The Russian Federation, with its plans to regain influence over former Soviet bloc countries, currently constitutes the main military danger for the EU and NATO. Because the war is so close to the EU’s borders, European allies have every reason to increase army financing instead of fuelling a transatlantic disagreement about burden sharing. This article deals with the question of whether the high strategic threat posed by Russia has increased military spending among European allies and decreased free-riding practices after 2014. To analyse this problem, we applied Spearman’s Rank Correlation test and then made a comparative analysis of 21 countries that are both EU and NATO members. Our results confirmed that European allies did not react in the same way to the Russian threat. We proved that strategic factors played a key role in the majority of Eastern European members of NATO, but not across Western European allies.
The paper provides an assessment of Poland’s efforts to address security threats over the last decade. The analysis is limited to energy security, environment protection, cybersecurity and information threats. Governmental strategies, policies and plans are confronted with the assessments of the Supreme Audit Office, academia and think tanks. The paper identifies common challenges related to development and implementation of the state’s response to traditional and emerging threats. It also discusses observed trade-offs and consequences of both actions and hesitance to act.
The purpose of this article is to fulfil a comparative study of national security legislation, as well as the formation of conceptual foundation for its development and the elaboration of proposals for the improvement thereof with regard to Ukraine. The article analyses in comparative aspect the practice of the Republic of Lithuania as one of the European countries. In the context of globalization, the research focuses on international legal systems of both international and regional levels. The comparative legal analysis of the legal measures to maintain national security revealed similarities in theoretical and methodological approaches. In the study, the author’s definition of national security is given; and a typological model of the concept of national security is formed.
Information today is becoming increasingly important, especially in the era of progressive computerization and advancements in the area of computer technology. At the same time, there are also increasingly more threats to this category, of which the most important are criminal offenses against information protection. These are enforced by competent state authorities whose activity is necessary to maintain the proper level of security. The article deals mainly with the phenomenon of crime involving infringement of information, and its scale, using for this purpose the statistical data collected by the Polish National Police Headquarters.
The articles analyses the penetration of social media through personal use into daily life and the relation of this phenomenon to national security. A survey of Lithuanian higher-school students aged 18-29 was conducted according to quantitative research methodology. Young people actively use social networks for various purposes (personal, learning, work, recreation). Statistically, each individual, aged 18-29, has personal profiles on four social networking sites, yet most often does not adequately evaluate and link the use of social networks with possible national security threats and risk factors. Less than two-thirds of young people have heard something of possible threats and risk factors; however, the impact of social media on national security is not considered significant. Thus, it seems that young people lack information about real threats presented by social networks to both personal data storage and national security.