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The paper provides reflections on NATO's London Summit held on 3 and 4 December 2019 in the context of Poland's military security. The paper is divided into an introduction, six sections, and a conclusion. The first section is devoted to issues of formation, functioning, and disintegration of alliances from the perspective of the theory of defensive structural realism and explains the methodological assumptions of the paper. The second section presents the atmosphere as prevailed before and during the Summit, which significantly impacted its process. The following sections are devoted to the main problems raised during the Summit from the perspective of Poland's military security. The first involved the approval of Poland and the Baltic states' defense plans together with a discussion on the danger of their blocking by the Turkish delegation. Another issue was the symbolic and practical confirmation of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty's significance in the perspective of the approach to Russia's threat. The next two problems concerned the level of Member States' defense spending and the vision of strengthening the EU's defense potential. The paper's main thesis is that the decisions of the NATO Summit in London have had a positive impact on Poland's military security. However, the climate and discussions that accompanied the Summit also brought a great deal of uncertainty and revealed a growing gap between allies concerning various issues.

In this paper author examines the perception of Central Asia by contemporary Russian thinkers and scientists: "neo-Slavophiles", "Eurasians" and "Westernizers". Author established the existence of significant differences between three groups of experts in the assessment of Russia's foreign policy in relation to Central Asian states. This conclusion applies equally to the attitude of selected Russian scientists concerning China, as well as to Russia's prospects in the region.

Transformations of forms of state political systems go beyond the established division of states into unitary and federal because it does not fully reflect the complexity of issues related to decentralizing reforms. According to the authors, there exist major differences regarding the classification of states at regional and local level, which do not fall into the fixed diversification between a unitary and federal state. The article proposes an extended classification of the recognized political systems, broadened by a regional and local level, which allows us to distinguish a sub-central system. The authors argue that the main criterion of topology is the relations (competences) between the central (state) government and regional and local governments. The observable vertical distribution of power relates to three levels: local self-government, territorial autonomy and subdividions of a federal state. They are not mutually exclusive; rather, they complement one another.