The concept of building societal resilience is most often used in various documents of the European Union, the most important ones including the 2016 Global Strategy for the European Union's Foreign and Security Policy. The resilience concept is most often associated with an organism’s health and immunity to various viruses, bacteria and other phenomena that threaten an individual's health. The resilience of a society, however, sounds like a set of activities that is necessary for the whole society to be resilient to what threatens all of us. This phenomenon is most often referred to as threats, and when the notion of threats emerges, we immediately find ourselves in the realm of security. However, the concept of strengthening a company’s resilience encompasses much more than just countering security threats. The Global Strategy for the European Union's Foreign and Security Policy refers to the definition of societal resilience used by the EU Council as early as 2013 namely that societal resilience is "the ability of an individual, a household, a community, a country or a region to withstand, cope, adapt, and quickly recover from stresses and shocks without compromising long-term development.”
The documents produced in the European Union on the concept of increasing societal resilience are, of course, very important. For a long time in the development of the European Union, the concept of security has not been among the priorities. With the emergence of various inconveniences and dangers caused by climate change, terrorism, mass and illegal migration, social and political change, however, they confirm that the concept of increasing the societal resilience in the broadest possible sense has grown even more important.
The resilience of Slovenian society has been tested many times. Let us only briefly mention the turning point of 1991, when a lot changed for the people of Slovenia. In some of the following years the floods showed all their power and scale. The ice storm of 2014, however, came as a particular surprise demanding a new, different reflection on the provision of national security. This was followed by mass migration flows in 2015, which ended as a European migrant crisis in March 2016. In 2020 Illegal migration requires intensive effort of the Police and the Slovenian Armed Forces. Additionally, in various fields, Covid-19 has come as a surprise to the entire world, and will continue to leave its mark in the future. During the epidemic, the activities to prevent, contain and assist in the organizational efforts included numerous state authorities, including the Slovenian Armed Forces.
All of the above is just one more reason to draft a concept of increasing Slovenia’s societal resilience, which as an integral part of the European family of nations will be able to contribute more to the security and prosperity both nationally and beyond, in Europe.
The present issue was created as part of the concept of increasing societal resilience. Since this is a very broad area, we focused on just a few topics related to security, defence and the armed forces.
China, security challenge for the European Union is the article of Mojca Pešec. China's global influence is growing, and is at its greatest in the economic and geopolitical fields. This country is increasingly present in other areas as well. In the article, the author focuses most on the political, security and military aspects of China's influence on the European Union, which consequently also affect Slovenia.
The concept of cyberspace is certainly the fastest growing area of all, and is as such providing unimagined opportunities for anyone who wants to change something for the better, as well as for those who want to cause harm or benefit in any other way. Rapid progress is hard to keep up with. A prerequisite for professional and scientific discussions is the synchronisation of terminology. Damjan Štrucl writes about it in the article entitled Terminology confusion in ensuring cyberspace security.
Darko Lubi was prompted to write his article by the problems of how critical the national critical infrastructure is and how to identify it, on what basis the criticality is determined and under what circumstances certain critical infrastructure is considered more critical than the other. The methodological model for identifying national critical infrastructure can make an important contribution to addressing this issue, but security circumstances are constantly changing.
The Slovenian Armed Forces has been cooperating with the Police in ensuring the effective protection of the Schengen border since 2015. Both organizations have their own statutory tasks. They are different, which stems from the differences in their missions. In the article Cooperation of the Slovenian Armed Forces and the Police in ensuring internal stability and security of the Republic of Slovenia, Gregor Potočnik writes about what their cooperation really means from a legal and organizational point of view.
Special Forces are elite units in the armed forces that perform particularly demanding tasks. Members of these forces are required to achieve higher standards of physical and mental fitness compared to their counterparts from other military units. Higher standards are usually achieved by men, which is why female members of Special Forces are more an exception than a rule. Karmen Poklukar and Pavel Vuk are wondering about the Integration of women in the Special Forces.
The knowledge and experience of authors in the Contemporary Military Challenges vary. Security conflicts in their various forms have consequences. One of such consequences are also the mines in Kosovo, which stayed behind after most people left. A few of those who have remained behind face the threat posed by this lethal ordnance every day. Matjaž Bizjak shares his demining experience from Kosovo in his article Mine threat in Kosovo between 1999 and 2001.
Next year we will mark the 30th anniversary of Slovenia’s independence with one of the issues of Contemporary Military Challenges. Readers are therefore welcome to contribute articles on security, defence and the military particularly focusing on the future.
Global Threats and European security: Reassessing Pro-national European Nationalism
