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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.

In spite of defining the role of various measures of security policy implementation the weight of one has been quite unequivocally assessed for the current policy. The main position for contemporary Poland is to be taken by the armed forces. Under these conditions, the Polish Army has become a basic element of the defense system of Poland not only in terms of image. It is not surprising then that currently the armed forces have received a wide range of tasks regarding security – both internal and external. President Duda and the government of Law and Justice proudly show the 2 percent of GDP spent on defense and an even higher target, at the latest in 2030. However, this does not create a perspective that would allow "hurray" optimism. The key to describing the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland seems to be their ability to respond to the revolution in the field of military and the ability to modernize. Despite the plans of the Ministry of National Defense and declarations given in media, this process faces a number of difficulties. Not only do we create "abstract" visions of needs for the current policy, but we also offend our partners and those that are still our allies. The arms policy, so important from the point of view of this "self-sufficiency", was brought to the accusations of lobbying, corruption, and fraud; not only do we not pay attention to our own needs, but we also create innovative concepts for the current policy that cause us to wander in dilettantism. It seems that the shape of the implementation of the modernization of the Armed Forces is affected not only by the current policy. To a large extent, the condition of the Polish arms industry is also a decisive factor in the absorption of modernization.

Privatisation of security did not appear in the process of revolution. Under conditions of deepening international relations, as well as integration and globalisation processes, security of the state, as well as other entities, is subject to a number of dependencies. The article casts some doubt on how much states are prepared to take such actions, while not losing the attribute of monopoly on violence. Moreover, the article presents doubts about the ranks of modern armed forces. Private Military Firms (PMFs) are new actors the actions of which affect the security. The contemporary image of the PMF functioning is a phenomenon on a global scale. In the twenty-first century, small businesses can have a huge impact on the reality and international affairs. Leaving military firms without state control proves that they do not understand the dynamics, range, risks and challenges posed by cooperation with entities that are allowed to use force. Furthermore, despite devastating consequences that occurred during the state stabilisation operations, these firms continued to outsource services to contractors, while not creating any legal control over them.

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.