Legal regulation of the Baltic States national security policy within the NATO’S Strategic concepts evolution framework

Abstract

The formation and development of the policy of national security of the Baltic States from the moment of independence has been considered. The impossibility of using the Soviet model of security in the Baltic States was discovered primarily because of the radically different size of states, the nature of threats and resource potential, as well as its non-compliance with the security models in force in the EU and NATO. Accession of the Baltic States to the EU and NATO changed the situation with ensuring national security in the Baltic States. Membership in NATO provided the countries of the region with access to collective defense, which they became part of. At the same time, the Baltic countries were forced to consider the problem of security in the context of providing international security, which at the beginning of the XXI century. is characterized by the expansion of asymmetric threats. This led to a radical change in the defensive concepts and concepts of national security in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in accordance with the principles of the UN, NATO and the EU.   It is established that in the EU there is a difference in the vision of the nature and origin of security threats between Western European, Eastern European and Mediterranean countries. And even in the Baltic countries, the same threats can be in one country in the list of external threats, while in others - internal ones. The orientation of the Baltic States in the field of security in NATO, and not in the EU, is due in particular to the fact that the security problem in the Eastern Partnership region has not been adequately reflected in EU policy as a tool for its solution. It has been established that a key political document reflecting the common vision of NATO's objectives is strategic concepts that directly affect the content and direction of national security policies of NATO member states. Each of the following Strategies aims to ensure a qualitative modernization of the Alliance, turning it into a multifunctional mechanism for responding to crises. The paper analyzes the evolution of the strategic concepts of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from the end of the 1990s to the present time, as well as their influence on the development of the policy of national security and defense of the Baltic States. The emphasis is placed on the absence of the problem of maintaining state sovereignty in the conditions of the state's membership in NATO.  In order to maintain stability in the Baltic Sea region, the Baltic States seek to strengthen military-political cooperation in all critical sectors with the countries of the Northern region of Europe and Poland. Relations with Russia are mainly based on international treaties signed with Russia by the EU and NATO. Bilateral cooperation with the United States, as well as the activities of the Baltic States in NATO and the EU, remain of strategic importance to ensure their safety.