Letnik 9/2, september 2007 - Slovenska vojska

Denis Čaleta
their national security can be threatened at any time by different factors such as
terrorism, natural disasters, international crime and other threats.
Terrorist acts have shown that national security systems were no longer able
to effectively counter new threats brought by the changed global security
circumstances. Most countries have started a process of determining new tasks
and relations between authorities responsible for the assurance of the proper
level of national security. Even greater stress has been focused on the assurance
of international security. Terrorist acts, which were of local nature in the past,
have acquired global dimensions with their new forms. This shows us that today
countries are not the only subject of international relations that have a monopoly
over the means for conducting mass violence.
After the Cold War, the relations in the international community changed radically.
The states as fundamental subjects of the international law no longer present the
main source of threat to each other. The appearance of unipolarity with a really
strong world super power, that is the United States of America, which is not
capable of controlling all negative phenomena in the international community,
brings about numerous ethnical, religious, international and ideological disputes.
Globalisation, as a world process, brings both positive and negative results. The
negative include attempts of the western culture to dominate traditional cultures
in different regions in the world. The process of globalisation does not bring just
allocation of world assets. On the contrary, the globalisation even accumulates
these assets in defined centres of power. All these processes are causing different
forms of resistance in a great part of the underdeveloped world manifested by
certain forms of terrorism. Because of globalisation and the media, which are one
of the main products of this process, terrorism has spread beyond the local frames
and become one of the biggest world threats. International terrorism threatens
the existence of the international security system and individual subjects in this
system. We have to dedicate special emphasis to the importance of national and
international security. Antiterrorist activities are not important per se. They need
to be conducted to protect values valid in society. Terrorism is the biggest threat
to these values. The conducting of these activities is important for restoring the
balance between risks (threats) and control of these threats. This is the essential
meaning and task of the system protection of national security. The first phase of
the system protection concept includes identification and recognition of threats,
followed by the analysis of these threats. The third phase includes activities which
are directed towards countering and removal of consequences caused by terrorism.
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