The publication is another title falling into the subject: Common European Safety and Defense Policy. However, it diff ers from previous depictions of European Union's activity in the second pillar. €The author's aim was an analysis of a development of European identity in the fi eld of safety and defense from its origins, that is activities taken and decisions made in the second half of the 1940s. € e author has followed through the European safety and defense policy from the moment of shaping its conception (Pleven plan) and setting up the European Defence Community until setting up the European Defence Agency. €The treaty instituting the European Defence Community deserves a special attention. It is the first presentation of such important Western Europe's striving for creating the European armed forces in the literature of the subject.
In many analysis of contemporary military conflicts, their ethnicity is emphasized. Ethnic dissimilarities are indicated as the main element which causes diversity leading to even very dramatic events. For some people dissimilarity is a possibility of marginalization, for others a possibility of arousing some values which nowadays are very often treated as secondary. Ethnicity has a changeable character resulting from the process of its settling. It cannot be seen according to the rights characteristic for former processes. To what extend does the category change in the contemporary world? Isn't it used only in order to hide a lack of communication and reluctance to compromises? Isn't ethnicity manipulated by polititians, very o! en temporarily understanding interest of people communities, who because of very low reasons oppose symbolism of ethnicity to arising processes of modernization? Or maybe ethnicity is another "magic charm" which we use so easily sitting in a "quiet" of a political stability. The process which can be easily placed in universalism and hardly in rationalism.
Today's world undergoes unbelievably rapid changes in the main spheres of social life. Nearly everyday we can see spectacular socio-political, economic, cultural, science and technological transformation. Rules previously typical for an industrial society became obsolete. The third wave of civilization development and information society emerges. Increasingly more often production capacity enables manufacturing goods considerably saturated with modern knowledge to develop into highly advanced technologies. New forms of production developed, including soft ware, media, advertising, consulting, and public relations. Consequently, the stage of relative stabilization comes to its end and threats result from the lack of ability to follow continuous changes.
Civilian management and democratic control over the army do not only consist in establishing organs and mechanisms of control and optimising their activity. It is significant to determine and respect the role of the armed forces in the society, which would allow making the army a politically neutral instrument of legally functioning forces as well as appropriate organisational structures with strictly defined protection measures allocated to carry out the undertakings of the state and the nation. The position and function of the army in society should be based on the fact that it reflects the features of the society it comes from. In order to facilitate the effective progression of the process, the following aspects should be taken into account: in what manner the army reacts to the decisions and actions of civilian society; whether there are intermediary bodies between these spheres; to what extent the armed forces represent the interests of the society; and whether a soldier-citizen exists or if the two notions should be treated separately
For the purposes of this article it has been assumed that the army should not become an autonomous constituent of the state's structure, since this would pose a threat of taking over a dominant position by this specific formation. The aim of the article is to analyze the modification of the reasons for the outbreak of war, and the means of conducting it. The ongoing changes in the security environment, both in national and worldwide scale, as well as the proceeding national interests of our country imply increasingly advanced tasks for the army and considerably extend their range. The process of transformation in the Polish army is being continued. Further changes are targeted at increasing operational capability in order to enable efficient accomplishment of domestic tasks and performing missions outside its borders. In the contemporary international reality there is a prevailing conviction, that the threat of the outbreak of a global-scale war is rather unlikely. However, other jeopardies and risks have recently come to the fore.
In order to describe the environment surrounding us, so complex in terms of relations resulting from using violence, we easily employ terms such as 'partisan' or 'militant', just in order to define the very same ones as terrorists a while later. Probably the benchmark of contemporary description, especially of political action is the lack of clear-cut attitudes. Terrorism is nothing new, and this statement in itself is not very revealing. However, for many contemporary researchers of this issue, there is never too much information. Terrorism has always accompanied the history of oppressive regimes as well as resistance movements and uprisings. All the same, within the anti- colonial insurrectionary movements of the mid-20th century which led to the fall of European colonial empires over a short period of time, terrorism achieved new quality. It should also be emphasized that it achieved considerable political successes compared to the social-revolutionary terrorism of the late 19th century. The attribute 'terrorist' serves as an excluding one in different relations. By employing such term, one that their cause is an unconventional one – leastways as long as specific ways of using violence are applied. On the other hand, groups classified as terrorist ones often describe themselves as partisans who are fighting for the liberation of certain social or ethnic groups and who have to employ "unconventional" methods of using force because of the military superiority of the oppressive regime. By describing certain actions as 'terrorist' one usually intends on bereaving it of every sort of political legitimation. Is there any aspect that terrorism and guerrilla actions have in common? In certain socio-revolutionary or ethno-separatist strategies of violence, the concept of terrorism consists in the idea of a 'starter' which is to create the conditions to commence the guerrilla war. There could also be groups acting as partisans on one front line, and as terrorists on the other. The example is Al-Qaeda: in Central Asia its network operated only temporarily, as a kind of guerrilla, while in the global scale it employed terrorist strategy.
A term "violence", despite transformations of the meanings, has always been connected with relations between genders, and as such, what it means in a given society to be a woman and a man and which economic, social and psychological relations have been assigned to these categories. At least since the 18th century, unequal share of the power between men and women has been justified with, among others, a different share of "passion" and different potential of violence. A real power ready to use violence should be focused on the men side while a tasks of women should be neutralizing men's readiness to use violence, achieved by subjecting themselves to men. For thousands of years military battles have been almost exclusively a man's privilege. Even 100 years ago, women did not have a right to vote even in western countries with the longest democratic traditions. Today, giving a woman the highest office in a state is not unusual. So can we talk about a fall of the patriarchy and replacing men by women even in such man fields as war and military battles?
On the workers' of the Institute of the Political Science and European Studies of University of Szczecin initiative, with a support of the Council of the Institute of the Political Science and European Studies, a Yearbook Reality of Politics [estimates, comments, forecasts] has been brought into existence. The aim of the community of political scientist from Szczecin has been creating a magazine which by its character could present a wide spectrum of opinions, views and refl ections within the scope of contemporary issues concerning political science.
The consequence of systemic and political changes in Poland involved reorientation of Polish policy in terms of perceiving security. It was reflected in newly defined policy directions which expression involved a search for the new guarantees of security. The problem of ensuring state security in new geopolitical conditions is expressed in the adopted hierarchy of priorities of implementation of the Polish national interest. The exercise of the specified policy priorities means Poland's obtaining a solid security basis. The Polish Army, the armed forces of the Republic of Poland, has become an element of NATO's broad security system. The implementation of the policy in this regard by the Polish government has recently been more and more unidimensional. Only cooperation with the USA is at the target of the Polish security policy. Issues related to its costs remain outside its determinants. There is no reflection on being dependent on another egoistic player.
Relationships between the United States and the Soviet Union not only wielded enormous influence on almost half century of international relations, but freed also an entire number of analyses and strategic theories, which and in our times have their bigger or smaller references. Cold war in one's for the political plane and military was the "golden age" for the strategy. For the author of the most interesting strategic analyses, with which in the huge rank it isn't possible to comprehend, as only historical formed the strategic action appealing above all to Clausewitza and Lenin. The strategy is pointing, how a victory refers through the war, it isn't possible so, of course, to ponder issues of the strategy until they determine, what the war is. According to the famous Clausewitza definition, the war is an act of violence, being aimed at forcing the opponent to fulfil of our will. This expression contains two crucial elements. Firstly, the war assumes the violence what is distinguishing her from other forms of political, economic or military rivalry. Secondly, it isn't the pointless slaughter, but the tool being used to achieve the political purpose. It outlined the vision of world with time with the arms race and manners of the effective disarmament?
