Security perception and security policy of the Slovak Republic, 1993–2018

ABSTRACT

The development of Slovak and security policy faced many challenges throughout last few decades. Slovakia, since its independence in 1993, was trying to find its geopolitical orientation - from the “bridge” between West and East, through the “black-hole” of Europe to the fully-fledged member of the EU and NATO. The main aim of this article is to provide a short, but detailed, description of the changes in Slovak security perceptions and development of the Slovak security policy and also to reveal how these changes influenced the opinion and perceptions of Slovak citizens.

KEYWORDS:

• Security policy
• NATO
• European Union
• Slovak republic
• foreign policy
• perceptions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Note on contributor

Tomáš Čižik is the Director of the Centre for European and North Atlantic Affairs, Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

Notes

1 The Slovak Republic gained its independence on January 1, 1993 after a “Velvet Divorce” with the Czech Republic.

2 Marián Török, ‘Tri obdobia dvoch desaťročí zahraničnej politiky Slovenskej republiky’ [Three Periods of Two Decade of the Foreign Policy of the Slovak Republic], Politické vedy 17, no. 3 (2014): 114.

3 Ibid.

4 Alexander Duleba, P. Lukáč, and M. Wlachovský, ‘Zahraničná politika Slovenskej republiky – východiská, stav a perspektívy’ [Foreign Policy of the Slovak Republic – Bases, Status and Perspectives], in Výskumné centrum Slovenskej spoločnosti pre zahraničnú politiku (Bratislava: Research Center of Slovak Society for Foreign Policy, 1998), 6.

5 Alexander Duleba, ’Slovensko a Rusko’ [Slovakia and Russia], in Slovakia 1997, Global Report on the State of Society and Trends for the Year 1998, eds. Martin Bútora and Michal Ivantyšyn (Bratislava: Inštitút pre verejné otázky – Institute for Public Affairs, 1998), 297.

6 The referendum turnout was only 9.53 per cent and it “reflected public anger after the Government, defying a court order, altered the ballots on the eve of the referendum to drop a question on the election of the President. The Government was apparently trying to preserve the current rules that the Parliament, controlled by Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar, selects the President.” ‘Slovak Referendum Fails to Resolve NATO Issue’ (The New York Times, 1997, https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/26/world/slovak-referendum-fails-to-resolve-nato-issue.html).

7 Török, ‘Tri obdobia’, 116–7.

8 Ivo Samson, Die Slowakei zwischen Annäherung an Moskau und Streben nach Westintegration [Slovakia between Rapprochement with Moscow and the Desire for Western Integration] (Cologne: Bundesinstitut für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien, 1997), 6.

9 Martin Chovančík, Vývoj bezpečnostnej politiky Slovenskej republiky od roku 1998 [Development of Security Policy of the Slovak Republic since 1998] (Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 2008), 13.

10 Vladimír Tarasovič, Reformy ozbrojených síl Slovenskej republiky nielen ako podmienka integrácie do NATO [Reforms of the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic not only as a condition for integration into NATO] (Bratislava: Center for European and North Atlantic Affairs, 2013), 3.

11 Chovančík, Vývoj bezpečnostnej síl, 20–21.

12 Oľga Gyarfášová, Európska únia hľadá občana [The European Union is Looking for a Citizen] (Bratislava: Inštitút pre verejné otázky – Institute for Public Affairs, 2001), 2.

13 Slov-lex LP/2017/627 ‘Návrh Bezpečnostnej stratégie Slovenskej republiky’ [Security Strategy of the Slovak Republic]; Slov-lex 2001 ‘Návrh Obrannej stratégie Slovenskej republiky’ [Defence Strategy of the Slovak Republic].

14 Marian Majer, Slovakia (Bratislava: Center for European and North Atlantic Affairs, 2013), 4.

15 Chovančík, Vývoj bezpečnostnej síl, 24.

16 Majer, Slovakia, 4.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., 5.

19 Török, ‘Tri obdobia’, 127.

20 Dalibor Vlček, and Dominika Kaščáková, Zahraničná politika Slovenskej republiky: základné východiská, ciele a realizácia [Foreign Policy of the Slovak Republic – Basics, Objectives and Implementation] (Banská Bystrica: Univerzita Mateja Bela, 2010), 115.

21 Slovakia’s first attempt to participate in UNSC, in 1999, was not successful.

22 Török, ‘Tri obdobia’, 129.

23 SMER – Sociálna Demokracia is Robert Fico’s political party.

24 Úrad Vlády Slovenskej Republiky (Government of the Slovak Pepublic), Programové vyhlásenie vlády Slovenskej republiky [Program Declaration of the Government of the Slovak Republic] (Bratislava, 2006), http://www.vlada.gov.sk/data/files/979_programove-vyhlasenie-vlady-slovenskej-republiky-od-04-07-2006-do-08-07-2010.pdf.

25 Török, ‘Tri obdobia’, 132.

26 Ibid., 138.

27 Draft of the Security Strategy, Defence Strategy and Military Strategy were approved by the Slovak government in October 2017, but they still have not been approved by the Slovak Parliament.

28 Slov-lex LP/2017/627 ‘Návrh Bezpečnostnej stratégie Slovenskej republiky’ [Security Strategy of the Slovak Republic].

29 Slov-lex LP/2017/640 ‘Návrh Obrannej stratégie Slovenskej republiky’ [Defence Strategy of the Slovak Republic]

30 Andrej Danko is the Chairman of the Slovak Parliament and a leader of the political party Slovenská národná strana – SNS.

31 Denník N, ‘Minúta po minúte’ [Minute to Minute] (2018), https://dennikn.sk/minuta/1115878/

32 Gajdos Peter, ‘Účasť v PESCO je príležitosť pre posilnenie obrany SR’ [Paricipation in PESCO is an opportunity for us to strengthen our defense capabilities] (2017), http://www.teraz.sk/slovensko/p-gajdos-ucast-v-pesco-je-prilezitost-pr/292192-clanok.html.

33 ‘Slovakia has engaged in closer defense cooperation within the EU’, https://domov.sme.sk/c/20695521/pesco-armada-europska-unia-eu-gajdos-korcok.html.

34 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, ‘The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database (2017)’, https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex.

35 Tomáš Čižik, ‘New Trends of Post-Soviet Heritage? Slovak Security Policy in 2018’, European Security & Defence, no. 3 (2018): 13.

36 ‘Slovensko nakúpi americké stíhačky F-16’ [Slovakia buys American F-16 fighters] (2018), https://www.etrend.sk/ekonomika/slovensko-nakupi-americke-stihacky-f-16.html.