Key Challenges and Threats to National Security: The Polish Perspective

Abstract

IntroductionIn the early twenty-first century, threats to the security of Poland have been substantially reassessed, and are still evolving. Currently, the threat of a conflict emerging that could lead to war on a global scale is less likely to take place. However, new sources of potential conflict have appeared that can pose serious challenges and widespread threats to Polish national security. In order to face these challenges and effectively deal with the resulting threats to its national security system, the Polish leadership needs to determine which threats are most fundamental in nature, and which are of secondary concern.This article is intended to clarify the current challenges and threats to the national security of the Polish Republic, and to help build awareness of the challenges and threats that exist. Perhaps some of its conclusions can be of use to decision makers who are responsible for maintaining Poland's security. The process of explaining the pressures posed by these threats to national security was best initiated by formulating a set of questions about each potential conflict: What threats to the security of the Polish Republic does it pose? How might these threats come about? And why is this particular conflict of concern?This essay aims to overcome the difficulties arising from a teleological approach by beginning with the problem and formulating a working hypothesis that is best able to reflect the essence of the current challenges and threats to Poland's national security. This method is made possible by the careful arrangement of a set of semantic concepts underlying the systematic study to be carried out, and then interpreting these different types of challenges and threats.The solution of the problem and the verification of the working hypothesis required the use of both deductive and inductive research methods. The interpretation of the underlying concepts as carried out mainly through the analysis of word formation, inductive and philological reasoning, and deductive inference, which provided new scientific facts and made it possible to create the necessary definitions. However, the system of risk was constructed following the principles of formal logic and rules of dichotomous divisions of the Platonic form (as contradictory characteristics). The development of the characteristics of different types of threats was achieved through the analysis of the many examples available in the literature, conducting verbal tests of these models of threats, and a synthesis of the causal analysis of the results obtained. Finally, in drawing definitive conclusions, I relied on incomplete enumerative induction (Mill's canons) and deductive inference.Basic ConceptsObtaining a relatively orderly response to the questions, What threatens the Polish Republic? How and why does it do so? requires a method of clarification that is adapted to the needs of working out this mode of understanding a set of elementary concepts. Without such a clarification of the basic concepts being used, a description of the national security threats is in practice impossible. These concepts will be discussed below.The dilemmas of the state with respect to resolving security matters are usually considered in the literature as challenges to national security.1 These challenges may either be taken up or ignored, and either decision may create additional opportunities or pose additional threats. Such an understanding of the challenges of national security should be considered reasonable on the condition that the understanding of the challenges is defined more precisely.2 A 'challenge' (after a small modification of the approach to the category of national security, as presented by M. Cieslarczyk3) is recognized as the situation (or information about a situation) which - if not discovered on time and if suitably selected arranged activities are not identified, arranged, accomplished in the right place and time, with the involvement of adequate capacity - may turn into a 'threat. …