Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

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 scientific work illustrates the newly developed methodical approach to complex statistical research of environmental security of differentiated territories. It is based on the method of integrated assessment of the level of environmental security as the result of the mutual influence of industrial and economic, nature-protective activities of environmental innovations. On its basis, the analysis of environmental situation has been carried out both of the countries of the world and separate territories. The directions of improvement of statistical observation have been justified in the field of environmental security, which include modernization of the forms of manifestation of international observation practice. This provides a combination of statistical indicators and the correct conduct of interterritorial comparisons.