Zlatogor MINCHEV^

THE NEW GEOPOLITICAL LANDSCAPE

Being on the crossroad of post-socialist nostalgia and modern democracy the socio-technological challenges for Bulgaria are quite intriguing and at the same time somewhat confusing. From one hand it is the influence of EU & NATO, but from another the traditional Russia and new USA interests clash on Balkans and Europe in general. The situation got even more complicated with the side effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war with the last two years¹, creating both economic and social effects for most of the civilized world. In this complex environment it is worth-noting the role of Turkey for both security and economy dynamics balance, together with China long term interests from mostly trading perspectives of the New Silk Road extension with the infrastructure and ports investments with the Black Sea². What have to be added here is the multi-political landscape complexity that in fact is keeping a fragile balance between East and West from ideological, economic, security and technological innovations perspectives.

Here mostly the energetic and security issues are coming on a first place as Black Sea region is traditionally affected by this, and the renewed wars in the Middle East³, together with a continued Russian – Ukrainian conflict all negatively connected with the country economy and security tensions. The last are mostly springing from the potential Russian response of NATO recent extensions around Russian borders, military and social packages⁴,⁵ for Ukraine with EU, USA and others, extended also with refugees from the new wars around.

At the same time the European economy is getting a sustainable negative trend and the effects after Covid-19 pandemics for the global economy are also not quite positive at least according to the World Bank and World Economic Forum some recent announcements⁶,⁷.

In addition, the BRICS’s extensive enlargement⁸, certainly affected both EU & NATO situation, as adding a bunch of new candidates to the table is quite visible request for potential world order rearrangement without new big war in principle.

The responsive political effects for Bulgaria are mostly related to often election campaigns with a series of care-taking governments that were in a way finally put in a certain stabilizing point in the second half of last 2023 year with new political tools as “non-coalition” or “sglobka” with rotational governing organization⁹.

The solution though somewhat difficult for handling looks in a way stable for the current quite complex situation.

NEAR FUTURE PERSPECTIVE

Proper understanding the near future of the problem, certainly requires creating a suitable model on the topic. Though this looks quite a challenging task by extending and joining some of the recent results from¹⁰,¹¹ an actual establishment of a feasible solution on the problem at hand could be achieved.

Thus, a probabilistic system model for multiple risks assessments based on the outlined issues and trends is developed, taking the scenario socio-technological context of the post-informational age¹².

 Post-information age scenario matrix evolution after¹³

The model aggregated results are aiming generalized forecast, concerning Bulgaria’s near future prognosis in the outlined complex geopolitical context up to year 2028. The approach gives a possibility for practical implementation of a multiple futures scenario planning with both plausible and implausible scenarios, implemen-ting expert assumptions, enriched with reference data gathered from heterogeneous sources around Secure Digital Future 21 initiative¹⁴ and used for machine supportive smart assessment¹⁵.

  Risk assessment model for Bulgaria socio-tech development towards 2028

The outlined results give aggregated probabilistic risk assessments from the complex combination of Direct and Indirect risks, taking the following classification:

• Critical risk priorities are most probably expected up to the year 2028 for: “Political Dynamics” – (5), “Social Issues” – (1), “Economy Issues” – (3), and “Security Issues” – (2) for Bulgaria that are mainly passive (marked in grey).

At the same time: “Military Conflicts” – (6), “Energy Issues” – (11), “BRICS+” – (9) and “International Relations” – (14) will maintain an active role (marked in white).

• Non-critical priorities are granted to: “Neighbouring Countries” – (4) “NATO” – (10), “Innovative Issues” – (7) and “EU” – (8) that will have mostly passive role (marked in white). “Climate Changes” – (12) and “Non-state Actors” – (13) are expected to have significant active roles within the next five years.

The aggregated risk gives priorities to the big five: “NATO” – (10), “EU” – (8), “Non-State Actors” – (13), Security Issues – (12) & “Military Conflicts” – (6).

Taking the model results several aggregated conclusions could be made:

• In the near future (towards year 2028) most of the critical problems for Bulgaria are expected to appear from existing and new military conflicts potential escalation. This certainly will affect the political, social and economy dynamics of the society as a whole;

• The innovations and climate changes will be the other problematic issues that will certainly rise significance, rising the economic & social effects at a new level of human-machine cooperative importance;

• Finally, the role of BRICS extension towards BRICS+ together with non-state actors (NGOs, non-formal allies, and other deep states instruments) and neighbouring countries will affect both economy and international relations assets challenging both NATO & EU with economic, security and energy issues and thus Bulgaria as a member of these allies.

DISCUSSION

The presented evolution of the geopolitical context for Bulgaria and the resulting prognosis based on system risk multiple assessment does not pretend to show the complete future landscape dynamics, but gives a comprehensive enough geopolitical outlook for Bulgaria.

Adding additional support with smart machine gathered and produced know-ledge, guarantees a less subjective system-oriented mechanism for formal risk analysis that is capable of producing a progressive geopolitical forecast with explanatory context.

Whether there will be other risks for Bulgaria as a country within the next five years, towards the year 2028 in general, is quite uncertain. The presence of nu-merous intangible factors like: new technologies fast and diverse evolution, genuine and strategic political changes, either large man-made, or natural cataclysms (new pandemia, earthquakes, global / local wars, etc.) could not be completely excluded or highly prioritized.

As this implausible scenario evolution (concerning implausible prognosis successful meeting) requires also additional resources spending, the presented here analytical model outlines could be quite useful.

Hopefully, this will ensure successful, resilient, and secure Bulgarian society governance in the near future geopolitical context dynamic evolution.

References

1. “Ukraine war: Three ways the conflict could go in 2024”, BBC, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-europe-67760067

2. M. Lambert, “China takes it all in the Black Sea region”, New Eastern Europe, 2019, https: //neweasterneurope.eu/2019/02/19/china-takes-it-all-in-the-black-sea-region/

3. K. Knipp, “Middle East 2023: War instead of ‘era of peace’”, DW, 2023, https://www.dw.com/ en/middle-east-2023-war-instead-of-era-of-peace/a-67827920

4. “EU agrees 50 bln euro Ukraine aid package – what are the reactions?”, 2024, https://www. reuters.com/world/europe/eu-agrees-50-bln-euro-ukraine-aid-package-what-are-reactions-2024-02-01/

5. “Military assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion”, UK Parliament, 2024, https:// commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9477/

6. C. Wheeler, V. Papagianni, “The Global Economy in Five Charts”, World Bank, 2024, https://blogs. worldbank.org/developmenttalk/global-economy-five-charts

7. Y. Panchia, “New Members, Old Powers: BRICS’ New Year Expansion As 10-Country Bloc”, Forbes Africa, 2024, https://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2024/01/02/new-members-old-powers-brics-new-year-expansion-as-10-country-bloc/

8. B. Popivanov, “Bulgaria’s False Dilemma”, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, 2023, https://www.rosa lux.de/en/news/id/51088/bulgarias-false-dilemma

9. Z. Minchev, “Bulgaria – Geopolitical Near Future Outlook”, The Market for Ideas, 2017, https:// www.themarketforideas.com/bulgaria-geopolitical-near-future-outlook-a168/

10. Z. Minchev, “Digital Transformation – An Extended Future Outlook for the Balkans Region”, Romanian Cyber Security Journal, no. 2, vol. 2, 2020.

11. Z. Minchev, et al, Digital Transformation in the Post-Information Age, Sofia, SoftTrade & Institute of ICT, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 2022.

12. Secure Digital Future 21 Forum Web Page, https://securedfuture21.org/