Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

Security Studies are undergoing a true upheaval in Europe and have become an unlikely cradle of new theories, new ideas, and new methods for the entire International Relations discipline. Three European schools of security studies - Copenhagen, Paris, and Wales - have produced a serious challenge to the orthodox canons of the US security/strategic studies on the understanding and explanation of security problems, as well as the very nature of the "security" phenomenon itself. Despite the active international academic battles, security analysis is in a firm grasp of geopolitics in Lithuania. An occasional critical article has not been able to launch a serious alternative to the strong school of Lithuanian geopolitics. Such an alternative, however, is necessary and could potentially bring a fresh impulse to the Lithuanian security policy itself. This article discusses the contemporary state and the most significant trends in Security Studies. Particular attention is given to the analysis of differences between the traditional, American security studies, and the critical, European schools. The main aim of this article is to present the possibilities inherent in critical security studies, which could present a strong alternative to the rationalist approach.

The political risk analysis investigates the influence that political decisions, or their absence, have on business. The author of the article describes the aims and methodology of the political risk analysis and claims that the methods employed by the leading companies engaged in political risk analysis are no longer sufficient for investigating political risk in the stable democracies. Risks like wars, massive commotion, or economic crises rarely occur in stable countries. However, new types of threats like the breach of technical standards, health risks, natural disasters, and anti-corporatism prevail. The author names them "the moderate political risks" and introduces the two-step moderate political risk analysis model. The model is verified by applying it to analyse the political risk in Lithuania and later comparing the risk in Lithuania with the risk in three other countries of the Central Eastern European region: Estonia, Poland, and Hungary. The analysis shows that the moderate political risk differs in the four countries, although the traditional political risk is very similar.

In this article, two Russian information campaigns occurring in Lithuania, in 2005 are analyzed. The first one is related to the May 9th celebration in Moscow, the second one is related to the crash of the Russian fighter in Lithuania. The question is - how and why this diplomatic visit and military incident became information threats and what consequences have they caused. In explaining the reasons for Russian information pressure and its consequences, and in evaluating if it could pose a threat to Lithuania, the perspective of social constructivism is used. In applying the securitization model article analyzes, how did Lithuania and Russia understand the above mentioned events, what kind of behaviour did this understanding provoke and what impact did it make to information security.