Editorial Note BJIEP 2025/Vol. 5, Issue 2

Abstract

This present issue of the Bulgarian Journal of International Economics and Politics sees the end of a turbulent year – nationally, regionally and globally. With the expanded Russian aggression in Ukraine, the hard return of the issue of taxes in the global economy and the announced distancing of the United States from the fate and future of Europe, security considerations are gaining even greater importance in political practice and scientific research. This context determines the relevance of the first article, which focuses on the conceptualization of the phenomenon of national economic security. The second article examines another topical (especially for Bulgaria) issue, attempting to explain the relative neglect of the role of the euro in competitiveness and the different impact of the single currency on the competitiveness of Eurozone countries. Again within the EU integration frame, the third article revisits some of the assumptions underpinning the explanations of European integration within liberal intergovernmentalism and postfunctionalism in the context of Brexit and the Russian destructive war on Ukraine. The fourth article explores the Ukrainian crisis within its larger regional context, focusing on the Transnistrian conundrum and the Ukrainian ambiguous standpoints on the enclave. The next article is an econometric study that analyses the impact of war on economic growth across conflict-affected countries in the 2010-2023 period. The last article is a study of China’s geoeconomic rise, challenging the monetary and financial hegemony of the United States and promoting a reorganization of global power dynamics, focusing on China’s expansion into Latin America.
The Expert’s Insights section delves further into China’s geoeconomic rise focusing on the Communist Party Plenum (October 20-23, 2025), which signals a comprehensive strategy for China’s socialist modernisation, combining economic growth, technological advancement, social development, and international cooperation over the next decade. The author Angel Orbetsov is a retired Bulgarian diplomat, writer and university lecturer. As an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he served as acting head of the embassy in Afghanistan (1995-1999). In 2002, he prepared the restoration of the diplomatic mission in Kabul and the dispatch of the first Bulgarian military contingent to Afghanistan. Orbetsov was Bulgarina ambassador to China from 2004 to 2008. He was director of the Asia, Australia and Oceania Directorate at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2008. Ambassador at large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Book Review column presents the Routledge publication Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences (2024) by Dirk-Jan Koch, reviewed by Ayodeji Peter Adesanya, who describes it as an attempt to shift the aid effectiveness debate towards the more complex and much-needed question of what else happens when international development interventions meet the randomness of the real world.