We take it several times a day, in large doses, as if it were a panacea. The Bulgarian national interest demanded this. The other contradicted it. The third was national betrayal. One politician defended it, another sold it.
The expression is used so often that it has gradually acquired almost magical power. Something like abra-cadabra (not to be confused with banga-ranga). It is enough to utter it and your own political opinion ceases to be an opinion. It is now "the interest of Bulgaria". Only there is one small problem.
What exactly is THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL INTEREST?
Not what the president, the prime minister, some party leader or a television analyst thinks it is Bulgaria will do well tomorrow. And what does the term itself mean?
The curious thing is that the Bulgarian state itself has an answer and has given it.
The National Security Strategy of the Republic of Bulgaria defines the country's "vital interests". Among them are the protection of the rights, freedoms, security and well-being of citizens; sovereignty and territorial integrity; constitutional order and democratic values; national identity; overcoming the demographic collapse; education and science; Bulgaria's worthy place in European and world processes.
There are other important interests - collective security, good neighborliness, regional stability, energy security and diversification.
Notice what it does NOT say there. It does not say "to be with Russia", nor does it say "to be against Russia". It does not say "to follow America". And even our membership in The EU and NATO are not the fundamental "national interest" itself.
It is a "means of its protection" and it is this distinction that is important.
The Union is NOT an interest. The treaty is NOT an interest. The gas pipeline is NOT an interest. The purchase of aircraft is NOT an interest. Sending or not sending soldiers is NOT an interest.
These are simply POLITICAL DECISIONS.
And each of them must answer the question HOW it serves the actual national interest: does it make Bulgaria safer, freer, richer, more independent and more capable of determining its own future?
In fact, this conversation is much older than today's written Strategy. Even the revivalists were looking for the content of the same concept, although they did not use modern administrative language.
Lyuben Karavelov writes: “Patriotism is attachment to the political fatherland, attachment to one's own independence and freedom.“
Zahariy Stoyanov asks the question even more simply: “Should Bulgaria remain a free and independent country in the future, should it be governed and ordered by Bulgarians or by foreign people?“ and gives his answer: “Only that owner and that state that orders its own affairs is happy and blessed.“
And Stambolov gets to the most realistic part of the equation. He warns that the Great Powers do not exist to protect Bulgarian interests: “The policy of the Great Powers, and especially of Russia, is a policy of increasing their power.“ This is not an accusation. This is a description of the way in which states function.
Russia has Russian interests. America has American interests. Germany has German. Turkey has Turkish. Serbia has Serbian. And our partners in the European Union also have their own national interests. It is normal. Stambolov understood this perfectly well back in 1894 and that is why he formulated the Bulgarian task with a single sentence that has survived for more than a century:
“The desire of the people to stand on Bulgarian feet, not on Russian.“
The key word here for me is not “Russian“, but “Bulgarian“. Because standing on Bulgarian feet does not mean moving to American, German or anyone else.
It means knowing where your interest lies.
And this is precisely the problem with today's use of the expression “Bulgarian national interest“. Too often it sounds like “interest-seeking“, but the even bigger problem is that it DOES NOT It is the beginning of the argument.
It is the end of it.
“This is in the Bulgarian national interest“, say the populists, and that is the point of their long, meaningless sentence.
Okay.
BUT WHY, FOR GOD'S SAKE?
How does it increase our security? How does it protect our sovereignty? How does it improve the well-being of citizens? How does it reduce dangerous addictions? How does it help against demographic catastrophe? How does it strengthen education, the economy, institutions? How does it make Bulgaria more capable of defending its own decisions in ten or twenty years?
And if we can't answer any of these questions, maybe we're not talking about "national interest" at all.
Maybe we are talking about party interest, economic interest, electoral interest, and in some extreme cases - about SOMEONE'S FOREIGN state interest.
The Bulgarian national interest, fellow Bulgarians, is not a magic phrase. No abra-cadabra with a tricolor on top.
If we had to collect the official documents and the old Bulgarian political experience in one sentence, maybe it would sound like this (forgive the capital letters, but it has to):
THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL INTEREST IS FOR BULGARIA TO BE A SECURE, FREE, PROSPEROUS AND VIABLE STATE, ABLE TO DETERMINE ITS FUTURE.
Everything else is a MEANS - policy, decision, action. NOT interest. The interest of a people does not change according to the current government. The means change and sometimes (unfortunately) they are to the detriment of the interest itself.
And the next time someone tells us that something is “in the Bulgarian national interest“, let us not nod immediately. Let us ask the simplest question:
Who exactly (or if at all) is protecting the Bulgarian interest?