Challenges to national defence in contemporary geopolitical situation

Understanding how soil systems respond to atmospheric forcing is critical not only for environmental science but also for defence operations requiring accurate terrain assessment. This study quantifies depth‑dependent and delayed soil responses to meteorological drivers using lag‑correlation analysis across six operational military monitoring stations (2022–2024). The results demonstrate that soil–atmosphere coupling exhibits strong station‑specific variability, with response times ranging from hours to several weeks depending on soil type and depth.

Military expenditures represent an important component of government spending devoted to the provision of national defense as a core public good. Despite their importance, no universally accepted definition of military expenditure exists, as national governments and international organizations apply differing conceptual and methodological approaches. This paper examines the evolution of defense burden, measured as military expenditure as a share of gross domestic product across NATO member countries from 2010 to 2025, with particular attention to NATO spending commitments adopted at the Wales Summit in 2014, all within the context of the current defense spending commitment adopted during the Hague Summit in 2025. Using SIPRI military expenditure data, defense burden trends are analyzed in three periods: pre-2014, post-2014 and pre-2022, and post-2022 following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The results reveal a long-term shift from declining defense burdens prior to 2014 toward a sustained increase across most NATO members after the Wales Summit, with a pronounced acceleration after 2022. While the NATO-wide average defense burden rose above 2% of GDP by 2025, significant disparities among member states persist. A detailed case study of the Czech Republic demonstrates a broadly similar but lagging trajectory, with defense spending consistently remaining below NATO average and median values and failing to reach the 2% GDP threshold by 2025. The findings underscore structural differences in burden sharing within NATO and highlight the relevance of past spending behavior for assessing the credibility of current and future defense commitments.

The purpose of this investigation was to empirically assess the association between military expenditure and income inequality in the 19 European member states of NATO between 2011 and 2022. To achieve this, the authors carried out multivariate statistical analysis using Kaplan-Meier life tables and survival estimation techniques. The results highlighted a trend in the countries analysed that income inequality tended to decrease when investment in the military increased during the period under consideration. The association manifested itself in the shortest time in the group of countries with the lowest military spending per capita, while emerging in the longer term in the countries with the highest. Furthermore, under high threat of war, the association tends to be shortest in relative terms in countries with the lowest military expenditure per capita. The results also revealed that the association between military spending and income inequality is more pronounced in the smallest countries by population and those with the lowest military expenditure per capita. The authors believe that this investigation will enrich scientific knowledge with new insights.

In the Middle East, vast oil reserves led to economic modernization and prosperity in the region. However, it is one of the most conflict-prone regions. This paper studies the relationship between military spending, oil and development in Middle Eastern countries using a panel data fixed effect for country-level observations over the period 1986–2016. The relationship between development and conflict will not be uniform throughout the region. Therefore, to test this hypothesis, the study categorized oil exporting countries into three parts that are countries with above average oil export, below average oil export and no oil export. The estimates show a significant reduction in military spending over time and the most declines were observed in the countries where oil export is above average than the Middle East. The results indicate a significant inverse relationship between the military spending with exports and oil rents in overall Middle East analysis and for countries whose average oil export is greater than the Middle East. It is also found that the military burden adversely affects economic growth across all the model specification. However, military spending is declining over time which indicates that there is a reverse causality between development and conflict. It is crucial finding in the context of peace and development literature.

This contribution deals with modelling of military expenditure and its potential security and economic determinants by an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. This approach is applied to several NATO member countries over the period 2001–2016, namely to Visegrad group countries and Baltic states. Time series of military expenditure (database SIPRI), the risk of inflation, GDP growth, terrorism, foreign pressure, cross-border conflict and ethnic tension (database of Political Risk Service Group) are used in analysis.