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Begin New Search Political Geography Europe Author Plamen Pantev

1. Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine: Concept, Ideology, Objectives, Means, Consequences

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
The study tries to outline interim conclusions about the concept, the ideology, the objectives and the tools used by the Russian federation in this barbaric war of attrition against Ukraine – a war of a nuclear superpower against a smaller neighbouring country. The study does not aim to analyse the strange way the war is developing – Russians carry on military attacks in both a regular and terrorist manner 7 on the whole territory of Ukraine, while the Ukrainians are deterred to counter-attack the aggressor on the latter’s own territory and to fight with longer-range arms even on their own land. The author understands how many issues from the theoretic fields of international relations, foreign, security and defense studies need to be considered to understand in a holistic way the final result of the interaction of domestic Russian, international, political, economic, governance, psychological and other problems that led to launching an aggressive and devastating war in the European continent by Moscow. The purpose of the study is not to outline the avalanche of mistakes in the policy of the collective West towards a showing for decades signs of revenge imperialist Russia. Neither it aims to point to the multitude of military mistakes by the aggressor in the last year. The aim of the study is to outline and discuss the concept, the ideology, the objectives and the means of the Russian aggression. Revealing the Nazi-like behaviour of the Russian leadership and its armed forces could serve to construct the broader picture of the developing conflict and learn how to prevent a similar invasion by Moscow. The study aims to prove that the legal and moral consequences of the war will be the conviction of the aggressor for the genocide and the war crimes. This would be the only possibility for normalising the life of the Ukrainians and the Russians as well as of the broader international relations system.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, NATO, Imperialism, Sovereignty, European Union, Conflict, Ideology, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

2. Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind: Is There a Blueprint?

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
70 years ago Bulgaria and the Peope’s Republic of China (PRC) established diplomatic relations. As a small country we are proud to be among the first that recognized the new great state and to have a record of long and constructive relations throughout this period. Despite the differences in the socio-political systems the bilateral relations of our countries are at its peak. The PRC is a key partner of both Bulgaria and the European Union (EU), to which my country belongs. I am personally grateful to the organizers of the high-level symposium for this first visit of mine to understand the sagacity of a Chinese proverb, I paraphraze, it is better to see something once than read about it one hundred times. China proved – and this is a lesson for all, that direct copying of experience and models of development of other countries may lead to nowhere. A methodological lesson in statecraft given by China from the end of the 70s of the last century till nowdays is that thinking big and whole while recognizing the truth in the facts of life, opening to the rest of the world and persistently reforming in a strategically chosen direction is the right way to success. The ability to take the best from the experience and wisdom of the past, sincerely seeking to share the achievements of mankind is a Chinese accomplishment that deserves to be studied by present and future politicians, including in my part of the world.
Topic:
Development, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and European Union
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Bulgaria

3. Challenges to the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union: Black Sea Region (Crimea) and Syria

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
A shorter version of this Research Study was presented at the International Conference: “Bulgaria. Ten Years After Its Integration in the EU and the Upcoming Presidency of the EU Council 2018”, convened on 21-22 November 2017 in Berlin, Germany, and organised by the Southeast Europe Association, Germany, The German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. The activity of Bulgaria and the EU during the Presidency of Sofia in the first half of 2018 proved the consistency of the assessments in the presented paper a year earlier. New developments and facts confirmed the growing complexity of the global strategic situation, the rising need of the Union to keep its unity in the intensifying competition of the global centers of power, the necessity of clear definition of the strategic autonomy of the EU. The slogan of the Bulgarian Presidency – “United We Stand”, vividly illustrated the correct Bulgaria’s perception of the evolving international political environment
Topic:
International Cooperation and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Europe

4. Security Threats and Risks in South Caucasus: Perceptions From the Western Black Sea

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
Perception1 of security threats is a dynamic process determined by the outside world and the perceiver’s culture, attitudes, expectations, needs, experience and other attributes. Each interpreter, depending on her or his respective analytic point of view, subjectively defines the facts in the security realm. Values, beliefs and cognitions constitute the bulk of any perception, including about security issues. A value is a preference for one state of reality over another. A belief is a conviction that a description of reality is true, proven or known. And cognition is information derived from the environment that can be substantiated through physical evidence or perceptual observation. Cognitions are key elements in establishing perceptual systems and in changing those systems. The threat perceptual systems of the Western Black Sea countries – Bulgaria and Romania, are strongly influenced by their values, beliefs and cognitions as sovereign nations with specific geopolitical positions and interests. They are also shaped in the context of their membership in NATO, as future EU members and as US allies on whose territories would be stationed American military bases.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Geopolitics, and Risk
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, South Caucasus, and Black Sea

5. The ‘Europeanisation’ of National Foreign, Security and Defence Policy

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
11-2005
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
This Research Report focuses on the issue of the interpretation of the meaning of the term ‘Europeanisation’. It is followed by a discussion of two constraining factors of Europeanising the foreign, security and defence policy. Lastly, it deals with the interrelationship of ‘security’ and ‘regional integration’ – an issue that is generally disregarded by analysts and politicians, but that can lead to a methodological miss-match, creating obstacles to the course of a less contradictory Europeanisation of the foreign, security and defence policy of the EU.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, European Union, and Europeanization
Political Geography:
Europe and Eastern Europe

6. Euro-Atlantic and Euro-Asiatic Concerns of an Enlarged Europe: a Bulgarian View

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
For historical, geopolitical, domestic and other reasons the enlarged Europe of 25 ‘+2’;’+3’, or ‘+4’ does not have a homogenized vision of the extent to which EU should differentiate itself in the realm of security from the United States of America. This causes fundamental concerns to the new members of the Union and to the other two, three or four that would join in the next few years. The Bulgarian perceptions of this issue cause concerns as to the most appropriate roles and functions of the country in the EuroAtlantic area as well as relative to the Euro-Asiatic neighborhood when the country joins the Union.
Topic:
Security, NATO, International Affairs, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, Bulgaria, and Atlantic Ocean

7. Security Risks and Instabilities in Southeastern Europe: Recommended Strategies to the EU in the Process of Differentiated Integration of the Region by the Union

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
11-2000
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
The chain of events and developments in Southeastern Europe during the 1990s provoked increasingly sophisticated political reactions, political approaches and longer-term strategies towards the region on the part of the EU. The firm requirement for ethnic tolerance and respect of human rights constitutes one end of the range of EU positions concerning Southeastern Europe. The gradual beginning of the process of integration of some countries from the region in the Union constitutes the other end. At the end of the 1990s, these positions gravitated towards two principles – regionality and conditionality. These principles are partly overlapping and mutually reinforcing, but to some extent also contradictory. The institutional arrangements of these two principles by the EU are identified with the Stability Pact (July 1999) for the principle of regionality, on the one hand, and with the accession negotiations and the Stabilisation and Association Process for the principle of conditionality, on the other hand.
Topic:
Security, European Union, Regional Integration, and Risk
Political Geography:
Europe and Southeast Europe

8. The Emergence of a New Geopolitical Region in Eurasia: The Volga-Urals Region and its Implications for Bulgarian Foreign and Security Policy

Author:
Nicolay Pavlov and Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
The application of geopolitical methodological instruments to the study of Bulgarian foreign and security policy issues has two fundamental causes: first, for many decades this has been a neglected intellectual instrument of international political research – for political and ideological reasons – and, second, the end of the Cold War necessitated an improvement of the conceptual and the analytical tools of security studies in Europe and the world. The traditional approach of ISIS to search ways of improving the security situation by conceptualizing events and processes in a novel way has focused the efforts of its researchers on security problems that cover a broad strategic zone: the Balkans – the Black Sea – the Transcaucasus – the Caspian Sea. Continued cooling – for more than ten years –of bilateral Bulgarian-Russian relations is conceived as one of the problems of this broader strategic and systemically linked zone. The geopolitical and geostrategic model – imposed on Bulgaria by the Cold War divide, the country’s membership in the Warsaw Pact and the thorough domination by the USSR – ended and was replaced by a different reality. The geopolitical projection of the ideological and socio-economic divide was no longer an applicable paradigm. At the same time the balance of power and the geostrategic approaches of understanding the evolving international environment proved to be inadequate after the end of the 1980s of the 20th Century. Russian, and to a lesser extent Bulgarian, politicians lost the orientation and the perspective of the bilateral links. This led to a dramatic diminishing of the meaning of bilateral relations in the general foreign-political engagements of the two countries. Bulgaria had undertaken a clear orientation to market economy, democracy and rule of law – a philosophic course, which logically prioritized the attraction of the European Union as the efficient integration nucleus of Europe, and of NATO – the symbol of stability and guaranteed prosperity in the broader Euro-Atlantic space. Though NATO was no longer perceived in the Cold War antagonistic pattern by Russia, and the very substance of the Alliance intensively adapted to the post-Cold War realities, Bulgaria’s political and security choice of joining the Euro-Atlantic community of developed democratic nations was negatively assessed by the Russian elite.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Europe, Eurasia, Eastern Europe, and Bulgaria

9. The New National Security Environment and its Impact on the Civilic-Military Relations in Bulgaria

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
Civil-military relations as one of the indicators and factors for the consolidat ion of democracy in the national and international societies are undergoing deep - in some cases, or more gradual changes - in others. The absence of a univers al theory of how the relations between civil society and its military should loo k like is no reason to neglect the various sources of transformation in the civi l-military relations' field: First, the changing mission of the democratic military in the post-Cold War era; Second, the high-tech and especially the infotech revolutions that change largel y the roles of the military profession and its missions; Third, the social processes of the less developed South, or the so called "third " or "developing world" and, Fourth, the democratic transitions in the postcommunist or rather post-totalitar ian socialist world. Bulgaria is subjected to deep systemic social changes as a former totalitarian s ocialist society and state. At the same time the post-Cold War global, regional and sub-regional security situation strongly, and in some cases even decisively , motivates the national security and the more general social transformations an d adaptations. Bulgarian society and its military component cannot be isolated from the revolutionary technological and especially information technological ch anges - another major factor of understanding the complexity of the present situ ation in this country and in its armed forces.
Topic:
National Security, Military Affairs, and Post Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe and Bulgaria

10. Bulgaria and the European Union in the Process of Buliding a Common European Defence

Author:
Plamen Pantev, Valeri Ratchev, and Tilcho K. Ivanov
Publication Date:
09-1996
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
During the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) of the European Union (EU) for reviewing the provisions of the Maastricht Treaty once again public and experts around the world realize the dramatic improvement of the security situation of the old continent that European integration led to. Few would doubt about the impact IGC will have on the security of the broader area of the Northern Hemisphere and the world in general. This is even more true considering the coincidental interaction of the EU with the evolutionary developments of the Western European Union (WEU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and of the internal national adaptations in the once divided into East and West parts of the Euroatlantic social, economic, political and defence space. Important outlines of a new design for the Euroatlantic security architecture with stronger European security and defence identity are already drawn. One should soberly admit that whatever political decisions are taken in the next two years, some more time would be needed to give a better shape and clarity of the new security design and its defence component. Bulgaria's structured dialogue with and pre-accession strategy to the EU as well as her formal submission of an application for full membership of the Union and the intensified dialogue that stemmed from it logically bring the country to the need of taking decisions for practical adaptation to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the future Common European Defence (CED) of the EU. These evolutionary developments importantly coincide in a non contradictory manner with the deepening involvement of the country in the activities of the WEU, NATO's instruments - the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) and the Partnership for Peace (PFP) programme, with the efforts of the governments of the Balkan and the Black Sea regions to improve their stability and strengthen regional peace and with the procedures of formulating a concept for the European security in the 21 century by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Treaties and Agreements, and European Union
Political Geography:
Europe and Bulgaria