The article contributes to discussions on security in international relations. A departure is made from focusing on the conceptual and historical contexts of processes and developments in the contemporary international community. Through historical and causal analyses, the phenomenon of solving security issues as part of modern developments in international relations is explored. In the second part, more recent developments in theory are presented, together with the security dilemma as a structural element of the development of societies, and the state and international system where focus is given to the security dilemma of actors. At the end, the article deals with the challenges of contemporary security and issues as they pertain to Slovenia.

Politika kot zavestna človekova dejavnost, usmerjena na urejanje odnosov med člani skupnosti, je od prvih korakov učlovečevanja ena osnovnih gibal vsake človekove dejavnosti

Covid-19 pandemic came during the globalization backlash and accelerated two important millennial mega trends: the changing nature of production and innovation, and the changing global world order and trading system Although stronger multilateralism was seen as a key approach to tackling the tough global challenges before the global crisis, the national responses at the start of Covid-19 have crowded out multilateral and even regional initiatives and revitalised the role of the state A growing gap between national, regional and multilateral responses to Covid-19 challenges the development of global governance and regional integration, as well as the future of the EU and its capacities for international economic and political cooperation All the dimensions of the complex multifaceted systemic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic are, however, still to be established, and their impacts on individual countries as well as on international relations continue to be an important topic of discussion and research

AbstractThis paper analyses the systemic framework of the operation of the Intelligence and Security Service – ISS, and the parliamentary supervision of its operations. It takes as its focus a case that occurred last year and was related to the Defence Minister’s commissioning of working materials from the Service on the effects that the privatization of the national telecommunications provider – Telekom Slovenije would have on the operation of the Service in the light of Slovenia’s defence interests. This work also presents a linguostylistic analysis of the media reports covering this case. The findings show that while after 25 years as an independent state Slovenia has established the institutional framework for the operation of the ISS and regulated parliamentary supervision of its work, it has not as yet managed to achieve the harmonized operation of all state policies in the field of national security. Rather than contributing to the solution of certain dilemmas regarding the legal, political and professional aspects of the operation of this civil intelligence and security service in the context of Slovenian national defence, the media reporting used a selection of foregrounded (marked) linguistic means in headlines to characterize the event as a scandal, and designate the ISS as a military intelligence service.

After the wars came to an end following Yugoslavia's dissolution, the Western Balkans (WB) embarked upon a path of transition and reform which for various political, security, economic and other reasons is still continuing today. Based on a broader analysis of the security framework in the region, this paper identifies the main transformative processes and analyses their elements and implications, which constitute the complex security in the WB. We assess the situation at the level of individual countries and extrapolate the findings for the whole region and Europe. With a view to evaluating the region's dynamics and underlying issues that correlate with and mutually impact on each other, we divide the transformation period into three processes: stabilisation with state-building, democratisation with institution-building, and Euro-Atlantic integration. Western Balkans security has been becoming ever more complex in the past 25 years due to these unfinished processes together with unresolved past issues arising from inter-related and mutually reinforcing political, socio-economic and ethno-national elements. Moreover, new-old security challenges have emerged that are further complicating the state of security. Instead of making progress with the democratic transition and the integration path, the various elements' interaction seems to place the region at risk of destabilisation and stalled progress coupled with the fact that not all requirements for stability have so far been met. The analysis concludes that the security framework is becoming increasingly complex and aggravated, in turn affecting the whole region's functioning and development and thus the entire Continent's stability and prosperity.

Western Balkan thesis remains particularly popular in the circles of international politics, according to which it is necessary to emphasize the traditional situation in the countries in Southeast Europe focusing on Balkan nucleus with its immediate neighborhood. Hence, the elaboration contained herein is moving along two axes: first, an attempt is made for rational analysis of the question “Whether the Western Balkan countries have already established a system that takes care of resolving open issues and problems without using force and based on the model of regional security community?” The second line of analysis refers to the experiences of the Western Balkan countries for security cooperation among them in the wider context of security and political relations in the entire Western Balkans region.

Military transformation is a complex, slow, asymmetric, changeable, political, and not necessarily completely rational process that clearly needs an effective monitoring mechanism. This paper fills a gap in current literature by creating and testing a model for multi-dimensional and multi-level quantitative monitoring of military transformation applicable in any country. The model is based on 10 transformation indicators that reflect changes in organizational structure, personnel structure, weapon systems, and defense spending. Its application on a sample of seven countries (USA, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and China) in the period from 1992 to 2010 unexpectedly shows that the USA – a protagonist in the transformation process among allies as well as globally – has carried out the smallest relative change. The non-directed transformation index indicates that Russia carried out 51.8% more change (or 34.1 index units), and the directed index indicates that Poland carried out 157.2% (or 40.8 index units) more change than the USA.

In today's security environment, internal conflicts represent the main threat to international peace and security and to the existing collective security system provided within the framework of the United Nations (UN). This article analyzes the positive effects of the functioning of mechanisms and instruments of the UN's collective security system in resolving the crisis in Libya. This article confirms that the collective security system implemented within the UN, and supplemented by a mechanism of responsibility to protect, is still an adequate security system for the international community to ensure international peace and security. However, new emphasis should be placed on post-conflict peace-building mechanisms.

Revolution in Military Affairs has been one of the driving concepts for creating modern armed forces capable of coping with the challenges of a contemporary security environment. Revolutionary change in Military Affairs has been interpreted as discontinuous, radical, non-incremental, and even disruptive change. Evolutionists, however, oppose this view and stress that past military transformations were actually more evolutionary, continuous, incremental, piecemeal, and slow. The third view tried to integrate both views by stressing the patterns of interchange of the periods of evolution and the turbulent periods of revolution. This article explores the revolution-evolution dilemma quantitatively by setting three logical revolution criteria/thresholds and discovers the number of changes in military affairs on a sample of 33 countries that were actually revolutionary in the period 1992-2010. The article confirms the argument that Revolution in Military Affairs has been in practice predominantly an incremental evolution in several military dimensions, with rare major (revolutionary) shifts. The statistical results show that only from 2 to 4% of possible revolutionary situations (periods in our measurement) were Revolution in Military Affairs. Only nine countries occasionally reached the revolution threshold of 30% change in one year, 10 countries reached the threshold of 50% change in three years, and only six countries reached the threshold of 70% change in five years. These findings suggest that Revolution in Military Affairs was used more as a promotional slogan, and perhaps even a motivational tool in military affairs.

The military transformation process typically focuses on the structural, operational, technical, personnel, training, and similar dimensions. Yet conceptual and practical approaches to such transformation have largely neglected the importance of the perceptional and subjective aspects that have frequently negatively affected this process. This article fills this gap by developing the Input-Process-Output Transformation Model and testing it on a sample of 55 military transformation experts from 23 NATO and PfP countries. The results highlight what are perceived to be the most important variables affecting the transformation input, process, and output that need to be incorporated in future integrated transformation strategies. It also turns out that transformation strategies need to increase the involvement of civil society, improve public support, the level of internal understanding of transformation goals, and the level of experimentation.

Anton Grizold is professor of sociology and dean of social sciences at the University of Ljubljana, Republic of Slovenia. He served as minister of defense from 2000 to 2004.

Summary The Republic of Slovenia, as the state created at the end of the Cold War from the territory of the former SFRY, channelled the evolution of its society towards democratisation. An important aspect of the democratic restructuring of the Slovenian society is also the formation of the new civilian-military relations, based on the principles that exist in developed parliamentary states. At the same time, Slovenia is confronted with the burden of the former (Yugoslav) authoritarian social system and with the problems which derive from the antagonisms in the course of the transition itself. The most important obstacle to the establishment of democratic civil-military relations and adequate mechanisms of civilian control of the armed forces was the lack of consensus among Slovenian political elites about the long-term defense strategy. Today the situation has changed and there is a general consensus (especially in the defense-security field) about what the permanent, basic, vital strategic national interests are. The proof of that is the transparent and clear definition of Slovenian national interests, derived from the security threats and their sources, which are defined in the basic defense document, ratified by the Parliament in the year 2001: “The Resolution on the national security strategy of the Republic of Slovenia”. That same year the parliament ratified “The general long-term programme of the development and equipping of the Slovenian Armed Forces for the period 2002-2007”. The adoption of those developmental and operational documents in the area of national security established an appropriate institutional framework for the civilian control of the armed forces like those in developed states.

the need for Slovenia to form its own armed forces and to rely upon collective systems of security;