THE CHALLENGES OF STRATEGIC THINKING IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

Throughout history, man has organized himself into different communities to ensure his own development, but the security of those communities has always been his priority. In all safety considerations, environmental understanding was imposed as the first, logical step. Man, as a social being, has organized himself from his beginnings into communities, going a long way from tribe to state. The modern-day formation of the state was established by the Westphalian peace of 1648. After the First World War, an attempt was made to give the international order a new quality and another landmark of its own, by establishing an international organisation, the League of Nations, which soon proved unsuccessful. With its end, the Second World War marked the beginning of a new era in the development of the modern world order, with some of the processes that have taken place so far being significantly intensified, some initiated, while others prepared the ground. Based on the League of Nations, a UN organisation was founded. A bipolar structure of world order has been established. It also began a process of decolonisation that contributed to the emergence of weak and failed states. The end of the bipolar order and modern globalization have largely determined today's security environment. After a little less than two decades of uniformity, global state actors from Russia and China came out on the world stage as well as numerous non-state actors in the form of trilateral organizations, transnational corporations as well as international criminal organizations.