In Bulgaria the Real Power Is in the American Embassy

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Antoaneta Kiselincheva’s interview with Valentin Vatzev, an expert on political analysis, geo-politics and international relations, a lecturer in European studies and political philosophy in the European College and at Paisii Hilendarski University in Plovdiv. Originally appeared at A-specto, translated by Valentina Tzoneva exclusively for SouthFront

SF editor: This is the first part of the interview. The second part will be released later this week.

Mr Vatzev, is it hypocrisy or schizophrenia the fact that the new Chairman of BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party), Cornelia Ninova, in her first moves brought flowers to the monument of Todor Jivkov in his home-town, Pravetz, and at the same time, returned the NATO-ists to the leading organs of the party?

First, the ‘NATO-ists’ were already there and second, from a technological point of view – this is how it is done. She has to enforce her positions, reputation, and if she intends to be an efficient leader and realize her big goals, she should first overcome her own mistrust in herself, which is obvious. From a different angle – yes, it is hypocrisy, but as a whole politics, is half-made of these manouevres. Everyone saw that she was elected due to the categorical will from the side of the Russian Honorable Consul, Geori Gergov, and the Honorable Consul, but this time not of Russia but of ‘Gazprom’, Rumen Ovcharov. To maintain peace there and to avoid creating additional problems, it was necessary to represent the ‘little party’ of America.

You see, this is tragic, but between the actual unannounced ideology of BSP and the one of GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria), there isn’t much of a difference in principles. GERB’s focus is on denouncing communism and BSP is also anti-communist, although it is visible from a closer look and not from afar. But today, in Bulgaria, no one pays any special attention to communism or anti-communism, and probably for a reason, because as a theory, communism is in the past. Marx is from the 19th Century and Lenin is in the beginning of the 20th Century. From a communist perspective, today only the supporters of Trotski work and this we can see in reality. By the way, the American neo-cons are exactly the supporters of Trotski and it is not even hidden in the American political thought. In other words, there are a lot of points for interaction between BSP and GERB as they are both a cast-off from any ideology. They do not bear any ideological responsibility and it has been like this for a long time.

When another Chairman of BSP informed the voters: you wanted a coalition partners with the DPC (Movement for Rights and Freedom) and HDCV (National Movement for Freedom and Development), this was a test of the tolerance and critical thinking of the supporters. It turned out that both qualities were below the required minimum. So it would be easy to explain to the Bulgarians that history has chosen the political bloc, or the big political coalition between BSP and GERB. Never mind what I like, the question is what is possible.

Why is it necessary to do this?

Why should it be something of this sort? There are many reasons and ways for this to happen. First, there is no way for Russia to help Borisov without making the American leadership of Bulgaria furious. The Russians cannot give him money or open support. However, it is possible to support Borisov from one side when he takes off down the slope. I expect Georgi Purvanov to be the performer of this delicate operation. He has not been afraid for a very long time now, because if you are wet already you are not afraid of the rain. A man who has refused a mandate already does not have a problem selling his mother’s kidney or whatever is needed and required for political expedience. So, now GERB and BSP are in a complicated love relationship leading to a future political marriage, which is prepared and it has a highly-technical mother-in-law – the ABV (Alternative for Bulgarian Revival).

Not a single law of the current Bulgarian politics would get broken. There have been more disgusting events in Bulgaria. The question of norm and what it should be is a different story. But this is another theme. I expect that Boiko Borisov will continue losing the political trust of the American leadership of the Bulgarian state. I am afraid that he has already lost it. See, recently it turned out that Jane’s Defense – an edition with a profound profile and a military analytical center with a huge reputation, published information that the forces of the Islamic State can demonstrate Bulgarian arms. On its own, this means nothing because you can find Bulgarian–made arms everywhere. It is cheap, accessible and not devoid of qualities. But the fact that Jane’s Defense mentioned Bulgaria together with the Islamic State is a terrifying symptom for the leadership of Bulgaria. Now, Borisov will be educated because he is facing a big adventure and I have no idea how he will survive it. It is important that very soon Borisov will have to visit Warsaw and undertake engagements on behalf of Bulgaria with the new NATO, which is being created as we speak.

What do you mean by “the new NATO”?

A new NATO is being created as it has been established that neither Germany nor France can be reliable partners in case there is an escalation of tension between NATO and Russia. Obviously, Germany will play smart and will not wish to escalate the tension with Russia. In Germany, the idea of ‘North Stream-2’ is more inspiring. In France, they cannot be forced to confront Russia simply because the relations there are different. In other words, a new NATO is needed: NATO-2, which is in project form which is ready for realisation. Just imagine, from the Baltic states, through Poland, Ukraine, Moldova (there is a conflict region named Pridnestrovska Moldovian Republic where there are Russian forces located) and down to Turkey and Azerbaijan. If you place this whole variety on the map, you will see something like jack-lift which lifts up Russia from the lower part – from the south and the west. Apart from that, you will see a valve breaking the influence of Russia in south and south-eastern directions. Of course, this is an anti- Russian bloc as the old NATO stopped being anti-Russian. It lost inertia and intention to fight against Russia and honestly there was no reason for a fight. The Founding Act NATO-Russia was adopted, it is not just an Act or a Memorandum of Intention but a contract which has been working successfully for the last 20 years. It is interesting to see if it will be renewed. For all the interested partie,s both in the United States and in Russia, there are two options – to be or not to be renewed. If NATO-2 is realized, obviously this contract will be passed-by. Naturally, the military-industrial complex will celebrate.

What is our Bulgarian role in this project?

In the NATO-2 project, if you can visualise it on a map, there is a missing link, a blank space: the state of Bulgaria. Can Bulgaria carry the responsibility of connecting the north and the southern part of NATO-2 just because of its location? No one must be surprised that Bulgaria is an important geo-political land and if, after all, someone is surprised, it is the Bulgarians. They forgot that they live on geo-political territory. But the big Bulgarian leaders have always known this. Take examples from the not-so-distant history, the history of the 20^th Century – this was clear even to Todor Jivkov. You don’t need exceptional education for this. One needs political talent and intuition. Boris III, of course, also knew it and tried to balance the burden of geo-politics during his time. Well, he didn’t manage to coordinate and he paid according to the highest tariff. Perhaps there was no other way. He was trying to resolve unresolvable conflicts, while Jivkov simply refused to resolve them.

But Bulgaria really is a geo-political piece of land and now Borisov will have to pay for the fate of Bulgaria and he is a man absolutely helpless in these matters. If it is a question of regulating fights between two bands, he knows how to manage it. Or if it is about making up between different links in the grey Bulgarian economy, there is no one better than him. Borisov is extremely efficient in his narrow parameter. But here we are talking about complex, difficult geo-political equations, which are difficult even for John Kerry and Lavrov. Borisov has two opportunities – or two options as the cultured people say (in other words, the Bulgarian Americans) today. One is to go to Warsaw and to take responsibility on behalf of Bulgaria saying that yes we are loyal, we are even the most loyal member of all possible anti-Russian initiatives. Moscow will notice this immediately as even now, it is curious about Borisov’s reaction. If he says Bulgaria will not participate – sort yourselves out, he can be fired in one afternoon and he can get an order over the phone to leave Parliament, resign and to get lost. Borisov, however, is not ready to become a martyr and to damage his nerves over these questions. He wants to live quietly and, if possible, with his money.

In this conflict situation, Jane’s Defense announced that Bulgaria has possibly exported arms to the absolute evil, which today we have agreed is named Islamic State and it means: Borisov, you will have to attend an exam very soon. You remember what the world will learn about you? – bank accounts, documents, biographical facts, witnesses, unquestionable proof that you are not the person who you are pretending to be. Borisov cannot resist this machine, and if he engages Bulgaria with NATO, then the second half of the Moscow Consensus will not be satisfied. Because NATO-2 means the end of the Moscow Consensus, or the practical agreement between Moscow and Washington regarding the total American military and political control over Bulgaria, and the presence of Russian capital in Bulgaria is seen as unproblematic. That’s why I insist on getting to know what the Moscow Consensus is – this is not simply a scientific political question and it is definitely not a museum problemmatic. This is a question of today because NATO-2 will not accept the presence of any Russian capital in Bulgaria. It will turn Bulgaria into a frontline zone, into a place where there is no winking and nudging with Russia. So today it’s not easy to be Boyko Borisov.

As an element of this big political/geo-political game, which is taking place in and around Bulgaria, the changes in the BSP took place. First of all, Cornelia Ninova must maintain high communist passion in the hearts of her supporters. Secondly, she must not limit the pragmatics who are in possession of the central leadership. These are the people who know that money doesn’t smell. In the past, it had a different name but now it is called pragmatism. In this regard, the first pragmatic in the European history is the Emperor Vespasian who said “pecunia non olet” (“money doesn’t smell”) when he taxed the city toilets in the eternal city of Rome. From there, we have the principle that money doesn’t smell because when he was asked how he deals with these stinky money, he answered that the budget required it. This type of pragmatism at the moment controls the leadership of the BSP almost completely, and Cornelia Ninova also has to solve contradicting equations; equations with an indefinite number of unknowns and constants. We must be politically adequate at the moment, but somehow it’s not happening.

What is the reason for this asymmetry between the elite and the people as well as the strong American influence over the elite?

The problem is that the Bulgarian elite, with each of its segments separately, is not adequate and it does not work. None of the existing political forces can take the responsibility of the power, even in conditions where the real power is somewhere else. They should be pleased that the American ambassador is both guilty and responsible for everything that is happening in Bulgaria. But they don’t dare to blame him because how do you blame an American ambassador?! The elite of Bulgaria cannot deliver anything; neither together nor separately. This is why it is essential to activate the Bulgarians living abroad to vote at any cost in the hope that the coefficient of representation in the Bulgarian establishment becomes higher. That’s why they came up with the insane idea of mandatory voting. I congratulate it – this is the way to stand in front of a mirror and slice your own throat with a razor. To make the Bulgarian vote for you when he hates you – this is wonderful! We will learn to draw indecent pictures and then go to the polling stations. And most people will do this. The Bulgarian political class is deeply unpresentable simply because it is still-born. You don’t make up politics at a round table; politics is a product of other things, which are sometimes miserable and cruel. Look at the birth of the new French politics – the guillotine worked first. Look at the new British politics: in the beginning it was Cromwell, who is not a fine humanitarian at all. As far as the German politics is concerned, the roots of modern German politics lie somewhere towards the end of the 40s. You know where it comes from; from the artillery that ruined Berlin, from the total fire over Dresden…

Politics is not a chat between people who wink at each other and touch each other’s feet under the table, even if it were a round table. Politics is relations between what’s ours and what’s foreign. Politics is constructed on the confrontation between the ‘ours and the foreigners’ and not by a group of pink-cheeked crooks who have redistributed roles amongst themselves. With the already-forgotten Visotski, who I didn’t like in his last years but who spoke with the voice of the era, there was a song that went like this:

Сегодня в нашей комплексной бригаде
Прошел слушок о бале-маскараде.
Раздали маски кроликов,
Слонов и алкоголиков,
Назначили все это в зоосаде.

Rough translation from Russian:

Today in our building team

Came a rumor for a masquerade ball

Masks of rabbits, elephants and alcoholics

Were distributed

And the event was assigned to the zoo-garden.

This is the perfect poetic metaphor for the Bulgarian round-table, which is the ‘Hallelujah’ of the Bulgarian political reality. To some, bowler hats and redingotes were distributed – they were supposed to be the ‘right’ and the others received rag-coats and machine-guns – they played the ‘communists’, and in the middle were the fine intelligentsia in parka-coats – the ‘social democrats’. The roles were allocated. They dug out from who knows where Dertliev, who was a nice man and in the beginning it was very difficult for him to figure out what was required of him. You will work as a social-democrat! Hey, it’s true. I was a social-democrat about a hundred years ago. But the authors of this political menagerie were, to a degree, disgusting. One of the authors of the idea, a Jew in the broadest meaning of the word, one of those who does not go to live in Israel (isn’t it quieter in Geneva or the Fifth Square in Paris?), the one who was disgusted by fascism – it was the Russian Imperial Jew, Lukanov. He had nothing in common with Bulgaria and fascism was not his cup of tea. He was squeamish. They didn’t manage and didn’t come up with the idea to restore a few pro-fascist Bulgarian organisations to make the menagerie complete – to represent other animals apart from the rabbits and the squirrels.

The Bulgarian politics was born like some kind of performance. At present, the performance is dying because the politics is the most serious thing. The principle of power is the principle of reality, and when you rule by winking there is no reality and no power. There is nothing strange in the result of these dishonest, useless exercises running for 25 years now in Bulgaria. The real power is in the American Embassy, there is no other place for it to be. The Americans are not the occupiers, simply the power flew there because no one else wanted to take responsibility. The representing power appeared to be in the hands of the children of the bureaucracy, which dreamt to be in power but it turned out that the children could only work with bank cards, sniff cocaine and work in the security sector. Boiko Borisov & Co in a sociological aspect are “the security”. As a joke it is called “Vatzev’s law for degradation of the elite” – the first generation of the elite can take power with a gun in hand and they know what to do with it afterwards. The second generation cannot take the power, but if they get it, they know how to manage it. The third generation knows nothing, but it has bank cards available. They manage ATMs and to a certain degree themselves, but not always.

The degradation of these elites is taking place right in front of our eyes. The position of the old revolutionaries, who might not be very attractive but they make us trust in their ability to die and to kill in order to get power, was taken by the sophisticated intellectuals, their sons and daughters who cannot get power if it is not handed over to them and more or less know what to do with it. Now is the time of the third generation – white and fluffy Bulgarian intelligentsia. One such was ruling a big Bulgarian party for a long time. I have never had anything against him personally; sociologically, he was the third generation representative. The children of the bureaucracy lose power by rule as they are not prepared to hold it. The sons of the kings in feudal Europe have studied Latin, fencing and horse riding. The sons of the royals and the aristocracy of today are capable of nothing. They can only count cash and do similar-art related activities. Power is a painful and dirty job, broken nerves, damaged fates; you don’t hold power with white gloves.

When the moment for transferring that power to the public structures came, it turned out that it is impossible for Boiko Borisov not to come along. If it were not Boiko Borisov, it would have been Boris Boykov, and if not, it would be his brother or the wife or whatever. In sociology, the time for the serving staff has arrived.

Georgi Purvanov is also a member of the serving staff, but he is one of the most submissive types. And if, let’s say, Stanishev is something like Buddha, who has aristocratic roots, education, culture, glory in comparison Georgi is something like the serving village. Stanishev cannot be forced to do a dirty job, his hands are clean. Purvanov does the dirty job – if he has to return a mandate, he will return it, regardless of the fact that it will stink for generations. So, today the power is at its right place: in the serving staff of the late socialism. There is no other way in sociology. The children of the bureaucracy in whose name the ‘perestroika’ was done, turned out to be immature, chronically-infantile and unable to take responsibility. I have witnessed how the sons and daughters of the professors of Marxist–Lenin philosophy, became leaders of Atlantic clubs and established themselves as victims of the totalitarian repression…

There are generations ready for power and others who are not, and it is not a personal fault. History follows its own objective laws.

It is true that it is very easy not to like Boiko Borisov, but if someone suggests that he leaves, I would be extremely interested what will happen after he left. Radan Kunev? This is not serious. Kornelia Ivanova? Yes, in another era…

In a word, the Bulgarian political picture will develop on the basis of its own logic, which is the inability of the elite to resolve any important questions because it suffers from creative impotence and intellectual weakness. It is most convenient for it to be a colonial bureaucracy and it is happening; Vienna balls, offshore accounts, small feudal privileges, should a blue light be given to Stoichkov or yes; little but noisy adulteries, sex, intrigues, crimes and so on. In this concept, we live in a smiley Puerto Picco – the people must be entertained, n’est pas?

Is the national sovereignty something old and of the past? Today, this term is often presented as something embarrassing, something we should give up at any cost in the name of a bright future? And our root identity, our patriotism, do they have any meaning?

Your question is based on an extremely non-liberal and non-democratic statement. Your question about ‘sovereignty’ is simply indecent. The elite of today does not like the mention of sovereignty because this is the name of the skeleton in the cupboard. The elite manufactured a theory about how sovereignty belongs to yesterday and how today we are global people. Today we are universal consumers. The Minister of Education said the secret wish of the heart every present-day democrat: the goal of education is to create not citizens and not responsible Bulgarians, but perfect consumers.

Sovereignty is something that has come in a different way, different place, different time. Sovereignty is the result of the modern development of the society. The national state and sovereignty appeared in the modernisation of France, England and Germany. It is a natural feature of the national state. For the Bulgarians today, sovereignty is a load. I am afraid that one of the heavy defects of our national consciousness is that sovereignty has always been a load.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Bulgarian intelligence had been arguing whether we should be independent with the load of a national state because it is a pride and a load at the same time. There was a party that wanted to save the backbone of Bulgaria from the load of sovereignty and simply to develop in trade because it could have sorted us out. The first party had won, the party of Botev and now the party that he despised won. And it explains why the published works of Botev are not only thrown out of the education system but are like a taboo. The fighters for a national state and sovereignty are slowly placed in the past, and now here comes the era of the global citizenship, the citizens of the world…

Apart from that, as a real reactionist, I can tell you that everything conscious is real and everything real is conscious. If the Bulgarians wanted sovereignty, they would have had it. But today’s ideal for communal existence is very convenient: Europe to feed us and America to protect us.

However, Europe is not going to feed us, it will feed certain layers in Bulgaria, some first-class families. America will not protect us because it never got engaged in protection. We badly wanted to have American military bases, and to make us stop crying, they drew some pictures of bases. A few American squares in Bulgaria are not bases. An American military base is something completely different.

There is a character in Russian literature, a wife who is afraid that her husband does not love her because he does not beat her. ”To love means to beat you.” The Bulgarian political elite was very upset: how is it possible! They all get bases and there are no bases for us? You don’t love us! Really? We committed ourselves to you and you do not love us. As it goes in a folk song: ”Mother, a private wanted me!” We turned our back to the Soviet Union, the hated empire of evil! Now we are brand new and we are totally loyal to you! What about you? You don’t even give us bases? And we are even ready to accommodate nuclear weapons! How can we live when the boss does not love us? This is a historical time-vacuum; there are no bases except for those drawn-up, which are an object of interest only for the local prostitutes, because there is some sort of business. There are young people inside, young girls outside; this is what I call cultural communication, a beautiful friendship of the youth. There were mayors who insisted that the business will be blooming around the bases. Nothing bloomed except for international love but that’s a different scenario.

I suppose the Bulgarians did not need sovereignty. But in Bulgaria, the foundation for your question is awaking; what about our sovereignty? Yes, I also think that it is very important, but it comes through suffering and not by mail.

Unlike the multiculturalism which is consumed in joyful intoxication…

According to multiculturalism, the natural end of the world is like in a porn movie: they all love each other and they are all satisfied; the one gender and the other gender and the third gender, even the dog participates. Joy, joy, joy! The triumphal finale of an open porno plot – this is multiculturalism. This is promised to all the nations accepting it. And the nations which know the price of sovereignty because they have already paid for it, they are not many.

By the way, there are not many real countries in the world and we must not mix them with the list of independent countries of the UN. The real states are more or less 30 to 40, and the list of the UN is 210, I think. These are some territories under mandates, zones occupied by tribal leaders, friends of the administration of the UN, people occupying territories in which the State Department of the USA is interested. In the past, Somalia was not a state, but Moscow decided that the place is perfect for a military base. And they made it into a state. The price of the military base included an agreement with comrade, Said Bare – the local tribal leader to build socialism in Somalia. He was busy building socialism for a long time, almost a year, and finally it turned out that in order to build real socialism, there must be more money. Comrade Said Bare asked Brejnev for 200 million dollars who replied that socialism must be built with less money, or … “this is how much your socialism costs”. Comrade Bare got cross and kicked the Russians out, however, they behaved like perfect gentlemen: when leaving, they destroyed the base because you do not leave a runway for those who will come after you. And that’s how sovereignty in Somalia ended. Now, there are three states on the same territory, each one pretending for ownership of the whole territory. Can you imagine how three sovereignties cope in the same territory?

Seriously, sovereign countries are those where a national revolution has taken place, a national bourgeouis exists, something like a middle class, a developed feeling for independence. All the rest are states like the kind of Vanuatu, the state of Kiribati and the state of Niue – there are such, but then it turns out that it wasn’t a state but an island, which by contract, is connected to Australia. As well as the state of Nauru – this is a triangular island and its national trade is to help the Australian authorities keep the illega immigrants at the stadium of the island of Nauru. These are all sovereign countries, with national anthems, national symbols and UN representation.

Bulgaria was a real national state with real sovereignty, which we were not able to keep due to a variety of historical objective and subjective reasons. Today, Bulgaria is a happy self-colonised territory in which the elite lives successfully and quietly and the population must support Slavi Trifonov, watch BTV, soccer, this and that, yellow press, fatal love, servants’ thrills, lots of porno – and that’s it. I can assure you that in most of the places all over the world, it’s the same story so the old principle of Trotsky that the states are dying is correct, in a sense that some states will really die and some won’t. If you go to France, and explain that there is no sovereignty, they will most probably beat you up. In Greece, they also don’t like the theoreticists who prove that the era of sovereignty has gone.

Why? What does it threaten?

It threatens the global power of the only superpower in the world today – the United States. I expect the practice to deliver a new definition of sovereignty – each state is sovereign as long as it has received documents about it from the State Department of the United States of America. If you are not in possession of such a paper for sovereignty, you are not sovereign. Take for example the fact that we do not recognize the Syrian power as sovereign and why would it be unsovereign? No answer! “We’ll tell you later. For now, you must accept it and it should be sufficient for you.” And then we put a huge billboard in front BulBank in the centre of the city of Sofia which counts – how exciting! – the seconds remaining to the end of the hated totalitarian regime of Assad. Yes, later on, the billboard was taken down, mistakes happen…

It’s nice that when the power is non-sovereign, everyone can go there and take whatever he wants. This, in practice, is the lack of sovereignty – a yard with a demolished fence where everyone can go and take whatever he likes. In this way, Libya was announced as a non-sovereign country. It turned out that the local dictator is unbearable but he had hidden 150 billion dollars, ah, the totalitarian…

Iraq was also a non-sovereign state because they had nuclear weapons. Later, after they turned Iraq upside down, they did not find them but a simple and clear explanation came for it – we learned that in the last minute, the Russian military intelligence has brought about 10 ships loaded with Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bombs and they have taken them somewhere, probably Siberia, where in principle, the nuclear bombs are hidden. A sovereign, in fact, is the one who has the blessing of the State Department of the USA. Our elite knows this very well. It has well-developed intuition on the question. The Bulgarian elite is trained to feel where the power is, whether it is in the North – in Moscow, or in the West. Now, there is certain confusion about the location of the real power – whether it is in Brussels or Washington. On this question, there are spiritual hesitations in certain moments, but somehow, this question will be resolved. We got to the point where the Bulgarian anti-Americanism is taking the shape of Europe-ism. “We are Europeans and we are not like the fools in cowboy boots eating popcorn and KFC. We are refined and we listen to Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony.” There is certain tension between the Bulgarian Americanism and Bulgarian Europe-ism, but it will pass because the TTIP contract will be sealed, and again like in a porn movie, there will be only peace and love. The Bulgarian history continuously ends up in the stylistics of a porn film – everyone is pleased. Your question about sovereignty is reasonable, but whoever wants it gets it. “In order to swim, you have to swim – Mao is right and this is not trivial. The Kurds don’t have it, but will soon, because they want it badly. And the contrary: it is so convenient to live without it! Why is it necessary after all? Sovereignty is the element without which there is no real development. If you are not sovereign, you don’t deserve development. In other words, this is the battle for development. But it is so convenient not to develop…

Where in Europe is there sovereignty and will Europe continue to be the function of the States’ wishes or will there be normalisation of the dialogue with Russia?

The memory of sovereign France woke up in Europe. Some are real memories, while others are artificially blown up. There is a strong sovereignty-resisting society, but it is not exactly anti-American; it is a memory that it is a great power beginning with the French Revolution, which gave birth to the standards of the modern national state. In Germany, in their own way, they aim towards the same, although there you mustn’t speak openly because this is a country with a broken spine – they have been brutally defeated. Their gold reserves are somewhere else. There is a British tank division on German territory for no reason whatsoever, and this is necessary to remind the Germans who is on top and who is at the bottom, who lost the war and who won it. But Germany is also moving on a painful road towards sovereignty and even to imperial dominance in a hidden form. The promises of Helmut Kohl about European Germany and not German Europe, which sounded so pretty, are not valid anymore. The Germanisation of certain segments in the European Union means, apart from everything else, a subtle de-Americanisation. So there are processes for sovereignisation in the EU at the cost of strained connections. Recently, I wrote about the crash of the ‘United European States’, which is happening right in front of our eyes. We only need to open our eyes in order to see it. In this new problemmatic situation, if there was a sovereign Bulgaria, it would have had many roads to choose from – which one is the most authentic, most real, but such sovereign Bulgaria does not exist. Today, we are a cheerful Balkan Puerto Rico.

In Europe, there are processes not for normalisation but for the reduction of the almost total American control, which settled there after World War II. In this logical scheme, the factor – Russia – has an explanatory role and place. It turned out that with all the mistakes, defects, weaknesses, wrong decisions of the present leadership of Russia, with all the disadvantages of the Kremlin power, it managed to realize its strategic goal – the strategic and geo-political relations between Russia, Germany and France are present. The triangle Moscow-Berlin-Paris exists, and we need more and more paint in order to cover it so that it becomes invisible. But it constantly comes up from under the rich layer of decoration. For this reason, you cannot rely on Germany and France in NATO. It is necessary to create a new NATO. Of course, for us this is a historical moment, when they can’t trust Germany and France they will trust us because we’ll do the job meant for Germany and France. In Bulgaria, they will find someone to explain that ‘this is our moment comrades/gentlemen’! (meaning that those who were then comrades are now gentlemen). In other words, we are going to have a starry moment to become France and Germany at the same time! And of course, the main point of support for the Atlantism in Eastern Europe. The Bulgarian Atlanticists are dreaming about this and I would not stand in their way – everyone has the right to wet dreams.

In practice, Borisov doesn’t take any position for obvious reasons – he is afraid. Each road possible is scary. The time of Sergei Stanishev, who was balancing between America and Russia on a broad, lit alley, is over. This, at that time, was possible objectively and Stanishev confidently managed. He understood the language and the hints of both sides or he had no communication problems. His problems were different.

For Borisov, the situation is unbearably complicated. The natural reflexes of a man in such a position is to hide under his desk. In difficult times, being under the desk is the best and coziest place. But for how long can you live under the desk? I see Borisov as the quintessence of the new Bulgarian political elite. He is not representative of the society, but is fully representative of the present political elite of Bulgaria. We can say that the whole Bulgarian political elite is one generalised Boiko Borisov. And now, he must resolve complicated historical tasks – a damned Bulgarian fate; with whom and how. For me, the answer to this question is clear: with yourself. If you are not with yourself, you are nowhere. But I am not the elite, I am simply a side observer.

And this is the drama of Bulgaria. The European Union changed its political shape, it’s not dying, but something unpredictable will take place. The signboard at the door will remain but the interior architecture is changing and what about us now? Our task is to be with the winners. Damn, who are the winners? Tell us so we can go there with them, kiss whatever organs we have to kiss and to get sorted finally. It’s unclear.

Agony, agony in the shack of the servants.