STRATEGIC IMPACT
Number 3/2009
3[32]/2009
Contents
THE POLITICAL-MILITARY PRESENT
Crisis effect, security and defence - Teodor FRUNZETI, PhD
GEOPOLITICS AND GEOSTRATEGIES ON THE FUTURE’S TRAJECTORY
The financial crisis’ strategic impact -
Gheorghe VĂDUVA, PhD
Considérations sur le lien entre l’intérêt national et patriotisme -
Petre DUŢU, PhD
NATO AND EU: POLITICS, STRATEGIES, AND ACTIONS
SECURITY AND MILITARY STRATEGY
Defence resources management in crisis situations -
Mihail ORZEAŢĂ, PhD
Economic security and global economical crisis and fi nancial crisis challenges -
Gheorghe MINCULETE, PhD, Maria-Magdalena POPESCU, PhD
Economic security, organic dimension of national security -
Marius-Petre ROTARU
ANALYSIS. SYNTHESIS. EVALUATIONS
The role of cooperation between public affairs offi cers and journalists during peace support
operations -
Anna ANTCZAK, PhD
Cultural ideal or geopolitical project? Eurasianism’s paradoxes -
Emanuel COPILAŞ
STRATEGIC EVENT
Abandoning a strategic missile system for a more convenient and performant missile
system -
Vasile POPA
POINT OF VIEWS
The Medusa myth and the technologies of the future war -
Sorin TOPOR, PhD
Definitive elements, advantages and disadvantages of globalization -
Iulia Frasina TĂNASE
REVIEWS
War and Chaos
CDSSS’ AGENDA
The activities of the Centre for Defence and Security Strategic Studies, July-September
2009 -
Irina CUCU
Instructions for authors
Crisis effect, security and defence - Teodor FRUNZETI, PhD
The crisis effect is not only what immediately
results from a crisis, it is not only its “purposefulness”. The crisis effect consists
of a dynamic and, most of the times, hard to
be predicted enchainment of developments,
destructions and reconstructions, deliquescence,
reconfi gurations, appearances, re-appearances,
or simple renewals on economic, political, social,
informational and military fi eld. Crisis may be
perceived as the highest level of confl ictuality
of some systems and processes, as a critical
threshold of the dysfunctions accumulated in time,
which need a solution. From the mathematical
perspective, a society’s development is shaped by
non-linear equations, where unpredictable or the
impossibility of absolute predictions and absolute
certainties dominate. Therefore, it results that the
crisis effect is just as complex and complicated as
any other limit-situations, as any other threshold
determining radical changes within the system. We
are all afraid of crisis, but we all want the world
to change itself, to transform, to move towards
evolutions and better, safer and more prosperous
stages. Everything related with the society– from small family communities to professional
organisations, from informal structures to state,
from state to alliances and coalitions – projects
policies and strategies in order to get out of
confl ictuality, some evolutions to the normal state,
peace and prosperity. But policies and strategies
make sense only in a dynamic world – therefore,
contradictory and even confl ictual –, and their
calling is controlling, or, more precisely, using
conflictuality for stability and security. This is one – and, maybe, the most important – paradoxes of
this world.
Keywords: effect, crisis, security, procesuality,
synergy, safety, consonance, dissonance,
repercussion.
The financial crisis’ strategic impact -
Gheorghe VĂDUVA, PhD
When fi nances stagger, everything does.
Moreover, we are witnessing the effects’ chained
tumbling, tending to multiply themselves in
uncontrolled developments, becoming radical and
exploding, determining economical, social and
military avalanches, multiplying the challenges,
defi ances, dangers and threats, therefore amplifying
the vulnerabilities and signifi cantly in creasing the
risk level, passing over the strategic safety level.
Under these circumstances, the security policies
and strategies focus on getting out of the crisis, “repairing” what has been deteriorated, all the
other fi elds being actually suffocated for a long
period of time. Sometimes, this sort of crisis
develop to a confl ictual maximum called war, just
as it happened with the crisis from 1929-1933,
which has partly generated the World War II. As
a matter of fact, the current crisis, transcending in
volume the above mentioned one, affects the whole
humankind. Even if some of the big powers, world’s
states, NATO, the European Union and the other
international and regional organizations will do
their best in order to prevent this sort of dangerous
developments, the strategic mutations are present.
The crisis impact on the security policies and
strategies is revealed not only by the significant
decrease of the expenses allotted to this fi eld, but
also by imposing some new rigors. One of them is
the fastest exit from the philosophy, physiognomy
and effects of the World War II and the Cold War
and the focus of the security and defence effort on
counteracting challenges, defi ances, dangers and
threats concerning the whole world, on diminishing
the common vulnerabilities on handling them and a
better management of the risk level. As, nowadays,
risk comes closer to its maximum level, due to the
intense destruction means, which, if used, would
be able to completely destroy the humankind and
the planet.
Keywords: crisis, systemic crisis, strategic
impact, weapon systems, missile systems.
Considérations sur le lien entre l’intérêt national et patriotisme -
Petre DUŢU, PhD
Aujourd’hui, le monde est dominé par deux
processus fondamentaux et contradictoires: l’un
d’association représenté par la globalisation et
l’intégration régional; l’autre de dissociation
représenté par le séparatisme politique. Dans ce
contexte complexe et dynamique, l’intérêt national
ne perd pas son actualité et son importance
en relations entre les acteurs étatiques et non étatiques. Son affi rmation plenaire et constante
est une preuve d’existence et manifestation active
du patriotisme, en tant que sentiment et attitude
individuelle et collective.
Mots clés: attitude, dimensions de l’intérêt
national, globalisation, intégration régionale,
intérêt national, patriotisme, sentiment,
séparatisme politique.
The originality of the European Union Council reported to a similar entity from an
international integration organization -
Mădălina Virginia ANTONESCU, PhD
This article tries to analyze some legal
differences between one of the most important
EU institutions (EU Council or the Ministerial
Council), and several bodies from the structure
of international organizations of regional
integration. There are many of these organizations
holding in their institutional structure a body
allowing a legal comparison with EU Council.
From the beginning, we must say that European
Union is representing an original entity that
cannot be assimilated with an intergovernmental
international organization, even if this has an
integrationist nature. Nevertheless, in many of
international organizations of integration, it is
an intergovernmental body having integrationist
objectives, like EU Council. But, as the analyze
is trying to show, between these two entities (EU
Council and a body of an organization of regional
integration) there are many differences regarding
their political and legal nature of the entity to
which each party belongs, the components, the
attributions given in their constitutive act, the
types of acts emitted by this body and by EU
Council or the decisional process to which there
are participating.
Keywords: EU Council, European Union,
MERCOSUR Council of Common Market, Protocol
of Tegucigalpa SICA, Pan/ African Parliament,
COMESA Ministerial Council, AFTA, ASEAN,
SAFTA Ministerial Council, Agadir Agreement,
SADC, UMA, Guatemala protocol, SAARC, SICA,
EURAsEC, Marrakech Agreement, Lisbon treaty,
Executive Council of African Union, Constitutive
Act of Lomé, ALADI Council, Andean Presidential
Council, Cartagena Agreement, Montevideo treaty,
SAI Andean Council of Foreign Affairs Ministers,
CFSP, SACU Council of Ministers, Union of Arab
Maghreb, UMA Presidential Council.
Defence resources management in crisis situations -
Mihail ORZEAŢĂ, PhD
Defence resources management should be a
matter of interest for everybody and not only for
experts and decision-makers as long as the effects
of any decision in this domain can be perceived by
the entire society.
NATO’s umbrella should not be the only way
of thinking security because any member nation of
the organization has the obligation to be both a
security provider and consumer.
Global security environment is now safer than
during the Cold War but there are still many risks
and threats at regional and local level.
Every crisis encompasses a hope and we all
have the responsibility to search for and discover
as soon as possible, the turning point between
the decline and progress and then to proceed for
recovery.
The best way for managing defence resources
during economic and fi nancial crisis is to think
and act considering the future and therefore by
investing especially in research and development,
in order to fi nd new ways of protecting and
developing society through active participation of
all the citizens.
Keywords: defence resources; global security
environment; risks; threats; defence planning.
Economic security and global economical crisis and fi nancial crisis challenges -
Gheorghe MINCULETE, PhD, Maria-Magdalena POPESCU, PhD
For a lot of people, the current economical
crisis has come like an arrow from above. Yet, it is
from the 1970s when the experts had started giving
warnings that the global economy was heading for
a huge crisis. It was in 1960s when the western
countries concluded that oil drilling, mining
exploitation and placing oil drillings in different
areas (which have undoubtedly been polluted) are
too high a price for mass production.
A handful of industrialists, along with politicians
and scientists who had enough funds to perform
studies and apply computerized tests which could
virtually reveal the economical disasters that we
are currently facing, were able to set up the Rome
Club and their fi rst report - “The limits to growth” has shocked authorities and media institutions all
over the world.
The report is basically focused on studies over
fi ve global processes: too fast industrialization,
raising the consumer products stocks, ending
the non-recycling resources and the environment
degradation.
Our analysis, focused on present day sober
realities, tries to give introspection within the
correlation between the current global economical financial crisis and the economical security.
Keywords: economical security, global
economical-fi nancial crisis, international market
turbulences, interventionist measures, global
economy recover, new global economical order.
Economic security, organic dimension of national security -
Marius-Petre ROTARU
Initially an attribute of the state, carrying a
single meaning, namely the lack of military confl ict,
the notion of “security” has evolved in time from
its traditional significance, where the emphasis was
on the military dimension, to the confl ict arising
among countries and threats against state borders,
up to the modern sense, where several other
dimensions, namely economic, social, political,
environmental, etc., are taken into consideration.
The problematic concerning security is not to
be mistaken with the state’s normal functioning
along these dimensions, but it exclusively refers to
those threats which, within the limits of the abovementioned
dimensions, jeopardize the existence of
the state itself. The connections between economy
and security, in the context of a multicultural
international background, generate important,
significant aspects.
The complexity of economic security comes
from the implications of a multitude of processes
and economic, social and financial phenomena,
and as a result of globalization, seen both as a
process, as well as a phenomenon, which interacts
systematically and continuously on national
economy. Its dynamics owes to the frantic rhythm
of economic processes and phenomena which
appear at national and global levels alike.
Keywords: economic security, globalization,
economic dimension of security, infl ation,
unemployment.
The role of cooperation between public affairs offi cers and journalists during peace support
operations -
Anna ANTCZAK, PhD
In the XXI century, the role of the media and
their infl uence on social awareness in most of
political, economic, cultural and social aspects is
gradually rising. The aim of the article is to present
research results which was conducted among
public affairs offi cers and war correspondents in
Polish military contingents participating in peace
support operations. It deals with detailed analysis
of the interdependences, relations between the two
groups and other units operating during missions
and the contribution of the public affairs area to
the success or failure of the mission. It discusses
the role of public affairs offi cers in the process as
well the importance of various factors determining
the quality of the PA activity.
Keywords: public affairs offi cer; war
correspondent; public affairs strategy.
Cultural ideal or geopolitical project? Eurasianism’s paradoxes -
Emanuel COPILAŞ
Both in its classical variant, based on
primarily cultural coordinates, and in the neoone,
predominantly geopolitical, Eurasianism
proves its ideocratic character, and therefore
ideological, despite its advocates’ rejection to
any form of ideology in favor of geopolitical
concepts. Advancing concepts as pro-Soviet
neo-Eurasianism, respectively post-Soviet
neo-Eurasianism, the article proposes a review
of the Eurasianist phenomenon in 20th century
Russia, and the way it was resorbed, after the
dismemberment of the Soviet Union, in the Russian
Federation’s foreign policy.
Keywords: Eurasianism, pro-Soviet
neo-Eurasianism, post-Soviet neo-Eurasianism,
foreign policy, ideocracy.
The Medusa myth and the technologies of the future war -
Sorin TOPOR, PhD
In Greek mythology, Medusa was one of the
Gorgons who could turn any mortal to stone with
its look. Perseus killed it while it was sleeping.
Assimilating this myth to contemporary military
technologies, we can assume that the energy strike,
regardless of its nature and form of manifestation,
impulses or continuous waves, has as main
objective taking any contemporary informational
system back to the Stone Age. We intend to present
those aspects which will determine revising the
doctrinal principles because of the danger of using
direct energy weapons by a potential aggressor and
at the same time emphasizing the advantages of
the controlled use of such weapons during military
operations in this informational era and the fight
against terrorism.
Keywords: Direct Energy Weapons.
Definitive elements, advantages and disadvantages of globalization -
Iulia Frasina TĂNASE
Globalization is a reality of the contemporary world with implications on all levels of human activity: economical, political, military, social, cultural, scientifi c, technological or environmental. During time, the approach on the globalization has been made from different points of view, often subject of controversy and never defi ned. Everybody wants to take advantage from the globalization opportunities, meantime avoiding its vulnerabilities, but nobody has succeeded yet. Keywords: globalization, multinational companies, industrial groups, migration.