people. The same, with different arguments, can be said about the West and the East.
Any black-white division: „rich – poor“, „democratic – undemocratic“, is still somewhat formal. But it has its undeniable logic when we talk about rich and poor countries. It is clear that the Kingdom of Sweden in Northern Europe is a rich country, and the Kingdom of Eswatini, (until recently the Kingdom of Swaziland in South Africa) is a poor country. Just look at the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. For Sweden it is about 55,000 dollars and for Eswatini it is about 5,000 dollars, i.e. nearly 11 times less! Not a difference, but a abyss!
It is one thing to handle a quantitative characteristic, since it is an objective parameter and predisposes to unambiguous comparability. Another is to do the analysis with a qualitative characteristic, as it is with regard to democracy, since there is a lot of room for subjectivity, and the basis of comparison is more slippery. Let's take Turkey. Whether and to what extent it is a democratic country? As they sometimes joke in Bulgaria – it depends...
But things are not so unambiguous in terms of the quantitative indicator „GDP per capita“. The development model, which increasingly irreversibly divides the North from the South, operates with full force even inside the developed democratic states, regardless of the fact that there are mechanisms to soften its negative effect. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that the growing social division is the result of the world functioning economically and socially as a never-ending centrifuge, which throws a thin stratum of super-rich people to the top and lowers ever wider layers of society to the bottom.
If earlier the West (and not only the West, because the same was true to no small extent for the world of socialism) possessed a social structure reminiscent of a (full) barrel of wine, i.e. with a broad and affluent middle class, now even in the West the social structure resembles an upside down (empty) wine glass – at the top an extremely narrow stratum of „oligarchs“, then a thin, highly narrowed „middle class“ and a very wide and high bottom of the rest of the people.
This new social structure has its own explanation. It suggests that if years ago the material dimension of social status was decisive for a person's place in society (people with a similar standard of living had a similar social culture, level of ambitions, lifestyle, perspectives and opportunities), now very important are not the quantitative dimensions of the standard of living, but the qualitative indicators – quality of life, quality of human potential, quality of government, quality of social policy, quality of health care, quality of education, quality of the environment, etc. A person can have a good income and still not be satisfied with and secure in his life, since this income does not provide him with a quality of life that is „supposed“ according to its amount – when he sees (in the case of Bulgaria) with despair that the state is weakening and withdrawing from its essential functions, responsibilities and duties, that young people are emigrating, that the ill-educated and low-cultured are increasing in his country, that the hygienic culture and ecological habits of the population are declining, that the value of human life and the value of respect for the person is decreasing. And the good material status, the high income may not protect him – in case of robbery by criminals, in case of violence against his child in the street, in case of the impossibility of finding the necessary treatment, because with this emigration of specialists from Bulgaria, the day is near when even the normally wealthy person will not have anyone to perform to him the necessary surgery or any other medical intervention.
Previously, society in the West (and in the countries of the so-called „developed socialism“) was divided in proportions into super-rich, very rich, rich (upper middle class), non-poor (lower middle class), poor and destitute, relatively symmetrically:
5%:15%:30%:30%:15%:5%.
Today, the structure described above (the upside down wine glass) is increasingly obtained:
1%:9%:90%.
This means 1% ultra-rich, living in high-security neighborhoods and basking in absolute luxury, 9% – rich enough, perfectly satisfied and self-confidently and hypocritically calling themselves middle class, and 90% – the rest of society.
What we have just called „the rest of society“ is not homogenous and covers a wide variety of strata in terms of living standards, starting with the forever marginalized, the downtrodden outsiders, the desperate losers, the embittered homeless people, and the miserable poor, and get to the top „floors“ of this 90%, namely people with relatively high incomes and opportunities to invest in material goods, education, health and reproduction of their family, lifestyle and ambitions. What the people in this impressive 90% have in common is that they all do not have a satisfactory degree of control over their life strategies, but are in a very high, hard-to-manage risk zone – any, even the smallest, failure of their life strategy (crisis in their business, dismissal in the work, financial difficulties in servicing the loan, illness in the family, etc.) can bring them down deeply in society, i.e. they can fall out not only too quickly and abruptly, but also practically irreversibly.
Moreover, even in this super-rich 1%, on the principle of „winners take all“ (see Study 26 and Study 15) there is a thin layer of 0.1% super-super-rich people („plutocrats“). There are analyses on the opposition „0.1% vs. 1%“ and that the gap between the 0.1% and the 1% will have serious political consequences.
Figure 1. Distribution of wealth in the US, third quarter 2023 [1]
Table 2. Distribution of wealth in the United States in the third quarter of 2023 [1]
Figure 1 and Table 2 show that stratification in the US in ratio:
1%:9%:90%
is expressed in the following percentages of possession of the national wealth:
30.5%:36.1%:33.4%
i.e. the three parts of society have similar percentages – about 1/3 of the US national wealth, never mind that they comprise 1%, 9% and 90% of the US population.
The separation of the top 0.1% from the top 1% of the US population is telling. The ratio of percentages owned wealth indicates that for the distribution:
0.1%:0.9%
it is:
13.9%:16.6%
i.e. again, relative equality is observed.
According to the American economist Joseph Stiglitz (1943):
„The rich don't need the benefits of collective action, said Stiglitz, because they can create their own ‘subsociety’ with its own collective goods“ [2].
And as the richest get even richer, the social fabric of society stretches and frays. A huge mass of people arose, for whom the French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu (1930 – 2002) created the neologism „precariat“ – from „proletariat“ and „precarious“. This social stratum is characterized „not only by the fact that it is forced to sell its labor, but also by the fact that it is threatened by insecurity in the hiring of its labor and its life status. „Precariat“ does not mean a state of complete destitution, but the permanent threat of unemployment and destitution. The emphasis in defining this new layer is on permanent threat and insecurity“ [3].
British economist Guy Standing (1948) wrote that the precariat suffers from systematic insecurity and experiences the four A’s – anger, anomie, anxiety and alienation. So „the precariat feels frustrated not only because a lifetime of flexi-jobs beckons, with all the insecurities that come with them, but also because those jobs involve no construction of trusting relationships built up in meaningful structures or networks“ [4].
Gradually, in modern society (even in democratic Western society) poor people are increasingly punished not only BY THE VERY FACT THAT THEY ARE POOR – they live shorter and get sick more [5], have a lower life status, are deprived of a number of perspectives, for the achievement of which serious material opportunities are needed, but BECAUSE THEY ALLOWED THEMSELVES TO BE POOR – they have smaller chances to get a quality education, a good job, fair justice, respectful treatment.
As the Indian economist Amartya Sen (1933) says, poverty is not related to the quantity of goods, but is determined by the socially determined opportunities of people to gain access to these goods, therefore, in the social reality of even the richest Western countries, poverty is an obligatory element („structural poverty“) [6].
Explanation:
Oligarchy – a form of government in which power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of society. In the modern sense of the word, oligarchs are wealthy citizens who have monopolized state executive and legislative power
Plutocrat – a person with great power, a representative of the richest part of society.
Proletariat – a social class of people, hired workers, not owning the means of production and selling their own labor power.
Frustration – a term from psychology denoting an emotional state of a person who feels cheated in his expectations or is in a situation of real or perceived inability to satisfy certain needs.
The French sociologist Loïc Wacquant (1960) spoke of a growing tendency in the modern democratic state (in the US and increasingly in Europe) – to relieve the state of responsibilities regarding the social and economic origins of insecurity, about „new penal common sense aiming to criminalize poverty“, „politics of criminalization of poverty“, „carceral hypertrophy“ and „penal management of social insecurity“, i.e. to use the repressive power of the state to commit violence to the poverty that breeds crime and the crime that poverty breeds. There is a shift from the assumption that there are poor people who resort to crime to an understanding that poverty is a direct cause of crime; and assuming that the poor are incapable of being responsible for themselves, that the fault of being poor lies with the poor themselves, with their attitude towards themselves and the law, with their conduct, it has just one step towards the poor – to be repressed with all the power of the state. This is how the neutralization of „the populations refractory to the new economic and moral order“ is achieved. The reduction of investments in a fairer social policy, i.e. „social disinvestment“ turns into an increase in investment in prisons, i.e. „carceral reinvestment, which alone is capable of checking the dislocations triggered by the dismantling of the welfare state and the generalization of material insecurity that ineluctably ensues at the bottom of class structure“. Moreover, this approach becomes profitable in economic terms – through it we are witnessing the birth of a commercial „prison-industrial complex“ – on the one hand, the cheap labor of prisoners is used, and on the other, a network of companies is developed, profiting from the state business with prisons – construction of buildings, production of equipment and means of surveillance, security, supply, etc. Loïc Wacquant bitterly and sadly concludes that „as the cleanup carriage of social precariousness, the carceral institution does not merely collect and warehouse the (sub)proletarians held as useless, undesirable, or threatening, thus concealing deepening poverty and containing its most disruptive effects. It also actively contributes to extending and perpetuating the social insecurity and dereliction that feed it and serve as its warrant“ [7].
Explanation:
Carceral – relating to, or suggesting a jail or prison.
Hypertrophy – an unnatural, excessive increase in the volume of an organ, tissue and cells.
Mankind is on one common plane, but for now that plane is (can only be) operated by the West (USA and Europe). This means that the West is not free to do as it pleases, to behave as it pleases. Those who fly as passengers on the plane actually have more rights – they can be carefree, have fun, make noise, play and even attack each other with words or objects (within certain limits, of course), but the West is the crew of this civilizational and trans-century plane, and its behavior and reason are imposed with many more responsibilities, many more duties!
One of the great mistakes of the West (Europe and the USA) is that it believes that there is only one model, a universal model of democracy – the Western model! And that, provided that in the West itself there are democratic models that differ not only in minor but also in some important details. This is thinking like about pregnancy or abortion – that a woman cannot be partially pregnant, that she is either pregnant or not pregnant or that you are for abortion or against it – there is no middle ground, i.e. either we have democracy or we have non-democracy, implied as anti-democracy, as some form of dictatorship or totalitarianism. But for a number of nations (including Western ones), democracy is not a goal, it is a means for a better, freer, more secure and more predictable existence of the state, society and citizens. Democracy as a means has no absolute but relative value and competes with other values, including security. When calculating their portfolio of values, some peoples agree to a partial „loosening“ the knot of absolute, self-valued and self-serving democracy, at the expense of more „shares“ of other values, incl. of security. And we can have different types of democracy – managed, procedural, compensatory, contractual, etc. It is a strategic and priority task for the West to continue to prove that Western democracy is the best of all possible democracies. And that it is the most effective.
In Study 25, we wrote that the West had an alternative scenario for adapting to the post-bipolar time – to become the North (or at least the supporting structure of the North).
The great problem, the main cause of the world's woes, the wellsprings and sources of chaos and anarchy in the world today is the floundering, marginalized and growing South.
And the depressed, stagnant, disorientated and constantly failing East – this is to no small extent a logical consequence and inevitable result of the processes in today's world.
The growing South cannot help but become – sooner or later – also a failing East.
Unfortunately, the West has no chance and capacity to maintain a sustainable balance with the South.
The West invariably wins and the South consistently loses from the global West vs. South asymmetry.
Becoming the North (or at least as the supporting structure of the North), the West can achieve the realization of its civilizational mission as the leader of human civilization.
The West-South confrontation injects into global, continental, regional and national processes too much uncertainty and more and more difficult-to-manage risks. West-South is an apocalyptic and catastrophic opposition.
West-South interaction is practically unattainable. The West and the South speak and will continue to speak fundamentally incompatible languages, they see the causes of what is happening and the solutions to problems in an incompatible way, in mutually exclusive planes.
North-South relations provide more ways to „attack“ not only the consequences of colossal problems, but also the problems themselves. In North-South interaction, stabilizing solutions could be found, to heal the systemic and structural preconditions for chaos and anarchy in today's world. The North and the South can look for a common language because they are in the same conceptual space, because they address the social dimensions of security, because they talk about social security.
The West is an exclusive association – it immediately excludes those who do not meet its initial conditions and categorical criteria for democracy.
The North is an inclusive association – it automatically includes those who manage to significantly raise their living standards, achieve a respectable quality of life, become attractive places to live and an object of pride for their citizens.
The world after 1945 was structured along the West-East axis. It is time for global processes to be re-transformed and re-formatted along the North-South axis. Along this axis, the North will help the South to begin to approach the North. Approaching the North, the South will become the West. Every South wants to become the North. Becoming the North, the South will become the West. To remain the West, the West must become the North. Or at least the supporting structure of the North.
● TREND 2. The course of mutually connected, mutually influencing, mutually intertwining processes of integration and disintegration
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, these processes gained strength and spanned continents – Europe vs. Africa; countries – Germany, China (it took back Hong Kong and Macau) vs. Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia; alliances – NATO, EU vs. Warsaw Pact, Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). In integration, as a rule, everyone wins and begins to live better. In the case of disintegration, it is the opposite – with few exceptions, everyone loses and begins to live worse. Such regularities should not be absolute, but many historical lessons can be learned from them.
In the context of this important trend, the European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Bulgaria is actually the correct, right and accurate answer for our country in the complex and contradictory changes, as well as in the face of new challenges and risks.
The accession of Bulgaria to the EU and NATO is an undoubted success, but our merits for this should not be overestimated. Success would look different if at the start there were 20 – 30 candidates for membership, and at the end there were 2 – 3 winners. Provided that almost all of them covered the distance from application to membership, it is clearly a geopolitical trend, a flow, a vortex, a direction and a vector. As the Roman philosopher Lucius Aeneas Seneca (4/5 BC – 65 AD) said: „Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant“. Some countries preferred Fate to lead them, others to drag them along. Some of them swam fast with the current, others behaved like a twig accidentally caught in the fast current – it turns to and fro, crashes into the banks, thinks that it is doing this on its own, that it does what it wants, but if you look from above surveying what is happening, it can be seen that, in fact, no matter how chaotic, Brownian, illogical the behavior of the twig was, it ultimately follows the direction of the current and gradually moves (is moved) forward – at the cost of a lot of lost time and a lot of wasted effort.
Explanation:
Brownian motion – disordered, chaotic movement of microparticles of a solid substance (dust particles) in a liquid or gaseous medium, which never ceases.
Bulgarian Euro-Atlantic and European integration is a function and result of a certain direction of geopolitical development, for which we have no particular credit. What has happened is the result of the development of significant geopolitical processes and a fortunate confluence of circumstances having profound consequences. And that – in terms of integration processes – has happened quite massively and to almost all candidates.
Logically, the question arises – if everything was predetermined, then it turns out that our country, people and society have no special merit for the realization of our strategic foreign policy priorities!? Such logic of reasoning is not entirely correct! When it comes to a geopolitical trend, i.e. for an almost natural phenomenon, objectively existing and located at an order higher than the capacity of any state with limited resources of influence to make absolutely independent decisions, there is undoubtedly determinism, a kind of conditio sine qua non. But regardless of that, each country has its own degrees of freedom. It also depends on it – and not even a little. This geopolitical trend necessarily sets a condition for society – that it does not behave radically and ungovernably in opposition to it. If society behaves aggressively, counterproductively and dismissively towards it, the geopolitical trend ignores it and leaves it overboard. That is exactly what it did with Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. This is exactly the merit of our country, people, society in relation to this geopolitical trend – that we behaved reasonably to the necessary extent so that the trend could „take“ us too, so that we could find ourselves in the stream in which all the twigs swim differently but move in the right direction and reach the right goal.
Here one can see how far the determinism of geopolitical Trend No. 2 extends: it answers affirmatively to the question Whether? – whether a country like Bulgaria will achieve its integration goals and become a member of the EU and NATO. The affirmative answer is to some extent determined by the efforts of the country – Yes, it will become a member of the EU and NATO if it follows a reasonable behavior corresponding to the priorities, values, norms and standards of these two unions. And that's it! Because Trend no. 2 no longer gives pre-guaranteed affirmative answers – it does not give such an answer to the questions How?, What?, Why?, At what cost?, How much?, How long? These are questions that relate to QUALITY OF MEMBERSHIP. The state may obtain the memberships so desired, but what will be their nature and substance depends upon itself. A membership can be full and full-fledged, or it can be formal and secondary. And that already depends on the country, its people and society. Mainly from them and much less from anything else.
In addition to what has been said regarding this trend, we will clarify that, to no small extent, Bulgaria's membership in the EU (and to some extent, of course, in NATO) can be compared to the mathematical task of imposing a strictly ordered, obeying strict rules GRID upon an ill-ordered, anarchic SYSTEM with vague and fuzzy rules which, above all, the system weakly, reluctantly observes; whose structure has strong internal stresses, serious defects, „burns“ a lot of internal energy through friction, and as a result of all this, this system generates chaos that is not negligible in scale.
The possible solutions to this task are several, and they can be described as the reaction of the anarchic system to the strictly ordered grid imposed on it, as follows:
▪ First, the system obeys the grid and reasonably accepts its rules and norms, its structure, its channels for internal and external exchange of matter, energy and information.
▪ Second, the system rejects the grid and „goes out“ of it, because it categorically refuses to accept its rules and norms, its structure, its channels for internal and external exchange of matter, energy and information.
▪ Third, the system tries to adapt to the grid, but it happens slowly, arduously, ebb and flow, by trial and error.
▪ Fourth, the system resists against the grid, but although very difficult, although too long and often against its will, it, the system is forced to accept it.
▪ Fifth, the system resists against the grid, and finally the grid „gives up“ on it, forcing it to either leave it or remain isolated on its periphery.
▪ Sixth, the system mimics, i.e. „from above“ it appears as if it has adapted to the grid, but „from the inside“, as an essence, it has remained exactly the same as before.
The question arises „Isn't our European integration behavior too often with obvious elements and symptoms of mimicry?“. Many times, viewed „from above“ and rather „from afar“, from Brussels (or Washington), things in our country seem to be going normally and improving. However, when the view is „from within“, things are seen as they really are and the truth inevitably comes out and it is at our expense.
The thing is, while only watching us „from above“, the grid can (and often wants to!?) be deceived, but when it sees „inside“ for the truth that directly concerns it, so as not to implant insecurity through us, then its words and reproaches are severe.
Returning to the above mathematical task, we will specify that the last possible solution – „mimicry“ is (however paradoxical it may seem) the most ineffective of all possible solutions. Because it wastes the most energy, wastes the most efforts, nerves and hopes. And this is so, precisely because in this decision, i.e. with such behavior of the system, it expends double energy – on the one hand, to create visibility of changes through which to „deceive“ the grid; and, on the other hand, to continue to live in chaos and disorder, which absorb inestimable amounts of its efforts and prevent the new quality of life so cherished from being born. This is how we expend double energy – pretending to be like Europe and living like in Bulgaria...
Explanation:
Conditio sine qua non (lat.) – a condition without which something is not possible, a mandatory or extremely necessary condition for something.
Slobodan Milosevic (1941 – 2006) – President of Serbia 1989 – 1997, President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1997 – 2000.
Anarchy (other Greek from „an“ – without; and „archy“ – power) – powerlessness, lack of state power.
Determinism – a philosophical theory that holds that every event, human consciousness, and actions are causally predetermined by an unbroken series of earlier events. A major consequence of deterministic philosophy is that free will is an illusion.
Mimicry – the ability of living organisms to blend in with their environment, changing their coloration so as not to contrast sharply with the environment and not be noticed.
● TREND 3. Serious weakening of the position of the nation state
Crushed from without and torn from within, the nation-state is already becoming „too small for the big problems and too big for small the problems“ [8], its shagreen skin shrinking painfully and shockingly. Concepts such as independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity lose their content. Regional and local (group) interests come to the fore, and this sometimes (and increasingly?!) leads to (not harmless) combinations of interests when regions (or groups) in a country are much closer and even cooperate with regions (or groups) in other countries for action or pressure against their own governments. The influence of external interests on internal processes is increasing. Society is less and less and more difficult to perceive as a single organism with common goals and priorities.
Explanation:
„Chagrin skin“ (La Peau de Chagrin, 1831) – a novel by the famous French writer Honore de Balzac (1799 – 1850). Shagreen skin is the life force of its owner, depleted with every expression of will; a symbol of life, getting shorter every day and diminishing the faster the more energy man puts into the way he lives.
Seeking a faithful and clear response to challenges and risks, the mature state tries to manage this inevitable and logical process with reasonable and considered actions.
‣ On the one hand, the state transfers part of its powers and functions upwards vertically – to supranational structures for integration and security (EU, NATO, UN, OSCE). Here, the main issues are related to national identity and sovereignty – granting sovereignty is not a one-time act, but a process, and the consequences of this process need to be managed, controlled and, if possible, minimized. We will share sovereignty (we will give away parts of it), but we must manage the risks that come with sharing it. If we do not manage these risks, even the most consciously shared sovereignty can bring significant harm to the country and society.
‣ On the other hand, the state transfers part of its powers and functions down the vertical – to regional structures and local self-government bodies (the local government). But the transfer does not mean release from these powers and functions – the state must realize this consciously and sensibly, support it with the relevant legal framework and provide the local authority with the necessary resources for this purpose.
‣ Finally, the state transfers part of its powers and functions horizontally – to private entrepreneurship (business); to different religious communities (in many places, religious structures are networks for helping the poor, sick, damaged by fate, unfortunate people – this is Islam, for example: Islamic spiritual institutions face the people from the bottom strata of the people, teach them and help how to live, how to cope with difficulties, how to raise their children, even teach them how to think and above all how to die for the right cause (this is a topic for another conversation); to non-governmental organizations and associations with ideal non-profit goals; to separate periodic, temporary or one-time initiatives of self-organizing citizens with proven moral authority among society, trusted by institutions, and with clean judicial past.
A number of fundamental questions await an answer: Is the state a physical space or will it transform more and more into a spiritual space? Will all the countries and nations of today exist in 50 – 75 – 100 years? How much of our identity and memory should we give up, how much of our sovereignty and independence should we keep so that our state will be there in this distant future? What is the most valuable thing about our country that must survive and be preserved at all costs? The territory, probably. But if one day it turns out that only unfortunates who have fallen overboard of time, who failed to adapt to the headlong flight of changes, wander through it? Or is it more important to try to preserve among the young Bulgarians scattered around the world (including among those who leave, never to return) the memory of their Bulgarian affiliation, roots, family and homeland? How is this supposed to happen? How can Bulgaria, joining the world, remain an attractive gravitational core for its children and grandchildren? How to determine who is more useful to the motherland – the one who here and now endures the hardships of survival and struggles to stop the process of disintegration of goals, morals, values and structures; or the one who seeks fulfillment somewhere in the world to accumulate knowledge, money and positions with which to prove himself as a capable person? What does it mean to be Bulgarian today in the world of transnational companies, of the unification of thinking, values and ways through which the State becomes an instrument above all for the protection of private interests? Life will one day ask us the question of creating and filling an information bank of the most important events, achievements, documents, personalities, victories and defeats of the Bulgarian nation, stored in sound and picture, which will carry the memory, the spirit, the aroma, the history and the authentic imprint of our identity.
While an immature state with eroded statehood or a collapsing state allows its powers to be taken away spontaneously or to be arbitrarily deprived of them under the pressure of private and corporate interests, the mature state assigns powers and functions according to the above scheme – after objective analysis and targeted strategizing. Naturally, this process is not unlimited, it has its limits. It can be considered that its nationally responsible goals have been achieved when two conditions are present –the objective and the subjective.
But first let's say that the American scholar of political studies and security Arnold Wolfers (1892 – 1968) talks about objective security and subjective security – objective security is associated with the absence of threat [to the values of the system], subjective security – with the absence of fear of threat [that these values will be attacked]. In order to have security, both objective and subjective security must be present [9, 10].
An acute sensitivity to one's own security and the attachment of security to our core values „can run a wide gamut from almost complete insecurity or sense of insecurity at one pole, to almost complete security or absence of fear at the other“ [11]. Since security is a subjective feeling, how much security is needed for a nation to feel secure? Through manipulations, threats, suggestions, the feeling of security can be lowered. How then to determine when society is truly secure? It can easily be pushed in the wrong direction – to seek more security than it needs. Or to swallow everything with the thought: „Let them do whatever the state does, but only let there be peace!“. In other words, the only thing that retains its value then is peace – as an agreement to live in less security, if only to avoid war.
Examining the role of the state in security should not be done abstractly, but in view of the specific historical situation. This requires giving an answer to the question What does the concept of security look like in the face of new challenges and what dimensions does it acquire when it is refracted through the prism of the fate of the nation-state? The national security system is not hermetic and tight in an unbreakable corset – it is a complex, adaptive, flexible, open and susceptible to external influences system.
Explanation:
Corset – a wide girdle with sewn-in flexible plates pressing the convex parts of the figure and giving a delicate posture to the ladies. It is also used in medicine and sports to immobilize or maintain a given position of body parts.
It is still the state that has the powers and functions to respond to serious risks and threats. At the same time, we are talking about such goals, tasks and responsibilities in security, which are always an irrevocable concern of the state and are its (the state's) other name. So it is both unrealistic and irresponsible to release the state quickly and shockingly from these obligations. It must be sought what is this minimum of obligations from which the state cannot be relieved without running the risk of ceasing to be a state. These are the essential functions of the state in security and it is necessary to create the optimal conditions so that it can fully implement them.
It is the dual nature of security as objective and subjective that determines both the requirements for the minimum of powers and functions that the state must retain in order to be able to fulfill its goals and responsibilities, according to the understanding of its main purpose, precisely characterized by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega and Gasset (1883 – 1955): „First of all, the state is a producer of security“ [12].
• So, the one condition for the minimum (the use of the term „minimum“ distorts the picture because it is invariably associated with something extremely limited and minimal, i.e. as little as possible, but here we are actually talking about a certain set of powers and functions, which may not be minimal at all, but rather are such that one should not „fall under it“) powers and functions that the state must preserve is precisely the OBJECTIVE, i.e. for the state to be able to fulfill its tasks and obligations as a complex producer of security – for itself, for society and for citizens.
• But although with this minimum of powers and functions, the state can objectively fulfill its fundamental role in security, it is also necessary for society and citizens to be convinced that the state can fulfill its tasks and obligations – this is the SUBJECTIVE requirement for the „shrinking“ the shagreen skin of the state.
The state has realized an effective, manageable process of unloading of powers and functions vertically (upward and downward) and horizontally, if both the OBJECTIVE and the SUBJECTIVE conditions are present at the same time – both that the state is a producer of security, and that society and citizens consider that the state is a producer of security. If one of the conditions is not present, the state will either be unable to objectively produce security, however much society and citizens may subjectively be inclined to believe otherwise; or society and citizens will subjectively not think that the state is capable of producing security, even though it objectively is capable of doing so.
A higher skill of power is to achieve more security with fewer means. And it is also a sign of poor governance if, with more means for security, the government achieves less security. In an unstable situation, society tends to overestimate its security needs and underestimate the state's capabilities to provide it. In a stable situation, society tends to underestimate its security needs and overestimate the state's capabilities to provide it. Overestimated needs and underestimated capabilities lead to psychological discomfort and overexpenditure of material resources even before the threat has arisen. And overestimated capabilities and underestimated needs lead to psychological comfort and overexpenditure of material resources when the threat materializes. The security needs of society and citizens are primarily subjective, and the state's capabilities to produce security are primarily objective. The most important task of the government is to play the main role in the complex process of matching the subjective needs of society for security (they are usually high) with the objective capabilities of the state (they are usually limited) to ensure this security. How power handles this fit is a measure of its effectiveness. The process of matching subjective needs with objective capabilities is very dynamic, internally contradictory, with a complex and sometimes delicate, subtle achievement of reasonable compromises, such that in order to „meet“ capabilities with needs, capabilities must be „shrunk“ in the top – down direction, and the needs – in the bottom-up direction.
The state has a monopoly on the resources, legal and personnel provision of the national security system, as this is its main responsibility. Monopoly does not mean, however, uncontrolled spending of funds. And in the expenditure of security resources, each country must stretch itself according to the contents of its purse. Problems of this type face all countries, regardless of the nature of their political regime. State resources are always limited, so it's all a matter of priorities and goals. But sometimes the apparent overspending of security resources can have a rather unexpected effect. For example, with a judicious emphasis on defense and by stimulating the military industry, the country can help its economy and alleviate some problems, i.e. defense investments could lead to positive changes (however limited in time!) in a number of areas of industry and social life.
● TREND 4. Growing role of natural (caused by natural phenomena), anthropogenic (caused by human activity), technogenic (caused by industrial technologies) and pathogenic (caused by mass epidemics and even pandemics) disasters, accidents, catastrophes, other emergency situations and the need for more and more resources for their early warning, prevention, timely response, countermeasures and liquidation of the consequences
The technological and constructive achievements of man; the escalating consumer attitude towards nature; the concentration of large-scale and complex energy, chemical and biological industries; experiments at the gene level; the madness of terrorism can completely change our ideas about crises and crisis situations and lead to a qualitatively new structure of the crises and in the crises management system.
The accident in the Fukushima nuclear power plant is a serious warning that we are entering a radically different era of crises and catastrophes, whose immediate consequences can most likely be contained, but in their long-term effects and impacts they will be irreversible. The spread of pandemic diseases such as SARS (as the Covid pandemic has so starkly demonstrated) can cause devastating human and economic losses if not contained with adequate and sometimes uncompromising measures.
The shocking increase in the frequency of emergencies, the new being in which we move from one emergency to another, are seen in direct relation to climate change. Vital ecosystems are close to or beyond their catastrophic point – a number of animal species, coral reefs, tropical forests, tundra in Siberia, soils, rivers, lakes, seas (e.g. Aral Sea), etc. There is a risk of „irreversible and abrupt environmental change“. Scientists identify 9 „planetary life support systems“ necessary for human survival and outline 9 critical planetary boundaries: 1. Stratospheric ozone depletion; 2. Loss of biodiversity and extinctions; 3. Chemical pollution and the release of novel entities; 4. Climate change; 5. Ocean acidification; 6. Land system change; 7. Freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle; 8. Nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans; 9. Atmospheric aerosol loading. The call is: We Need a ‘Crash Plan’! If we continue to consume at the same rate as before, we will soon need between two and five planets of the size of the earth [13]!
A number of the mentioned challenges are either global or at least supra-regional in nature, i.e. they spread and move easily across borders from one country to another. This requires cooperation of efforts and the construction of complex ground and even space systems for monitoring, control and early warning for the purpose of prevention. Efforts are needed to prepare and educate the population for actions in crisis situations, but not only in sudden similar situations, but in the hypothesis of their increasingly frequent presence in everyday life. The skill of crisis behavior and self-control during a crisis will become the main prerequisite for dealing with such extreme trials and minimizing human, social and material damage, for preserving the normal course of life, for the reliable functioning of the political system.
But these logical conclusions are in the field of palliative measures, to one degree or another they are among the firstsignal conclusions that humanity is obliged to make. Because the causes, critical factors and symptoms are much deeper and warning that the time to find answers is extremely limited. We have to face the new reality and realize that in the risk society, in the society of risks and serially manufactured uncertainties and insecurities, any underestimated, poorly managed and realized risk will most likely lead to a crisis and to an increased insecurity, and this will mean an emergency situation and will have serious consequences.
Explanation:
The accident in the Japanese nuclear power plant „Fukushima I“ (11.03.2011) was an extremely dangerous accident as a result of the strongest earthquake in the history of Japan and the tsunami that followed it (powerful – fast, high and strong – long waves).
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) – a severe acute respiratory (relating to breathing, airways) syndrome, a viral illness with high fever, dry cough, shortness of breath or breathing difficulties, and atypical pneumonia.
Palliative – temporary, partial solution, half measure, half way out of the situation.
Firstsignal – elementary, impulsive, primary, primitive, thoughtless, superficial.
It is becoming painfully clear that humanity is gradually moving into a new phase of development, when extraordinary events and crises, risks and insecurities, uncertainty and indeterminacy, high dynamics and difficult predictability have settled permanently into everyday life and nostalgia has begun to arise for bygone times of stability, safety, definiteness and predictability of events to which we were accustomed and thought guaranteed, which could not be otherwise at all. But returning to the golden cage of security is impossible. We must cold-bloodedly accept the new reality and the fact that in it the extraordinarity will become the norm, the rule. Crises will be our being and consciousness. A process is gaining strength in which normality and a-normality (even non-normality), and accordingly, extraordinarity and regularity („in-ordinarity“), begin to exchange places. Normality becomes rare, exceptional, almost impossible; while the extraordinarity begins to be realized as ordinariness (ordinarity), to become and be more and more frequent, more and more natural, and more and more expected.
The question arises: What happens to the state, its structures, laws and resources during this transformation? Earlier they were constructed to serve order and normality. Disorder and non-normality were seen as an exception, as an emergency situation: almost impossible, very rare, extreme, considered something related to a military or political encroachment on the order and normality that had been established in and by the state. It was then regulated that if such a thing happened, the Army and other power institutions would intervene, and the state would go into an extraordinary (hard to imagine, vaguely described in meaningful norms) regime of government.
That is why we are called, forced and pressured to ask ourselves again and again: „And what happens to the state in the new normality of a-normality (or non-normality), with the extraordinarity becoming the regularity?“. Such a question requires an answer, not only because it concerns the State, but also because it applies with no less force to NATO and the EU. It affects their basis, their fundamental essence, since they were created to serve and protect normality and have not developed even to a minimum acceptable degree capabilities, procedures and resources to act in and manage various emergency situations with approaches other than direct application of military force.
Today, the State retains its leading role as a complex mechanism for the production of security. However, this leading role is already deployed in radically different situations, in situations „on the edge“, in situations of strong non-linearity (when small impacts lead to big consequences – in the manifestations of crises; and conversely, big impacts lead to small consequences – in human efforts to manage these crises). These are precisely the emergency situations that become the new regularity (in-regularity).
A bit of theory follows (see Study 10 and Study 11 for more).
An emergency situation can occur, as a rule, in one of the following two cases:
⁕ Firstly, when the political (constitutional, legal, public, social) order is violated by forces outside or inside the state.
We will call this an EMERGENCY OF THE FIRST TYPE – outside the established constitutional (legal, legally guaranteed) order. As a rule (at least – but not only – in Bulgaria), the current legislation focuses (even fixes) precisely on this situation and it describes, first of all, how to react if this situation occurs. And rather, it only mentions it, without building either an adequate regulatory framework or the necessary institutional infrastructure.
⁕ Secondly, when the normal course of processes is disrupted as a result of an emergency situation – disaster, accident, catastrophe, crisis, civil contingency, emergency, pandemic.
We will call this an EMERGENCY OF THE SECOND TYPE – outside the normal (natural) course of processes. Here (as legislation, as an institutional network of networks [14], as resources) there is a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of changes and even a lot of thinking ahead...
We will focus on the strategic institutional pillars of the Security State (ie the State as a producer of security). We will explicitly clarify that when we talk about the „pillar“ of the Security State, we are talking about a complex of institutions and structures (a „network of networks“) that are integrated mainly horizontally and increasingly combine coordination and decentralization at the expense of command and centralization.
THE CLASSIC Security State has the following strategic institutional pillars (see Study 11 for details):
▪ The Army (with a capital „A”) – it was created to protect the external security of the State, i.e. it is an armed institution for protection against external threats.
▪ The Police (with a capital „P”) – it was created to protect the internal security of the State, i.e. it is an armed institution for protection against internal threats
▪ The Special [intelligence] services – they provide information, i.e. the software of the national security system.
▪ The Defense industry – it produces the weapons and equipment, i.e. the hardware of the national security system.
The CONTEMPORARY Security State has five strategic institutional pillars: The Army, The Police, The Special Services, The Defense Industry, and The Civil Security.
As various emergencies come to the fore, when a-normality (non-normality) becomes the new normality (the ordinarity), the four CLASSIC PILLARS of the Security State come face to face with a very strong, powerful competitor for material, financial, cognitive (knowledge-related) and human resources – the Civil Security.
The CIVIL SECURITY is a complex of institutions and structures („network of networks“) directly involved in disasters, accidents, catastrophes, pandemics and other emergency situations. It is committed to the emergency and is the main instrument of the State in its operation in the space filled with traditional and non-traditional challenges, risks, dangers and threats as a result of various crises and emergency situations. Building this Fifth Pillar of the Security State is a fundamental priority. When such a support is built, it will lead to a synergistic effect of using the limited (and they are, in principle, always limited) resources of the state in countering any type and kind of emergency, of abnormal and critical situations.
Explanation:
In a first approximation, the Security State can be perceived as the National Security System.
Civil security should not be confused with Security of citizens! The problem is that often in Bulgarian civil, civic, civilian and even sometimes societal are translated by „civil“ or various derivatives. Therefore, in Bulgaria we have to explicitly specify: „Civil Security“ in the sense in which „Civil Protection“ is used! It doesn't occur to anyone that „civil protection“ is „protection of citizens“.
Synergy – the total effect of the interaction of two or more factors, in which their interaction significantly exceeds the effect of the sum of the actions of the two factors separately; joint action (work) of two or more bodies.
● TREND 5. Establishment of a unipolar geopolitical model
The American political scientist Michael Mandlebaum (1946) compared the Cold War confrontation to a fight between two heavyweight sumo wrestlers: „Two big fat guys in a ring, with all sorts of posturing and rituals and stomping of feet, but actually very little contact, until the end of the match, when there is a brief moment of shoving and the loser gets pushed out of the ring, but nobody gets killed“ [15]). In this 45-year struggle, the West won. It was followed by a period of ambiguity as to where international relations would take. There were moments of hopes (or illusions) of building a multipolar world of common, indivisible and shared security. Then, in the vacuum of this ambiguity, George W. Bush (1924 – 2018, 41st President of the United States, 1989 – 1993) raised the New World Order paradigm, which suggested the transition to a world in which the power of law would replace the law of power; a world whose security will be at the center of the UN (in Europe – OSCE). Gradually, however, a unipolar geopolitical model with a single superpower – the USA – began to emerge.
History knows such a development, but the question remains whether it is predetermined or a matter of choice. Caught in a situation overloaded with global responsibilities and privileges, the US chose to rely on organizations under its control, in which not the democratic principle of „one country – one vote“ applies, but another principle – of (de facto or de jure) the rich and the powerful – „one dollar – one vote“ (NATO, IMF, G-7).
There are many examples of such a model being unsustainable and easy to throw out of balance; it has a number of defects and vulnerabilities, foci of tension, instability, sources of conflicts and discords. Global interests are much more varied, and the threats are far more serious for one country, or even the United States, to successfully overcome them.
The search for pluralistic alternatives to the unipolar model was triggered both from above – by countries that do not accept this world order and aspire to a more significant global role (China, Russia, India), but also from below – by the humiliated and dissenters (counter-revolution of the rejected), of all those who feel discomfort in the new geopolitical environment and are convinced that their survival and their value system are threatened by today's development, who see no prospects ahead of them. They became increasingly radical and uncompromising, motivated and terrorist in the battle with the unipolar status quo. It was only a matter of time before it became clear that this status quo was doomed.
And what options are there before the unipolar geopolitical model? The following four base scenarios can be outlined in the near future (in the next 20 – 25 years).
⁕ THE FIRST SCENARIO leads to a global an-archy (an-archy is modeled after mon-archy – rule by one; di-archy – rule by two; poly-archy – rule by many). It is about establishing a global non-polar model, where there could even be several great powers, but none of them would position themselves as a pole, i.e. shifting, temporary, and unclear coalitions will continually be formed.
This scenario is unlikely. States of global an-archy have occurred mostly (and relatively short-lived) in times of transition from one model of the big (world) politics to another. The world has always been asymmetric, even at the highest geopolitical level, and one or a limited number of countries have had some advantage in terms of military power and/or some other potential – economic, financial, resource, cultural – which logically allowed them to „move“ forward and increase the distance with other countries. And coalitions of partners and „clients“ have formed around them, and thus they have gradually become the new great powers.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 –1679) described the natural condition when people live in anarchy, without a common authority over them to respect them, i.e. without a supreme arbiter to impose order and laws, in which people live in anarchy, without a common authority over them to respect them, i.e. without a supreme arbiter to bring order and enacting laws. This natural condition is a „war of every man against every man“ („bellum omnium contra omnes“), „and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short“ [16].
We mention this because it is natural to assume that an-archy is close to anarchy – such a state does not work for the stability of the geopolitical system, so stronger countries usually make huge efforts to reformulate the rules of the world order and the relations between them, thereby restructuring international security. Let us hope that (as well) this time humanity will not allow itself to collapse into a Hobbesian „natural condition“ of war of every man against every man.
If, however, Donald Trump becomes president of the United States again and continues his illogically brutal behavior on the global stage, this seemingly impossible scenario could turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Explanation:
Self-fulfilling prophecy – a prediction giving rise to the reasons for its fulfillment.
⁕ THE SECOND SCENARIO leads to stabilization of the unipolar model. This means that it will be entrenched, strengthened, deepened and will turn out to be a self-replicating status quo.
⁕ THE THIRD SCENARIO leads to the imposition of a new bipolar model. Who then could be the second pole? Here it is permissible to consider four sub-scenarios:
• SUB-SCENARIO 1. For those who see the future international system as primarily state-centric, the second pole is logically a state, and it can only be China.
• SUB-SCENARIO 2. This is a certain development of the first approach, with the second pole being a union of states. A contender for such a pole is none other than the European Union.
• SUB-SCENARIO 3. The second pole is a civilization in the sense put forward by the American political scientist Samuel Huntington (1927 – 2008) [17], namely a Community with a high degree of integrity based on history, culture, ethnicity and religion, with a close, including to coincidence, value system. In this case, the undisputed candidate is the Islamic world.
The problem of these three subscenarios is common – they are looking for tomorrow's second pole among today's candidates for it. And we should imagine what tomorrow's world will be like and look for the possible second pole in it. As said, we are gradually entering a networked world with a networked structure, with a networked mindset, with networked challenges and with networked responses to those challenges. Therefore, it would be logical to try to find the second pole among the increasingly escalating and rapidly developing network structures.
• SUBSCENARIO 4. A second pole may also be a network structure covering the Earth with a cobweb. Such a structure are able to build, through its intertwining, the networks of organized crime and terrorism, i.e. Organized Crime & Terrorism Network (OCTopus-N). This network structure entwining the Earth is not to be underestimated at all. With the overflow of personnel, resources and methods of activity, with the enormous accumulated capital, with their penetration at practically all levels of power (even in democratic countries) and in all profitable businesses, organized crime and terrorism are undoubtedly capable of manifesting ambitions and asserting claims of an influential geostrategic factor.
The capabilities of a geopolitical structural unit (state, union of states, civilization, network structure) are determined not only by its potential, by its potential ability, by its potential energy, but also by whether it is able to unite behind itself, to lead after itself, to mobilize after itself, to control a significant part of the world (if there are two poles, we are talking practically about half the world).
Extremely important in strategic forecasting and scenario planning is the analysis of the potential of CAPABILITIES and the level of AMBITIONS, the so-called C & A Analysis, leads us to the conclusion that (most likely) at the current historical stage:
• China has the capabilities but lacks the ambitions to be a second pole.
• The European Union has neither the capabilities nor the ambitions to be a second pole.
• The Islamic world has the ambitions but lacks the capabilities to be the second pole.
• OCTopus-N has both the ambitions and capabilities to be a second pole.
Put simply – China „can but does not want“, the European Union „neither can nor wants“, the Islamic world „wants but cannot", but if not reacted in time, it could turn out that OCTopus-N „both wants and can“ to claim to be the second pole.
A clarification is needed here. We believe that rumors of China's future unique greatness are greatly exaggerated. Yes, China is a dynamically developing country, with ancient traditions, religion, philosophy and culture, with a huge diaspora. But serious social problems are brewing there – raising the standard of living of a large part of the Chinese will make them more sensitive to democratic values and human rights. Being an active global factor requires quite a bit of strain. A good illustration of such overexertion is the fate of the USSR. And the authoritarian rule of the current Chinese (practically life-long) leader Xi Jinping and his complete rejection of Deng Xiaoping's reform policy are already pushing the country into a very serious economic crisis.
But we must also consider the alternative point of view – that China is following the covenant of its ancient strategists and using deception and distraction; that he is pretending to be weaker and less ambitious in order to misrepresent his geopolitical aspirations. China is increasing its economic and financial power, building a modern army with conventional and strategic weapons. The task is not only to remain a great power, but to become the only Great Power. This is a tightly disguised plan, the „Hundred-Year Marathon“, the purpose of which is for the country to revenge for the humiliation it has suffered, inflicted on it by the West and to supplant the United States as the military and economic world leader in 2049, i.e. for the centenary of the proclamation of the People's Republic of China to build a new world order – a world without American domination. And as the study from which this quote is taken concludes:
„The first step, recognizing that there is a Marathon, may be the most difficult to take, but it is also the most important. America fail to recognize the problem and may refuse to face the long-term scenario of China not only surpassing us but also growing to double and them triple the size of our economy, by 2049. Then China will have won, by default“ [18].
⁕ THE FOURTH SCENARIO leads to a multipolar system. The famous and influential American experts in international relations Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928 – 2017) – analyzing the future core of transcontinental security; and Henry Kissinger (1923 – 2023) – describing the new world order in the XXI century, reflect on a similar perspective [19, 20]. The two include in their predictions at least six major players in the future system of international security: the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Russia and India. The American political scientist Joseph Nye (1937) draws a future multifactorial scenario in which, from the point of view of military power, the world will be unipolar – the USA; from the point of view of economic power, the model will be tripolar – North America, led by the USA; Europe, led by Germany (increasingly this role is played by the EU) and [Southeast] Asia, led by China; from the point of view of every other aspect of security (social, cultural, financial, environmental, informational, etc.), the world will be multipolar, with different poles in number and composition – what he calls „diffusion of power“ [21].
Anyway, we will note that the USA lost the first place as the most innovative country and in 2020 is in 3rd place after Switzerland and Sweden (Bulgaria is in 37th place and Russia in 47th) [22]; in 2021, the USA is again in third place after Switzerland and Sweden (Bulgaria is in 35th place and Russia in 45th) [23]; in 2022 the USA are second after Switzerland (Bulgaria is in 35th place and Russia in 47th) [24]; while in 2023 the USA is third again – after Switzerland and Sweden (Bulgaria is in 38th place and Russia in 51st place) [25].
By growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) among the countries with the largest economies in the world, as of September 2023, the USA is in 7th place with 3.10%, after India – 7.60%, Turkey – 5.90%, Russia – 5.50 %, China – 5.20%, Indonesia – 4.94%, Mexico – 3.3% [26].
At the same time, according to nominal GDP (that is, at current prices – prices in the relevant year) for 2023, according to data from the International Monetary Fund, the IMF (data from the UN and the World Bank are similar), the USA is firmly in first place with a GDP of 26.950 trillion dollars. After the USA is the EU – 18.351 trillion. USD, China – 17.701, Germany – 4.430, Japan – 4.231, India – 3.732, Great Britain – 3.332, Russia is in 11th place with 1.862 trillion. bottom Bulgaria is in 69th place with USD 103.099 billion. The nominal world GDP is 183.950 trillion dollars. [27]
Когато обаче се разглежда БВП по т.нар. паритет на покупателната способност, ППС, класацията се преобръща (в т.нар. международни долари). На 1-во място е Китай – 35.004 трлн. дол., следвани от САЩ – 27.970, ЕС – 25.930, Индия – 14.260, Япония – 6.710, Германия – 5.720, Русия – 5.230 трлн. дол. България е на 72-о място със 152.079 млрд. дол. Световният БВП по паритет на покупателната способност е 216.499 трлн. дол. [28]
However, when considering GDP according to the so-called purchasing power parity, PPP, the ranking is reversed (in so-called international dollars). In 1st place is China – 35.004 trillion. USD, followed by USA – 27.970, EU – 25.930, India – 14.260, Japan – 6.710, Germany – 5.720, Russia – 5,230 trillion. bottom Bulgaria is in 72nd place with 152.079 billion dollars. World GDP at purchasing power parity is 216.499 trillion. bottom [28]
If we compare the shares of world GDP in PPP in 2016 and 2050, we get the following: China – 18% and 20%, USA – 1 6% and 12%, EU – 15% and 9%, India – 7% and 15% . In 1995, the GDP of the E-7 (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Mexico and Turkey) was equal to half the GDP of the G-7 (US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy) ; in 2015, the GDP of the E-7 was roughly equal to the GDP of the G-7, and in 2040, the GDP of the E-7 is projected to be twice the GDP of the G-7 [29] !
Table 3. Ranking of the great powers by the corresponding period or year AD, according to their GDP estimates [30]
Table 4. Ranking of countries by GDP according to purchasing power parity in billions of US dollars from 2016 [31]
Table 5. Ranking of countries by GDP in trillions of US dollars in current prices [32]
Explanation:
IMF – International Monetary Fund, an international organization, a specialized institution of the United Nations, with headquarters in Washington.
WB – The World Bank, an international financial organization that provides loans to developing countries. It is one of the largest sources of development aid.
G-7 – The Group of Seven is a group of the most economically significant countries, which includes France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. In 1997, Russia joined and the name of the group became G-8. On 24 March 2014, Russia was excluded due to its annexation of Crimea in 2014, so the group is once again the G7.
Diaspora – a term denoting a distinct ethnic community living permanently outside its historical homeland.
Conventional weapons – ordinary weapons that do not use chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological means. Weapons using such means are strategic and are called weapons of mass destruction (WMD). A radiological weapon disperses radioactive material to kill and cause destruction in a densely populated area.
Xi Jinping (1953) – General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission since 2012 and President of the People's Republic of China since 2013. He has been the Supreme Leader of China since 2012.
Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) – long-time leader of China from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, a reformer in the country's politics and economy.
PRC, People's Republic of China – the official name of China.
Innovative – new, original, creative, with a sense of modernity, of innovation.
Trillion (trillion) – 1000 billion.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) – it reflects the real cost of living in each country. PPP equates the purchasing power of national currencies to a given single currency. The most popular single currency is the so-called International dollar or PPP dollar, which is calculated by the World Bank by dividing one unit of the currency of the respective country by the calculation indicator of the purchasing power parity that the dollar had on the territory of the United States (usually 1990 or 2000 is taken as a benchmark).
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Personal site of Prof. Dr. Nikolay Slatinski for studies and analyses in the field of national and international security
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