Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

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.

National security and sustainability are the main priority of any state. Therefore the Republic of Lithuania as well as any other state follows its National Security Strategy which establishes the interests of national security, directions of its evolution, the security and defence policy in general, means and types of risk factors and threats to the national security. This study investigates the issues of legal preparation in the military high school. The topical issues directly related to the national defence and security which arise in the run of the training course for the military, especially junior leaders at the institution of higher education in the sphere of providing them with the basic legal knowledge, are presented and examined in the article. In the process of training and upbringing of a junior leader more attention is paid to their professional skills and competencies, and a leader’s and subordinate’s personality, therefore, a system of legal preparation and training provided for students of this kind of educational institutions, its role and degree of influence on personal qualities of a future leader have not yet been studied and described in scientific publications. The above mentioned observations determined the rationale for choosing the topic for the research paper. Its relevance is without doubt. It has been concluded that a leader who is politically correct and competent in the legal sphere can ensure that the decisions made are well-reasoned, consistent and adequate, and they are aimed at the elimination of possible disagreements which might emerge in the sphere of human resource management, management of military units in the run of resolving their daily tasks, holding negotiations at any levels, as well as enhancement of the army’s defensive power in general.

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.

Throughout the history of mankind, energy security has been always seen as a means of protection from disruptions of essential energy systems. The idea of protection from disorders emerged from the process of securing political and military control over energy resources to set up policies and measures on managing risks that affect all elements of energy systems. The various systems placed in a place to achieve energy security are the driving force towards the energy innovations or emerging trends in the energy sector.

A possible sustainable growth of the financial sector due to the development of activity of credit unions is being examined in this paper. Moreover the analysis of contemporary credit unions conceptions and problems of management improvement are performed. In addition theoretical priorities for credibility and international capabilities of credit unions are presented. A sketch of some actual theories is being performed and methods for analysis of credit unions’ activities are particularly composed. Following method of improvement of observational research was performed in this paper. In order to evaluate common tendencies of activities of the credit unions in the World and particularly in the European Union the financial institutions’ legal regulations are specially surveyed. Furthermore legal regulations of credit unions are analyzed in practice for local and international credit unions of Lithuania. The preliminary evaluation of the credit unions activity in the circumstances of contemporary waves of the financial crisis is presented. After examining available and possible theoretical and practical aspects the assumptions from the analyzed material are proposed. The article discusses the development of credit unions and the factors affecting the credit union managers approach to the credit union system development prospects. Despite an occurrence of the recent commercial banks global situation concerning the possible disappointment of consumers - credit unions are one of the best institutions for further financial sustainability in the retail credit markets. An object of this research is credit unions and some other self-credit institutions. In addition the accumulated global information from the cooperative financial institutions is overviewed.