Archived Articles

Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

Global Real Estate Project
News Index

Directories
  Int'l Realty
  US Realty

So ladies and gentlemen from the West, we are at war. To win it we have either to capture or to destroy our enemy. That won't be easy but we have to start somewhere. Let's see what we have to do that will help us in our fight.

First, the most sophisticated weapons of war of our enemies are made here, in the West. They use our planes as bombs and our office buildings as targets. They use our symbols and turn them into our weakest links in the chain. To win the war will mean to adapt our civil infrastructures and technologies to the new realities in the world.

Second, these who perpetrated all this in NYC and Washington DC are only the soldiers at the front-line. They have their own officers and generals that stand behind the scene. They all use our information and financial infrastructures to send and receive orders and money. To win the war will mean to cut these criminal links without hurting the normal business activity that depends on these infrastructures.

Third but not least, our enemies aren't aliens, they came from somewhere. Their war have some goals, both political and economic. To win the war will mean to destroy the very idea of reaching these goals.

All this sounds very abstract so let's go into more concrete matters. What means "to adapt our civil infrastructure and technologies to the new realities"? Go outside and look around. Do it not with your eyes of a peaceful human being but as if you are a terrorist. What you'll see? Targets, both small and big. The big targets have either to be protected or their existence have to be reconsidered. This won't be easy but it could be possible to do in the coming 1-2 decades.

What I mean? After the riots in the 60s many cities in the US moved their retail and part of office infrastructures outside the city centers. Terrorists like any other military power in the world want to have as many as possible big targets so with fewer strikes to achieve biggest impact against the enemy. To eliminate the bigger targets will have as a result to decrease the threat of any known weapon - conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear.

How we can achieve this? By decentralizing our cities using the newest information technologies that already exist. By creating virtual corporations and governmental agencies. Having all this even in case of successful terrorist attack our casualties will be in order of tens not thousands.

This will diminish our casualties but won't diminish the perpetrators' ability to try again to hurt us. So we have also to destroy their command and control systems. Unfortunately that are the same systems we use when we communicate - mobiles, e-mails, chats, financial transactions. Just one week after the attacks we have plenty of information about the perpetrators - e-mails, checks, photos from ATMs, credit card balances etc. We have all this information now because we simply checked our own systems. We certainly had to do it earlier. Some will say that this may destroy our basic liberties. But look, no law has been changed in the last week and FBI has found plenty of evidences about the perpetrators. So maybe the point isn't to change the laws and restrict the liberties but to know where to look at and how to use the available information.

Of course all our efforts will be unfruitful if we don't look at the political and economic goals of the movement that has decided to wage a war against our world. So far there isn't a 100 percent certainty who stands behind all this. So the lines below will be a pure speculation. Let's imagine that we have to deal with Muslim extremists hiding somewhere in the Middle East (maybe in and around Afghanistan). Of what we know about them they want only one thing - to rule the world. Their first goal is to pull America and other western countries out from the Middle East, then to topple the moderate Arab regional regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc. Then they will put the West under oil embargo and will want in exchange to occupy Israel. Shortly after that will come other signs of expansionism around the world because Muslims live in many countries that are ruled so far by not Muslims. Our enemies will impose on us the price on which we buy our energy and by buying it we'll finance their strive for global dominance.

This is remarkably different from the situation during the World War II when Germany and Japan were finally suffocated by the lack of abundant energy sources at their disposal. So what we can do about this? In one word, we have to diminish and eliminate our dependence from the oil economy. This war may be long and we have to be protected even in case we lose our control on the Middle East oil fields.

There is only one way to diminish and eliminate our dependence whatever the economic price is. This way is to adopt new energy sources that may be produce in our countries such as hydrogen for the cars, wind and solar power for our homes.

Everything I'm proposing here requires big investment in the western world infrastructures, information systems and energy basis. Compared with any past efforts the USA have experienced they can be measured up only with the Would War II efforts made 60 years ago.

Endnote: More than 150 years ago the English naturalist Charles Darwin writing about the natural selection of species said that in case of sudden changes in the nature survive not the strongest but fittest species. Something similar happens with the social systems. In the 30s Hitler told his henchmen that the West will collapse very soon because people under democracy are lazy and won't want to fight. In other words they won't be ready to adapt to the new realities as quick as the totalitarian regimes. The history proved he was wrong. The communists also thought they can win the Cold War against the West because they pretended to be more organized as a society. The history proved they also were wrong. Now the terrorists think they can win because the West will prefer not make these huge economic efforts to restructure its infrastructures and to adopt some new energy sources. I hope they will be proved to be wrong and the West will come out after this war stronger and fitter for a new life.