Velina Tchakarova: evaluation

Transcript context

…They’re information sources you could incorporate into, say, a 10- to 15-year forecast, or do you just think they don’t contain much extra information? The big difference is that predictions . . . for instance, you have these big prediction houses when it comes to elections. They try to predict the outcome of elections. Contrary to predictions, I anticipate possible futures. I do foresight, not predictions, not forecast, so I cannot forecast anything. What is foresight? Foresight is, thanks to the daily observation of events and developments, categorizing these events and developments into trends to assess a possible trend projection that will point to a certain direction in which, for instance, the global system goes. What do I mean by global system? I’m really focused on the macro perspective. The global system — this is my own concept that I’ve been working with since 2014. And that is that practically all the relevant socioeconomic networks — you take a global finance system, you take a global energy system, you take the global finance, trade, economy, agriculture — so these most relevant socioeconomic systems that have emerged specifically because of the last globalization wave following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Introduction of most of the countries into a global capitalist system, so they are now more or less intertwined. Looking at the interactions between these networks and looking at the way these systems are undergoing transformation gives me some answers as to the direction in which it goes. Let me give you an example. Most of the analysts, you would agree, have been pointing, at least for the last 20 years, towards multipolarity. The biggest cliche that we’ve been hearing is that we are sliding into a multipolarity order. We have several big centers of power, several great powers, and so on and so forth. I’ve never bought into this. Since 2014, when I started looking at this macro perspective based on this global system concept I’ve developed, I saw that, practically, we have only two centers of power. Everything in between is in this gray zone that is oscillating between United States on the one hand, and China on the other. Now, Russia has taken sides already in 2014. In fact, Russia has been saved by China following the first intervention in Ukraine and following the first launch of Western sanctions, when Russia, facing a serious, almost precarious economic situation, was saved by China. Meanwhile, most of these middle powers are still avoiding taking sides. They want to capitalize from both worlds. A classic example right now is the case of India. India is acting as a geopolitical bridge between the two antagonists, trying to take the best of both worlds. But it is very, very difficult to bring this long-term picture that is to play out in the next 5 or 10 or 15 years to the daily business of politics. Why? Because people are just not following. They just don’t have the time to follow all these trends, and then don’t have the time to go into all these specific systemic processes. siness of politics. Why? Because people are just not following. They just don’t have the time to follow all these trends, and then don’t have the time to go into all these specific systemic processes. When I was talking about bipolarity in 2015, or when I was talking about the Dragonbear since 2014 — the Dragonbear being this modus vivendi of China and Russia, as modus operandi to coordinate without the necessity to enter any strategic alliance — people were not interested because it did not really affect the daily life of politics. But now you would agree that China-Russia axis, or whatever kind of articles, are almost coming out on a daily basis, and we are already talking about decoupling, and we are already discussing this kind of bipolarity. This is the point. We have a 10-year time span that I have been investing in every day to try to get the trend projections correctly, but it is absolutely not possible to convince anybody else of the correctness of this assessment so long as the reality doesn’t kick in and prove you right. This is what was happening, at least with most of my assessments. This is how I am right now not stuck in 2024. I’m already in 2030, 2040, and so on and so forth. Most of my assessment is actually helping clients to prepare for the long-term perspective. I’m not a consultancy like most of these consultancies, providing these daily briefs and analysis, telling you about the dynamics in a specific country, explaining to you the constellations between the political actors and whatever, which is equally important. I’m not denying the importance, on the opposite. It’s just that what I do is so rare. Right now, I’m observing that a lot of consultancies, like the big consultancy Goldman Sachs, are trying to enter this business of geopolitical foresight with big teams and trying to foresee the future. But in the end, I would argue it’s a methodology that is not so easily conducted. Especially, it’s not easily conducted because you have to free yourself from any kind of personal biases, and you have to have a model. Now, we may argue some have developed indexes like the geopolitical risk index that is now being published by the Federal Reserve. They try to track back different headlines in various newspapers and magazines. Then, based on the number empirically, they just point to the severity of a geopolitical risk, like it happened with Russia’s war against Ukraine. We have a different kind of metrics, an algorithmic and empirical one. My approach is a very qualitative one, and it’s really derived from what I just explained to you.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.