Dimitar Yonchev: Russia will not allow NATO to stay at its borders
Ukraine is not a world problem, it is a springboard for creating tension, quotes the ex-chairman of the National Security Committee of Bulgaria Dimitar Yonchev, the publication "Facti". In his opinion, it is important how the influence of major players will be distributed. Everything is sad for Europe now, it has completely let go of the geopolitical reins.
Interview with Dimitar Yonchev, Honorary Professor of the New Bulgarian University, one of the founders of the Department of National and International Security, former Chairman of the National Security Committee in the 36th People's Assembly (The first People's Assembly after the fall of the Communist regime. – Approx. InoSMI).
Fact: Professor Yonchev, geopolitical changes have been brewing for a long time, but did you assume that the knot would be cut by war? A war that looks like it will be a long one and is going on in all directions, including in the economy?
Dimitar Yonchev: My generation lived during the Cold War, we knew that only a nuclear war would bring change, and after it there would be a fourth war – with bows and spears. When everything happened in 1989, it seemed incredible that drastic changes could take place in the world without a military conflict.
It turned out that these changes were not so drastic. We have yet to realize that a change in the political regime does not mean a change in the geopolitical status quo. Anti-Nazism was at the heart of the organization of peace after the Second World War. The Allies created a new organization - the UN, the successor of the League of Nations, with a Security Council in which the winners make decisions, have the right of veto, and the main purpose of this organization was to prevent the revival of Nazism.
The fall of the Berlin Wall did not change the world order – the UN remained, and NATO, which lost its opposition, remained. Gradually, economic processes and technologies led to Americanization, otherwise known as globalization, and economic pressure began all over the planet – the United States has been practicing it for more than a century. This dynamic, accelerated by technology, has destroyed national borders. It largely contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but did not change the organization of the post-war world.
There was no Nazism in the global post-war world. The economic expansion of the United States, their world domination was hindered by Russia (militarily) and China (economically). A new enemy was needed – in the person of Russia and China. The demonization of Russia has been going on for decades, we are trying to build a world with a new enemy and a new ideology – not anti-Nazi, but anti-Russian and anti-Chinese.
In this sense, the old world has gone without return. The UN is a relic of it, where they are constantly trying to exclude Russia from the Security Council or deprive it of the right of veto. They are trying to eliminate the UN, as this is what remains of the previous stable world.
The world was moving towards a geopolitical restructuring, it was inevitable. Obviously, this is much more serious than the fall of the Berlin Wall, and involves much more suffering.
– What is your forecast – how long can the war last and how long will it take for the reconstruction of the world order to begin?
– The conflict will probably be settled at some point, when both republics (LPR and DPR) receive guarantees, the parties will come to an agreement. Most likely, this will happen closer to the next shift in the White House. But these are details. Globally, the geopolitical situation will change more slowly, but it will change.
War alone will not solve the problem. Ukraine is a springboard that plays the role of a place of tension, but geopolitical restructuring did not begin because of it. This is nothing compared to global geopolitics. As they say in such cases in the United States, Ukraine was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is a pity for the Ukrainian people, they are going through hellish suffering. But Ukraine is not a global problem. The problem is how the influence of the big players will be distributed. And among them, in addition to the USA, China and Russia, there is also Europe, where everything is sad.
For 200 years, geopolitics in the United States have openly said that their main task is to separate Moscow and Berlin, break off their warm relations, set them against each other, cut off Russia from Europe, deprive Europe of energy resources so that the United States can fully control the EU.
The EU was created with the idea of becoming not a political entity, but a single economic space in order to be able to resist major players in global competition. Individual countries, even Germany, will not be able to do this in the future. Even today, this economic project is about to be sacrificed to the interests of the United States. This is the main drawback of the European Union. After the Second World War there were several great leaders, but over time, after joining NATO, countries relaxed, especially after the Maastricht Treaty, and for thirty years they have not spent a single euro in their own interests and for their own protection. Figuratively speaking, European leaders have gone on indefinite geostrategic vacations.
Now that the conflict is purely geostrategic in nature and will be resolved for a long time, the Europeans react mainly ideologically. They cannot understand that this is a geostrategic problem, and they sacrifice their own economy in the name of US geopolitical interests. It hurts to look at them! It hurts to hear what the EC Chairman says. It's like if one goes to a duel with a gun, and the other with a chessboard or slogans. Ideological rhetoric is one thing, but Europe's strategic response is quite another. She needed to be alert and ask herself how she could protect her interests. How can it not sever ties and prevent the absolute economic dominance of the United States? To cut the umbilical cord, to sever the energy connection, means to finally let go of the geopolitical reins. In this sense, Europe is not on the geopolitical map of the world right now. She's doing worse than Ukraine.
– Is there a way out?
– It will be difficult for Europe to come to a consensus and create a political face. It is not the USA, where there is a federal structure and we practically do not know what individual states are doing. The federal structure is important. In Europe, everyone makes their own decision. The EU is a hulking dinosaur with almost 30 heads. Europe was not prepared for such a situation.
Pressure on Russia will most likely force Russians to try to cope with a difficult situation, and the only way out is to put their economy in order. Since the time of Peter I, their economy has been reduced to the extraction and export of raw materials. In the economy, they occupy the position of slaves. The pressure has largely forced them to start developing their own capabilities, and perhaps it is better for them. In the future, this will help them.
– Putin did not want to strengthen NATO at his borders, but he achieved the opposite - Finland and Sweden declared their readiness to join the pact, NATO gained a new meaning. Has the Russian President underestimated the West?
– Rather, they underestimated him. When the Berlin Wall fell, in response to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, an agreement was reached that there would be no expansion of NATO to the east. When I was part of the delegation to the NATO Assembly, there were US senators, the founders of NATO. They submitted an official document to Congress with a proposal to dissolve NATO, because the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist. There was a period – about six months, when many politicians in the United States saw the situation that way.
When Russia began to weaken noticeably, it turned out that it was very easy to get into it. Almost all the production of raw materials fell into the hands of foreign companies, as well as gold mining in Bulgaria, and Russia got crumbs. Yeltsin was going to disassemble it into several states. Since then, the idea has emerged to create three countries in place of Russia, that is, to remove it as a military competitor. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO expanded five times, what you mentioned will be the sixth. This shows that Russia has been quite weak all this time.
But it so happened that Putin's replacement coincided with the Arab Spring and the crisis in the region, which significantly increased the price of oil. Russia, without spending extra money, began to fill its treasury, and the money went to military production. The Russians came to their senses, NATO's approach to their borders began to get on their nerves. Remember the Caribbean crisis – the United States has eight missiles, and the world is ready to explode. The situation is much worse now.
I am sure that with such an army and self-confidence, Russia will not allow NATO to remain at its borders.
– What can happen? What do you think should be expected?
– Most likely, they will agree on a sanitary zone. After the end of World War II, Stalin deliberately did not reach the English Channel. Historians know that he had such an opportunity, but he refused. He didn't want to be alone against the whole world. He needed not Europe, but a sanitary zone around Russia, the so-called socialist camp. So Russia has guaranteed itself peace of mind. When this zone disappeared and NATO approached its borders, of course, she is nervous. If the Minsk Agreements were implemented, where it is written that the Constitution of Ukraine recognizes the two republics as special entities with its own government and undertakes not to join other military structures, there would be no conflict. But no one in the West was going to implement the Minsk agreements. Just the opposite. Gradually, Ukraine turned into a springboard, where all the old weapons of Europe and the United States were brought.
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– Recently published a study according to which two-thirds of Bulgarians want our country to remain neutral in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. At the same time, 21.1% insist on supporting Ukraine, 7.5% - Russia. How do you explain this data?
– We don't want to be dragged into this mess. If at one time our political leaders had been a little bolder and held a referendum, you would have realized that Bulgaria would never have joined NATO. She would hardly have entered the European Union, it is not for nothing that Bulgaria is said to be the poorest and most corrupt in the EU. We became famous for our poverty and incompatibility with other EU countries, our entry was due to political reasons.
They say in parliament that there is a national consensus on NATO. I don't know where they got it from. In Bulgaria, the national consensus is an abstraction, for many centuries, regardless of the situation, we are divided into Russophiles and Russophobes. We need to live with the idea that Bulgaria cannot have a single opinion. The main thing is that those in power spare their opponents and do not plunge our country into grave sin. We don't have extremes. Any extreme in Bulgaria negates the other part of Bulgaria.
