International Security in a Time of Change: Threats - Concepts - Institutions

Over a short period of time, the area of security in its traditional sense has witnessed consecutive tides of threats and challenges, which have caught the attention of researchers, politicians and the media. The interest and fascination of the security community has been stimulated by the successively long-term and complicated consequences of the disintegration of the Soviet empire, post-communist nationalism, ethnic, religious and other conflicts, humanitarian tragedies that called for international intervention, "rogue” nations and "failing” states, and finally, international terrorism. The unstable situation and its unpredictable development make it impossible to come up with a new paradigm of security and build a solid institutional infrastructure of international security. The Polish and German editors of this book have encouraged a group of renown international researchers to tackle this project. The authors look from different thematic and national perspectives at current problems of international security, grouped into four large "baskets”: Threats and challenges, new concepts, problems of security in the Euro-Atlantic zone and issues of arms control. The book is dedicated to Professor Adam Daniel Rotfeld, nowadays a State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland and formerly the Director of the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).