Bulgaria just turned five as a NATO member. It joined the Alliance on March 29, 2004, in a solemn series of enthusiastic events badly orchestrated by the Bulgarian government at the time.

Now five years later the celebrations of Bulgaria's NATO accession anniversary are bleak happenings on a rainy day. Just as bleak and cloudy is the situation with its membership, on which I will try to recapitulate very briefly here.

All flamboyant "Western values" rhetoric aside, Bulgaria's accession to NATO (together with its EU accession) is probably the single best thing that has happened to the country since its victorious war of 1912. Finally, Bulgaria HAS the HISTORIC CHANCE to step on the road to security, stability, progress, human rights, and national dignity as part of a democratic community of post-modern nations respectable of each other...

Yet, what are we making of this once in many lifetimes opportunity?

First of all, Bulgaria doesn't feel like a member of the military-political alliance of the free nations of the West even though it is supposed to. The Bulgarian society and people, even the political elite still don't think of NATO as "us" but rather as "them". Clearly, the necessary psychological paradigm shift has not happened yet... and there are probably a whole bunch of crucial reasons for that...

Second, in terms of administrative and especially of military integration with the NATO structures, standards, and capabilities, Bulgaria is faring rather badly. Certain recent reports and statements from various sources have pointed out that Bulgaria has not a single military unit equipped to go into battle under NATO's standards. The professional Bulgarian Army has still not really turned professional after the draft was abolished, and Bulgaria has no tactical aviation and naval capacities worthy of the name in order to provide for the security and stability of its powder keg region...

Third, after five years in NATO, Bulgaria seems to be enjoying not the trust but the suspicions of its Western allies. Questionable elements in the country still appear to be keeping certain robust affiliations of various kinds with Moscow. Some time ago NATO's Ambassador to Russia even dared to describe Bulgaria as Russia's Trojan Horse into the Euro-Atlantic Structures. To which the Bulgarian President and government replied with little more than protocol protests amounting to next to nothing....

Fourth, Bulgaria takes no stand and no initiatives whatsoever as part of NATO; it avails itself in no way of its NATO membership in order to contribute not only to its own security and prosperity, but also to the stability of the wider Balkans-Black Sea region...

One would think that Bulgaria would try to be proactive within NATO because it is surrounded by potential hot spots, and is located in a key region for the Eurasian stability - between the Western Balkans and the wider Black Sea - Caspian Sea area.

Because now we have to the west all the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia - a questionable state in Kosovo, a disgruntled Serbia, a long neglected and deteriorating Bosnia, a Macedonia hanging in the balance, which, as appears, is a country without a real name... And to the East we've got a Turkey with an unclear role in the NATO - EU dichotomy, a bleeding Georgia, an intimidated Ukraine, what seems to be a resurgent Russian bear, the bucket of worms in the Middle East including the international pariah Iran, and the messed-up states of Iraq and Afghanistan...

What about terrorism, trans-border crime, environment, the dying Black Sea, the energy and transport routes, to name but a few additional items on the long potential and current problems list. If you think of it, Bulgaria has to be the most proactive and vocal member of NATO in order to use this unique Alliance, to convince its allies to help tackle all these issues in real ways...

But our government and state, and our confused society for that matter, are taking no stand; they don't stand for anything. (This is only logical, of course, with all the mess in the country's domestic politics - just take all the corrupt military public procurement procedures as one example...) But this is what it is: Bulgaria's five-year-old NATO syndrome:

Bulgaria formally exists as part of NATO, but practically it seems to be "Now Almost Totally Out of it"... literally and figuratively speaking...

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