Comment by Evgeny Dainov:
Sometimes I hate being right. For example, these days, when Trump reminded me how right I have been since the mid-1980s.
I was probably 23 when for the first time party members and Komsomol members, who graduated from "International Relations" (MO) and "International Economic Relations" (MIO), explained to me that there is nothing in common between the domestic and foreign policies of a given country. Some satrap could terrorize his own population and kill his opponents, but do completely different things on the international stage. The two types of policies were determined by completely different factors.
"Complete nonsense", I said to myself. It is obvious that if you are a democrat by worldview, you will not harass your population because you respect people's rights; and on the world stage you will be respectful of others for the same reason. If you are a satrap and harass your own people, you will look for ways to harass other people abroad. The worldview is one and the actions are the same.
And I stopped being interested in the topic of "international relations" - until suddenly, years later, I realized that the thesis about the difference between foreign and domestic policy is not only widespread in Bulgaria. It dominates all over Europe. I grabbed my head because this was a recipe for inevitable disaster.
How are you going to counteract a satrap with diplomatic means if he sets out to conquer neighboring countries? You don't expect him to do that at all, do you? You believe that he may be a satrap in their country, but on the international arena he will be a completely different person?
And the catastrophe came
The thousand-strong army of European diplomats did not foresee, prevent, or stop the wars in the former Yugoslavia. They were stopped by American bombs. Then Vladimir Putin taught an open lesson. First he unleashed terror on his own population. And then he did the same in Georgia in 2008, in Ukraine in 2014, and again in Ukraine in 2022. In the meantime, he leveled large areas of Syria to the ground, and Russian mercenaries are exterminating the populations of various countries in Africa.
And Donald Trump? These days he personally demonstrated that in his head there is no difference between domestic and foreign policy. It's the same thing. We're talking about his phone call earlier this week with Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, where Trump's hit squads have been terrorizing the population for weeks and have so far killed two citizens in broad daylight on the street and in front of numerous witnesses.
"He told me he didn't understand what was wrong with us in Minnesota", Walz said after the conversation in an interview with the American television station MS NOW (until recently called MSNBC). "He told me he did the same thing in New Orleans, in Louisville, and there were no problems there. (...) And then he told me how successful he was in Venezuela."
This is the moment of truth. In Donald Trump's mind, there is no difference between domestic and foreign policy - between the state of Minnesota and the sovereign state of Venezuela. He will crush one place, he will crush the other. In the same way, for a whole year now, the American president has been using the financial instruments available to him as a club. Just as it punishes financially rebellious universities, law firms, companies and corporations, states and cities, it punishes foreign countries in the same way. Quod erat demonstrandum.*
Why are the efforts of European diplomats unsuccessful?
As they say in Stara Zagora, "There is nothing mine, nothing yours – everything is Beroe". In the case of Donald Trump, – "everything is mine".
There is no difference between domestic and foreign policy. Both are an expression of the worldview of the respective politician. Watch what he does at home and know that at the first opportunity he will do the same abroad.
I offer these insights of mine to the many-thousand-strong army of European diplomats who have wondered in recent decades why the result of their efforts has been exactly zero.
*Quod erat demonstrandum (from Latin: What had to be proven)