The global nature of security threats
The elements of today's globalised world (individuals, countries,
non-government organisations, etc.) are becoming increasingly
interlinked. The same holds for threats to security today, which means
that they can pass from one country to another exceptionally quickly
or very slowly. State borders arose because of the demarcation of
human forms of the organisation of life on a specific territory, but
this does not have a great effect on mass phenomena (in our case,
threats to security), which spread without regard to artificial
borders. Threats to national security that spread across the border
into another country can quite quickly start to threaten the national
security of those countries and, consequently, international
security. Many sources represent the following typical examples of
contemporary trans-national threats to security: the smuggling of
illegal arms, drugs and dangerous materials (including nuclear
weapons); transfers of illegal migrants; the spread of infectious
diseases; information disruptions (threats to information
infrastructure - e.g., cyber- terrorism and cyber-criminals) and so
on. Environmental pollution as well as natural and manmade disasters
represent a special category. Nuclear conflict between superpowers,
which with the end of the Cold War is less likely, represents the
military threat to global security with the greatest possible
consequences.
In general it is possible to define the direction of the
international spread of the threats mentioned. Illegal arms usually
travel from the developed north to the undeveloped south, where there
are more armed conflicts; illegal migrants and drugs move from the
undeveloped south to the developed north; and infectious diseases and
information disruptions travel in both directions. Slovenia is located
on the edge of the developed north and is a transit country for the
majority of the transfers named, but it is also increasingly becoming
a target country.
The characteristics of trans-national threats to security defined
above also lays forth their primarily non-military nature, which does
not mean that they are not often the consequences of military
conflicts or even their cause. The trans-national spread of threats to
security is oftentimes a consequence of a threat that has already
escalated to the national level (e.g., armed conflict, conflict
between a terrorist group and the state, a surge in criminality, etc.)
or the cause of the continued escalation of other threats to security
(e.g., an increased level of criminality in target or transit
countries as a result of the high level of illegal migration).
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