Search

Begin New Search Topic Geopolitics Author Plamen Pantev

1. Perceptions and Reflections of the Security Crisis in the Black Sea Region

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
The first reflection about the geopolitical environment that Bulgaria faced after the tectonic systemic shifts in the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s of the 20th century thirty years later is that the efforts of the country to influence the transformation of the Balkans into a regional security community were successful. The second reflection is that Bulgaria was not able to influence effectively a similar development in the Black Sea area. Both the Balkans and the Caspian Sea-Caucasus- Black Sea area were conflictual knots of relations inherited from the Cold War divide. While the traditional European great powers that polarized the Balkan system of international relations pushing the small countries one against the other and the United States had the strategic interest of pacifying the South Eastern region of Europe, the dominating great power in the Black Sea area – Russia, aimed at preserving the opportunities of coming back to the territories that the Soviet Union lost after its collapse by preserving various degrees of conflictness in the neighbouring countries. Depending on the general condition of the Russian economy and state as well as its domestic political status different opportunities were either designed or just used to preserve the profile of Russia of the empire that sooner or later will be back. What are, in this regard, the perceptions in Bulgaria of the annexation of Crimea?
Topic:
Security, International Security, Geopolitics, Conflict, and Empire
Political Geography:
Russia, Caucasus, Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Caspian Sea

2. 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

3. 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

4. The Balkans and the Caucasus: Conceptual Stepping-stones Towards the Formation of a New Single Geoeconomic, Geopolitical, and Geostrategic Region

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
Abstract:
The formulation of conceptual stepping-stones requires the consideration of at least two defining factors: First, how have the Balkans and the Caucasus evolved since the end of the Cold War? Second, what are the guiding principles in the formation of this new, vast economic, political, and strategic region stretching westwards from the Adriatic Sea and eastward from the Caspian Sea? This region is influenced by and influences global economic, political, and security processes, and benefits from the eastwards enlargement of the democratic civic and security space embodied by NATO and the EU.
Topic:
Security, NATO, Cold War, Politics, European Union, Geopolitics, and Economy
Political Geography:
Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and Balkans

5. 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