Does being in NATO really feel that different from being in the Warsaw Pact for those who lived through both? And is it possible for a group of Eastern European nations to actually force peace by acting as a “buffer zone” from within the alliance?
To explore these ideas, I turned to someone who has watched the world shift from the deck of a ship. Captain Ivo Yotsov is a former captain in the Bulgarian Navy and currently a professor at the Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy. With his unique mix of military experience and academic work on “New Structural Realism,” he offers a view from the Black Sea that challenges how we usually think about power, culture, and the future of Europe.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 New Structural Realism vs. Liberalism
00:06:40 Civilizational Realism & The Russian Worldview
00:17:40 Comparing the Warsaw Pact to NATO
00:29:54 An Eastern European Buffer Zone
00:39:23 Preventing War via NATO Vetoes
Credit to : Neutrality Studies