Ústavu mezinárodních vztahů

The first missions to Mars may be followed by more extensive visits. Mission duration must comply with launch windows and time spent on the Martian surface would typically amount to 500 days. A safe and comfortable habitat will be required, along with a reliable supply of all necessary life-support materials (e.g., breathable air, potable water, food). Consumables transported from Earth will be recycled extensively. Water can also be mined on site, both for use as such and to generate oxygen. The latter could be used for breathing, but also for combustion fuel, both as a local energy source and for the return journey. Early crew habitats may gradually develop into long-lasting scientific outposts. Its most important tasks would be the scientific exploration of the geological and (putative) biochemical history of the terrain and to enable a more sustained presence by prospecting for in-situ resources. Such stays would pose unprecedented challenges to the crew’s physical and psychological endurance. It will also raise major legal and ethical questions, which require serious consideration before any such mission takes place.

Mars has long been a source of inspiration, imagination and, lately, aspiration for many. It has generated a breadth of beliefs and ideas, as well as hope for a bright future there. However, the red planet will never offer a fresh start: we would carry with us some of our culture and our politics. Our future there would remain connected to Earth’s history, particularly human history. In the present chapter, humanity’s relationship to Mars is discussed from a broadly historical, cultural, and ethical perspective, in order to provide a backdrop for the later inquiry of a variety of issues—ethical, societal, and political—related to Mars exploration and settlement. Political drivers for establishing a Mars settlement are then discussed. The chapter ends on a more practical note: on planetary protection, and the threat posed thereto by human-borne microbes. One way or another, terrestrial beings will alter the Martian environment. The ethical concerns this raises cannot be left unaddressed.

If early crewed outposts on Mars can develop adequate habitats and in-situ resource utilization capabilities, they may evolve into small permanent settlements. Their main aims would likely remain scientific exploration, as well as work required for the settlement to grow further and become (nearly) self-sustained. Even if the latter work is successful, a settlement will raise multiple practical, legal, and ethical questions which did not apply, or not to the same extent, to missions smaller in scale. For example, living conditions (tight living compartments, high levels of ionizing radiation, partial gravity, etc.) could cause new medical problems over the long term, and be risky for reproductive biology, thus endangering the viability of the community. If humans were to spend decades on Mars, a return to Earth may be hazardous. Finally, the identity of the settlement, and its relationship with terrestrial operators, founders, and legal systems, may be complex and should be considered well ahead of time.

This book is a sequel to the book that was published in 2021 with the title NATO’s Expansion After the Cold War: Geopolitics and Impacts for International Security as a part of the book series Global Power Shift. However, as is well known, just a year after its publication, a horrible event happened: Russian dictator Vladimir Putin started an aggressive war against Ukraine. This invasion was prepared as a short operation that would be crowned by an easy regime change and an imposing enlargement of the territory of Russia. Today, we know that these plans were totally erroneous because the Russian élites fatally underestimated the determination of Ukrainians to resist and defend their independent state. At the same time, Putin and his followers underestimated the solidarity of the USA and other member states of NATO with Ukraine, namely, their political, diplomatic, financial, and military support for the invaded and deeply suffering country. As a result, we are witnessing a merciless proxy war that is accompanied by immense human suffering and is causing massive damage for the next generations, including a worsening of the environment.

The framework of this chapter results from RQ 5 of his book: why did Putin and his followers take the decision to invade Ukraine in 2022, and why are we witnessing such a high level of negative peace and militarisation in the relations between NATO and the RF? This concretely means that in this chapter, most of the attention will be paid to an analysis of the war in Ukraine in light of clashes between the three bipolar narratives about the relations between the process of NATO expansion and the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. This analysis represents the largest and most important part of this chapter, even if it also offers a nonmilitary analysis. The analysis of these bipolar narratives is conceived as the main added value of this chapter.

This chapter analyses the growing militarisation of the Baltic and Black Sea areas, the doctrinal development of NATO before the annexation of Crimea, the new Eastern frontier of NATO, and the military consequences of the Russian annexation of Crimea.

This book has been written as a combination of theory testing and a historical evaluative text (Van Evera, S., Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Cornell University, Ithaca, 1997). It covers the 25-year process of the post-Cold War expansion of NATO. Today, we know that this process substantially redrew the boundaries in the Old Continent and profoundly changed the whole framework of international security relations (ISR), and that it resulted in a long–term war between the two biggest and most important post–Soviet states. Moreover, it is a merciless war between the two biggest Slavic nations. All the above–mentioned changes have been analysed within the framework of a dominantly qualitative research which was based on five research questions articulated in the first chapter of this book. They are neither closed–ended nor normative research questions. All of these five questions have the character of positive and open–ended research questions.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the period between the second wave of NATO expansion and the end of the 2010s. This analysis is based on RQ 3 (Why is the structure of international security relations at the eastern border of NATO so confrontational?) and RQ 4 (What are the consequences of this trend?). The aim of this analysis is not at all to provide a defence of the RF and its policy. The aim is to explain the behaviour of the RF as a reaction to the second wave of the NATO expansion and to the publicly declared intention to invite Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.

This chapter covers a period of one and a half decades. During this relatively short period, Europe has moved from an unprecedented détente and positive peace towards negative peace and rising military tension. It was the result of two waves of the NATO eastwards enlargement and of the Russian reactions to this process. This chapter will analyse key events that occurred during this period as well as the role of the most influential operational realists and the attitudes of realist and neorealist thinkers.

This chapter will analyse the consequences of the Russian invasion in Ukraine in February 2022. To date, many military analyses of this war have been published. A large majority of contemporary authors have focused on military aspects, the role of arms systems and military manoeuvres. Their conclusions can be neither neglected nor ignored. They will be cited and appropriately appreciated. However, they do not represent the main subject of this chapter, which is why the main attention of this chapter will be paid to the debates about the correlation between this war and the process of NATO expansion.

This chapter defines the theoretical and methodological positions of the entire book. It starts with a presentation of the key ideas of the realist school of thought, and it continues with a detailed presentation of five pillars of neorealist theory that will be used as lenses for a detailed analysis of the process of NATO expansion between the end of the Cold War and the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

While the motivations of individuals to become foreign fighters have been at the forefront of academic interest, an important motive—revenge—has so far remained under-researched. Drawing on the case study of pro-Ukrainian Chechen foreign fighters self-deployed in the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War, this article seeks to fill the gap in the extant literature by identifying and conceptualizing revenge. This article posits that two intertwined motives—revenge for perceived historical injustices and revenge for personal wrongs—have played an important role in motivating Chechens to become foreign fighters in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. This article suggests that while revenge might be a potent driving force of foreign fighting, its appeal may be stronger in the cultures of honor with the persisting notion of retaliation.

The planetary defense community should consider the development of a Responsibility to Defend Earth (R2DE) as a foundational normative principle for a future planetary defense security regime. This requires thorough deliberation and consensus-building to definitively answer the question: “What is the value we secure?”

This article deals with one of the most explosive areas of the world today, which is the Near and Middle East (NMEA) and especially the territory of historical Palestine, where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (IPC) has been going on for a long time. The text deals primarily with historical and military factors and is written as a historical explanatory analysis. It focuses on the most significant historical events and explains the ways of functioning and the consequences of the processes that have been taking place there for a long time.

This article explains the survival of the AKP in Turkey’s late stage of autocratization (2017-present) through its strategy of shifting the primary drivers of competition from individual parties to pre-electoral alliances. Confronted with a decline in popular support in 2015 June elections, the article argues that the AKP created uneven patterns of competition via the system of pre-electoral alliances so that it could institutionalize a ‘Rikerian offense’ on the salient Turkish-Kurdish cleavage and establish an authoritarian power-sharing mechanism with its former challenger, the Turkish nationalist MHP. To illustrate the shift toward uneven patterns of electoral competition via such incumbent strategies, the article conducts a two-part analysis: It first examines the landscape of competition among parties (2002-2015) and second, evaluates competition among both parties and alliances (2018-2023) at the national and district levels in Turkey.

Czechia has traditionally been one of the strongest supporters of further European Union (EU) enlargement. This is not only because the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe are long-term priorities within Czech foreign policy, but also because it is in the country’s interests to bring long-term stability to these regions in Czechia’s broader neighbourhood. Specifically, the Czech enlargement strategy assumes a more comprehensive approach, as by keeping these states on a trajectory of gradual rapprochement with the EU, it also aims at preventing the strengthening of other actors’ influence such as, but not limited to, Russia and China. This approach builds on the region’s proximity and strategic importance as well as its familiarity and traditionally good relations with these countries. In the context of events in Ukraine, Czechia increasingly views enlargement as a geostrategic investment. Czech diplomacy believes that enlargement is not just a matter of formally fulfilling the criteria, but that in the new geopolitical situation, the values of belonging to the West are more important than ever. Hence, whereas previously Czech support for enlargement was mainly motivated by economic interests and for some Eurosceptic political elites it was a welcome opportunity to ‘dilute’ integration, today a values-based attitude prevails.