Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

Despite rich experience indicating that waging wars is risky and not very ‘profitable’, particularly from the last decades’ perspective, and it also has a demoralizing effect on societies engaged in the conflict strengthening the tendency to aggression, nationalism, at the same time destroying the natural environment, it is difficult to imagine the world without an armed confrontation in the future. Such a course of action is proven by ‘the Ukrainian scenario’, or the situation in the Middle East. Motives pushing people to armed confrontations are quite complex and do not result from a simple need of domination and possession. War is quite closely connected with the domain of the sacred. Violence and religion are placed in close neighbourhood. Thus can values represented by great monotheist religions be ‘useful’ in the conducted polemological-irenological discourse and in the process of building a desired international security system? Do the components fostering war aggression dominate over ‘pacifist reflection’ in Judaic-Christian and Islamic spirituality? One may risk a statement that religion regardless of time and latitude, is not an indifferent factor from the point of view of waged conflicts.

Polemology and irenology that have been evolving since the Second World War are relatively unknown. There is much misunderstanding about polemology and irenology and what can be done with research results. The methodological competition between polemology and irenology indicates their differences due to the opposite research subject (war-peace), the system of concepts, and the usefulness of research results. The aim of the article is to present the basic assumptions of irenological and polemological research and to propose a common area of research on peace and armed conflicts. The article presents a thesis about the need to integrate polemological and irenological research. Due to the research problem and the subject of research, a qualitative strategy and appropriate research methods were used in the research process. The obtained research result indicates that it is not justified to conduct research on peace and armed conflicts separately, but as a whole as a study of peace and armed conflicts. The conclusions from the research indicate that the genesis, diagnosis and prognosis of peace and conflict-related processes is justified in the range of long cycles from minus 50 to plus 50 years in relation to the started research process.

The energy security of the Visegrad Group countries is a derivative of their energy potential resulting from the lack of strategic natural gas and crude oil resources, limited fuel storage capacity and limited access to the transmission network. This causes a dependence on supplies of raw materials from Russia, which is not even, but applies to each of these countries. The Czech Republic and Slovakia have small deposits of natural gas and crude oil. Hungary and Poland have greater potential, but it is still not enough to achieve energy independence. The energy market of the V4 countries is of interest to the Russian Federation, but it is not a priority for it as it accounts for a small part of Russian transmissions. Russia aims to keep the market for crude oil and natural gas at a uniform level, but the actions of the V4 countries in terms of diversification of supplies, aimed at increasing the level of energy security, effectively hinder the implementation of this goal. The threat to the energy security of the V4 countries is related to their dependence on gas supplies from Gazprom. The terms of the contracts contain unfavorable clauses that negatively affect the sale of surplus Russian gas, as it is necessary to pay fees for the ordered gas regardless of the scale of its use. The differentiation in the energy policy of the Member States is also worth noting. An example is the lack of clear opposition from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia to the plans to expand the Nord Stream and Turkish Stream gas pipelines. These states show interest in participating in projects, which, in fact, constitute the implementation of the Russian concept of building new transmission routes. Poland takes a different position, consistently preventing the implementation of Russian energy projects.

Security of societies has become one of urgent issues in contemporary world. Too frequently we started encountering one or another form of malicious behavior, criminal activities or terrorism. New and complex threats highlight the need for further synergies and closer cooperation at all levels. Awareness, preparedness and resilience of societies emerge as key preconditions of further secure and sustainable economic development and general well-being. A special attention in those conditions has to be paid to development of theoretically grounded approach to protection of critical infrastructure (CIP), damage or disruption of which can be immensely harmful to unprepared and therefore vulnerable institutions and society. The aim of this paper is to lay theoretical foundations for theoretically grounded approach towards research in CIP area, in order to formulate, ultimately, an approach towards action, which, employing leadership societal stakeholders would allow to enhance awareness of society actors about the threats, i.e, to develop ability to recognize, prevent, and, in case of disaster, to resist to consequences of critical infrastructure infringement. Hence, enhanced resilience of society to critical infrastructure infringement is and ultimate goal of fostering of leadership for critical infrastructure protection.

The world faces new challenges and threats to international security environment, among which a key role play different types of cyberthreats. This follows, primarily the global links in a cyberspace in terms of critical infrastructure of the state’s and intergovernment’s objects in the international security environment and the fact that the cyberaggressor’s tools are becoming cheaper, and their skills are more and more advanced. There is an urgent need for the analysis of present and future cyberthreats in the security environment, to understand their impact on everone, States, Nations and organizations and develop effective methods of response in this highly complex reality. The article presents the concept of defining of main types of cyberhreats (i.e. information warfare, cyberterrorism, cybercrime and cyberespionage) on the base of the new theoretical approach of modern security environment model.