Suchergebnisse

Russia defines relations with The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the category of strategic competition and struggle for influence. It realizes its goals through various methods and tools, choosing the right combination of them, depending on the entities to which they are dedicated. This article is an attempt to synthetically discuss the activity of the Russian Federation in the information environment of the Baltic States, oriented to the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO), determining its conditions, mechanisms and key narratives. The author considers the fact that the attitude towards NATO is part of Russia's global strategy, which aims to revise the international order in a direction that would guarantee a return to its rightful position in the emerging new order.

Today, there is no doubt that the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops in February 2022 represents just another phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War that has lasted for nine years. There are many aspects to this confrontation. The consequences of the war will affect the future of the world order. It will include such aspects as security, formation of new political blocs, force interaction of political regimes, the choice of state-building models by the countries, the art of war, the role of civil society, and strengthening of the informational component in the confrontation between states and their alliances. Russia-Iran has already emerged as one such aggressive alliance. In the article, the authors explain the phenomenon of the infodemic and one of its structural elements, the "vaccinodemic". The COVID-19 pandemic became a vivid example of the global clash of actors in international relations that implement conflicting ideologies – democratic or authoritarian rule in the social and political life of their states – and realize such aspects in foreign policy. The authors assert that the current situation in Ukraine, namely, the open military Russian invasion and the further aggravation of the security crisis, primarily in the European region, are only the next phase of an ideological confrontation that could be observed during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic by humanity. Now, this confrontation continues in a more aggressive, conventional format. Manifestations of the infodemic and its unique form, the "vaccinodemic", captured the essence of the global confrontation, which will determine international processes for decades. Namely, Russia's fight between democracy and authoritarianism has acquired neo-totalitarian characteristics. This fight will determine, in addition to other social phenomena, the structure and content of the global information space. It is noted that authoritarian regimes have shown some success in addressing the pandemic, which may aggravate the rivalry between democracy and authoritarianism, as the former will have to prove its effectiveness and long-term advantages.

The paper describes the Polish road to NATO which, contrary to the West's expectations and promises, was long and bumpy. The author presents and analyses various obstacles that hindered Polish accession to NATO. The author divides such challenges into objective and subjective barriers, but using other criteria, the author points to specific geopolitical, international, political, social, and military conditions. Furthermore, the author presents the stances of different countries on the enlargement of the North Atlantic Alliance after the Cold War, particularly the attitudes of the USA, Germany, France, the USSR, and Russia as these states were either more or less supportive of Polish efforts to join NATO or not supportive at all. In 1989-1999 the Alliance's position was slowly evolving from being initially unwilling to support Poland's accession to NATO to being sympathetic towards it. In the paper, the author poses a few research questions on the above-mentioned obstacles on the Polish road to NATO and a few theses and hypotheses. The author states that primarily the USSR, later the Russian Federation, was against Poland's accession to NATO. Initially, the West also opposed it. After 1989, its priority was to reunite Germany and stabilize military relations with Moscow through the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) and the elimination of Soviet military bases in post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.