Abstract
As part of the formulation of a vision for Bulgaria’s force development in the horizon of 2035, the authors were tasked to study the evolution of the economic environment and provide a view on the potential resource allocation to defense. Our study resulted in three scenarios—“Bulgaria in the gray zone of the European economic space,” “Peripheral economy,” and “Catching up economy”—each one plausible under a set of driving factors and conditions. The paper presents the process of scenario design, the scenarios, the respective defense budget levels and the impact on Bulgaria’s defense and armed forces.
Highlights
In the period of the Cold war, Bulgaria was member of the organization of the Warsaw Pact, aligning closely its security and defense policy and decisions on force development with the Soviet Union
By 2004 the Bulgarian Armed Forces were reduced to 45,000 active duty personnel, and even further, while Bulgaria remained among the few NATO countries spending over 2 percent of its growing GDP on defense
The development of the armed forces is based on a complex set of norms, institutions, procedures and tools, intended to capture diverse requirements, reflect various interests, account for the momentum in force development and the uncertainty in the environment
Summary
In the period of the Cold war, Bulgaria was member of the organization of the Warsaw Pact, aligning closely its security and defense policy and decisions on force development with the Soviet Union. The second type of scenarios allows to represent the complexity of the future world through particular instantiations of likely future threats and challenges, and to derive requirements to defense [1,2,5] These are known as force planning scenarios [6] or, in the NATO parlance, as “planning situations” [5,7]. Within the classification of the types of scenarios presented above, we decided to explore the possible alternative futures, design respective scenarios and assess their impact on the resource aspects of Bulgaria’s defense policy in the 2035 timeframe. Details on the underlying economic analysis are presented elsewhere [16]
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