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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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Europe: United at lastIt's easy for news reporters to downsize some important event and to magnify in size something else that isn't so important for anyone except for its author. This week when I looked at the American and Canadian media I was really surprised to learn that the most important thing in the NATO summit in Prague was the pact's alignment to the US on the war against the terrorism. The NATO allies have always been with the US although they prefer not always to declare this loudly. The real news from the summit was that in terms of security Europe would be united by a large NATO expansion eastward*. Unfortunately this news was so downplayed that it appeared like a garnish on the main plate. For those who don't understand the real significance of this event I want to make some explanations. Look at the map of Europe and find these 7 countries - Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia and Slovakia. If you look at some older maps, three of them simply don't exist because they were part of the former Soviet Union, other two don't exist because they were part of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Except Slovenia they all are at the eastern political border of Europe. All of them were occupied by a foreign force at least twice during the last 100 years. I remember when speaking some years ago around a round table in the European Union headquarters in Brussels I mentioned that the flow of foreign investments would run eastward only when these counties were invited to enter NATO and EU. A high-ranking EU official interrupted me saying that he had never heard such a stupid thing about NATO as a precondition to investment. Indeed NATO is a security, not a trade organization. But how could I have explained to this blue-collar official who had lived all his life in NATO members like Belgium and Netherlands that one of the main reasons they got American investments wasn't just because they were American friends, but because they were American allies. Who is ready to invest in the buffer zone between "us" and "the forces of evil"? During decades for the western world "us" meant Western Europe and North America. The "evil" began somewhere eastward of the Iron curtain and southward of Mediterranean Sea. Do you know how many times in the last one thousand years these buffer countries, European by culture but unlucky by their geography, had to face the waves of eastern invaders wanting to occupy the continent? But why go so long in the history? Do you remember how many times in the last years Russia has threatened to use "any means" to counteract the will of the Baltic countries to become US military allies under NATO protection? Who will go to invest big money in such countries the very existence of which is put under question? The decision to invite these countries into NATO solves once and for all the security concerns about the future of these 7 states. Until the US has the military and political power in this world, the independence of these countries will be guaranteed. Some of them will benefit from this and will get richer, some won't and will remain poor as they are now, but the important is that the future will be in their hands.
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