Speaker

Velina Tchakarova

Velina Tchakarova

Bulgarian geopolitical strategist, founder of the FACE (For A Conscious Experience) consultancy, and one of the few analysts to have publicly argued for a bipolar world order — centred on the United States and China — since 2014, when the prevailing consensus still described the emerging system as multipolar.

Tchakarova built her practice over 25 years on a distinctive methodology she calls foresight: mapping the interaction of large-scale socioeconomic systems (finance, energy, trade, agriculture) to identify the structural direction of the international order over 10–15 year horizons, rather than forecasting specific events or tracking the daily currents of politics. Her most publicised concept is the DragonBear — her term, coined in 2014, for the China–Russia modus vivendi: a durable operational alignment that coordinates without requiring a formal strategic alliance and that functions precisely because both parties can maintain plausible deniability.

Core positions

The world bifurcated in 2014, not 2022. Tchakarova traces the structural alignment of Russia with China to the first Western sanctions following Russia’s seizure of Crimea, when Beijing’s economic support kept Moscow solvent. Everything since — including the full-scale invasion of Ukraine — has been a consequence of that alignment, not its origin. The middle powers (India being the clearest example) are trying to capitalise from both sides, but their freedom of manoeuvre is narrowing.

On Taiwan, she is a consistent sceptic of the military-invasion scenario. Taiwan’s geography limits viable attack windows, the terrain favours defenders, and a successful assault would require military odds she puts below 50 per cent — too high a risk for a leadership whose strategic culture favours patient, indirect accumulation. Her alternative scenario is absorption by subversion over a decade or more: political, economic, and social penetration exploiting Taiwan’s democratic openness.

On Russia, she reads Putin’s ambition as running well beyond whatever territory he currently holds. Ceasefires in the Donbas pattern were always used to regroup and advance; she expects the same logic to apply in any post-Ukraine-war pause. The next likely tests are Moldova and Georgia (where existing Russian footholds lower the cost), followed eventually by a provocation against the Baltic states designed to test NATO’s Article 5 at a moment of Western political disunity.

In the wiki