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During the Arab Spring Revolution, when the protests against the Syrian government began in 2011, Russia was one of the strongest backers of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, backing its right to use force if necessary to prevent or put down an uprising. Currently, the Russian Federation is the power which has most prominently provided a diplomaticshieldforthe Syrian state and bolstered it witharms supplies, although Moscow talks about the need to "balance" between the warring parties in Syria. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the motives of the foreign and security policy of the Russian Federation in support of Syrian President BasharAssad in the background of Russian interests and influence of norms. At the theoretical level, the paper builds upon a combination of conventional constructivism and rationalism approaches, which in relation to the motives of Russian protection and defense of the ruling regime in Syria reflects a number of fundamental knowledge.

Relations between a military and a civilian society belong to the core issue of civil-military studies. This article reflects main ideas and concepts used in theoretical and analytical literature, including seminar works by Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz. A military culture, military ethics and influence of new technologies, full-volunteer army and new missions on military culture are discussed. An abstract term "military" can change very significantly in accordance with actual military culture, perceptible to the fact how civilian society accepts military values. Therefore, not only size and equipment determine how particular armed forces look like. The author introduces the term Constabulary Force reflecting the idea that primary purpose of forces today are low-intensity conflicts and operations other than war.

The article sums up the evolution of the Czech officers' qualification structure since the start of downsizing in 1990 and provides an outlook beyond 2010. At the early 90's graduate education used to be only for officers. A total of 65 % were holding university degrees. Today this number reaches 98 %, with 3 % holding Ph.D. or CSc. degrees. There is also an increase in numbers of WOs with graduate education, it is 4 %, despite the fact that such qualification is not necessary for them. Authors discuss this evolution and compare it with the ageing of the Czech population and overall academic education system. The gradual decrease of people aged 20-24 till 2020 is an important challenge to reforming recruitment and education of junior officers. The reform is needed to avoid deficits in quality junior officers and consequently the lack of personnel selection for military education at the University of Defence.

Usually, there are many scholarly concepts able to be fixed to newly constituted branches of knowledge. Among others, this is the alternative and interdisciplinary concept of safety framework. Presented article deals with a competence of this concept to highlight many crucial aspects of this framework, originally transformed from a defence or armed safety. General ideas or notions correspond to some class of entities and that consists of the characteristic or essential features of security system. The conjunction of all characteristic security features and theoretical construct within a security are based upon German terms, e.g. Wehrstruktur (defence structure), Wehrverfassung (defence legislation), Wehrsystem (defence system). The study demands high predispositions for abstract way of thinking of readers. It is accompanied by two detailed charts to explain some author's concepts.

Europe is a maritime continent whose economic concerns and security could be backed only by the power of navy forces. The Czech Republic is not a maritime state, but it is a member country of both NATO and the EU, it participates in the formation of common security policy. Czech soldiers could take part in combined joint military operations, where one of forces is also a Navy. Dozens of Czech citizens are employed in common international institutes and staffs; they all need a broader view, including the knowledge of Integrated European Naval Strategy. Their activities promote the status of the Czech Republic at international level.
This contribution contextually explores European space and its naval power. It introduces naval forces projection of European national navies, the bulk of which best respond to current security issues, along with decisions of the national governments of the EU and NATO member states. The article also dedicates extensive attention to the Russian naval strategy.

Career education of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) personnel is a key component to meet requirements for qualifications. As these requirements are career growth conditions for career personnel, they are inherently connected with further promotion in rank. The MoD Concept of Personnel Development for 2012-2018 sets the direction of the educational development to achieve these qualification requirements. During the process of preparation of the career courses it was revealed that some system changes should be made due to implemented or planned changes within the legislative and source framework of the Ministry of Defence.This article describes the proposal of a new concept for training of personnel in the career courses. It was prepared by a project team headed by the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies at the Defence University. The article also shows the development of the situation since 2004, when the professionalization of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic occurred.

The fire support is an inevitable prerequisite for the success of combat forces in land military operations and artillery is its key provider. Will it be even in a future complex and uncertain operating environment? The article recalls high requirements on the current ACR artillery and with the use of the Alliance partner's findings, it points to selected aspects that might influence its capabilities development towards the future operations. The article defines artillery as an indirect fire system and clarifies its role and tasks in the framework of joint fire support. It proposes measures to increase the quality of its training and management. It discusses the issue of an operational concept and its importance for the future ACR artillery, together with introducing main trends in areas of its potential development.

This specialised article deals with Big Data and the exploitation of this current day phenomenon in the field of intelligence disciplines, based on technical methods of data gathering and its relevant assessments. The introduction deals with the issue of development of the security environment and gives general overview on the current trends in the field of technical branches. The following chapter analyses the main trends, especially the digitalisation of the battlefield, rise in data volume and the development of new technologies. The next chapter is focused on the basic terminology description of the Big Data issue, which leads into final assessment and certain prediction of future development in this field and the rise of importance of this trend for the intelligence disciplines in future.

The article deals with aspects of operational art inside the operations planning process. It deals with the concepts of operational design and suggests a possible way of introducing such theory into the development process of operational approach. This paper is a free sequel to several articles published in Military Review on this theme. It introduces several professional terms in the field of operational art, up to now not officially established.

Today, the word Concept is one of most used terms in the framework of long and medium term of defence management. Concept development as a process is mentioned in significant number of departmental regulations and descriptions of activities of organizational bodies of the Ministry of Defence and General Staff. Concept development and Experimentation is a kind of incantation used when we speak about the development of long and medium term strategic documents. This article comprises the analysis of the legal regulations concerning the development of strategic documents. It analyses the implications of the governmental Methodology of mid-term concepts and Methodology of preparation of public strategies for departmental strategic documents.

The motivation and professional values of soldiers involved in Other People's Wars is one of the most important knowledge necessary for effective command and control. Those were main reasons for an extensive questionnaire survey among soldiers, deployed in PRT ISAF in 2010-2011. One of the key topics was motivation to leave for Afghanistan, professional expectations and evaluations of external and internal environment of the mission. The purpose of this paper is to present the basic outlines of values of today's Czech soldiers, their professional motives and expectations. The results are interpreted in the context of Moskos' theory of the contradiction between institutional and occupational orientations of present armed forces and adapted to the actual social and political state of affairs.

As a consequence of shrinking military budget, secondary military schools in the Czech Republic were considerably reduced. Actually, there is only one left nowadays. Its future is rather dim, not only due to the Financial Outlook for 2018. The White Paper on Defence 2011 postulated educational scope offered by any secondary military school. But such mission could be easily transferred on other school institutions, without any impact on the national security. Even other Czech state institutions, dealing with national security, very soon will have to answer such to-be-or-not-to-be question. Namely the Ministry of Interior, struggling to economize, runs two secondary schools of its own. This article is a summary of the evolution of secondary schools needed for national security purposes, since 1993. It challenges the conservative point of view saying that in no case their educational capabilities could be substituted.

The important part of the forces transformation deals with the problem reducing in numbers of officers, namely field officers and general corps in the Czechoslovak Armed Forces and lately the Army of the Czech Republic. The main cause of this reduction was new concept of military career, as before the transformation it used to be a lifelong profession. The downsizing started in 1990 and it ought to have been finished by the end of the first period of the Czech Armed Forces Reform, as of 2008/12/31/, but it appears that downsizing is endless. The author quotes figures concerning numbers of officers; several rank charts and tablets with corresponding NATO and Czech grades respectively are used to demonstrate veracity of his statements. According to Lt.Col. Pernica, the downsizing is going to continue but no one knows how many officers for the all-volunteer Czech armed forces will be enough.

NATO has been permanently adapting to new outside and inside challenges. Lisbon summit in 2010 is one of the very important milestones in this transformation endeavour. Since 2010, the Alliance has embarked on meaningful structural reforms with the aim to enhance effectiveness, improve efficiency of all NATO entities and make the Alliance fit for its purpose. The main objective of this article is to introduce the scope of NATO reforms and their expected outcomes. Furthermore, this article will assess real achievements and draw at least some lessons from a reform implementation process in order to establish best practice in reforming complex organisations.

The separatist movements at Ukraine, Crimea annexation, have fundamentally changed today's security surrounding. All that came about were in fact described in the last Russian military doctrine of February 2010, herein the Czech strategic thinking failed, leaving the nation unprepared. The Czech military documents identify threats too broadly, without setting definite opponents. One precondition failed completely, namely a gradual emergence of threats, enabling the Czech Republic to prepare itself. The author explains his own views on current security European affairs and asks to modernize and adjust both Czech defence policy and military science.

The article is in Czech Language only.
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The article presents the theory of information operations on the background of contemporary armed conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria. In the introduction, information is presented as a phenomenon and the accelerator of social development. It outlines basic information channels that deliver security information to their recipients. Furthermore, the article discusses security and operational environment and also vulnerabilities being caused by increasing dependence on information. The core of the article are information operations presented in theory with the author's commentary on real application in military practice and in terms of the Czech Armed Forces. As part of information operations are subsequently introduced psychological operations, computer network operations and electronic warfare. The article ends with real examples of information and psychological operations in modern warfare, and conditions of their management in the Czech Armed Forces. The conclusion summarizes the general idea of the security environment and information operations, and stresses the importance of information operations in current and future conflicts.

The article defines extremisms and terrorism as eventual destabilizing moments in society. The paper decomposes possible reasons and grounds of their manifestation, the authors point out that certain signs indicate the penetration of extremisms and terrorism into armed forces structures and civil service, by means of concrete persons. At the end they propose general rules and approaches to keep up this topical phenomenon of the present day.

Changing security environment and the need to address conventional and especially asymmetric threats and risks, wherever they occur, establish clear requirements on the development of national capabilities. Armed forces are required to be fully deployable and sustainable in operations in austere conditions for an extended period of time. In NATO-led operations currently participate many nations of different sizes, force structures, equipment, training and capabilities. The only way to reach operational goals while achieving economies of scale is a mutual cooperation of all involved participants. Basic key prerequisite for such cooperation is interoperability.

The paper is focused on the area of defence sources in the Czech Republic. Within an analysis of the actual situation in military spending in the Czech Republic, some potential approaches are defined to enable the reasonable and transparent allocation of resources for national defence. Based on these approaches, three courses of action are derived in order to deal with current resources inadequacy and instability in defence.

The article is available only in the Czech language. For more information please contact editors.

This polemics is written by Prof. Fr. Ochrana, both reader and author of the Military Review quarterly. It is a response to the article in No 4, 2013, by Vl. Karaffa, editorial board chairman. Prof. Ochrana generally supports his conclusions concerning the further survival of this Czech Military Review. According to him, the review has indispensable role in the spectrum of both civilian and military professional journals. He recommends to evaluate the problem of its existence upon the principles of cost/benefit analysis, with regard to the so-called socials costs, the key steps of which he enumerates.

The paper presents reflections over the issue of armed forces capabilities. It is a phenomenon much discussed and written earlier, namely from the point of its building, estimation and development. Nevertheless the question is whether practical experiences are backed by theory fundamentals. Now we have a chance to introduce the live theory of quality management [1] into this specific and frequented military problem. The article is a polemic consideration over possibilities of introducing capabilities management into command and control capabilities system in armed forces.

The Czech Armed Forces' professionalization is an underlying qualitative change and its realization is not without risks. This paper outlines the political origin of this phenomenon, characterises the coherence with the transformation of the Alliance and illustrates overseas experience with some recruitment problems, namely the NCOs, the limits of women in the armed forces, the role of voluntary reserve force, and the substantiations for compulsory military service generally. The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to less known pitfalls of this process, with wide connexions, going beyond regular professionalization frames, defined as a task carried out by the military personnel department.

The control of emergency economic measures, namely state material reserves, is an important part of Czech security system. From the institutional point of view, all is run under the authority of a central institution-the Administration of State Material Reserves (ASMR). This paper deals with its role in the management of state material reserves, reflects problems and consequences resulting from the changes in security surrounding, re-evaluates opinions and views both by experts of state administrations and academic community. Those are the main key questions the study seeks an answer.

The consequences of economic recession and their impact on national defence budgets can indeed heavily hamper the credibility of both NATO and the EU. A need for coping with budget restrictions and ongoing security crisis in the Ukraine re-opens the issue of common European armed forces as an effective tool for keeping security stability not only in Europe, but also around the world. However, the key issue is to what extent it is feasible to develop autonomous European armed forces operating independently of transatlantic allies, while there is a very strong NATO-EU interconnection in the area of military capability development.

The article deals with the reasons why NATO is interested in energy security and main tasks which Alliance fulfils in this area. A special attention is paid to the energy dependence of the European member states of the Alliance, the increase of awareness about energy security, critical energy infrastructure protection and energy efficiency in the armed forces. The author elaborates the implementation of the energy security issues into the Alliance main activities, education and training in the field of energy security and cooperation with partner countries, other international organizations and private sector.

The article is available only in the Czech language. For more information please contact editors.

In the September Scottish referendum of its separation from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the majority of Scottish voters decided against these efforts. But in case of success, Scottish nationalists originally projected considerable military forces. A five-million nation should have had defence budget of 2.5 billion pounds a year, which is in fact roughly a double of the Czech defence budget! During subsequent ten years after independence, the new Scottish Government planned armed forces of 15,000 regular and another five thousand reserve personnel. The article focuses on this rather unknown dimension of Scottish independence debate.

The article explains the meaning of strategy documents covering forces' deployment in future operations, i.e. operational concepts and aspects of their development. The authors concentrate first on approaches to their optimal structures and use history examples taken from both Alliance and Czech environments. Secondly they discuss the latest initiatives of this kind in NATO, the formation of a document under the title "Framework for Future Alliance Operations (FFAO)". After its approval, this document is going to be a crucial groundwork for all defence planning, not only in the Alliance scope, but in every member state. The scientific attitudes and employed methods of introducing the FFAO are closely watched by the Czech security community, mainly by the specialists of defence department, with the aim to adjust them into the processing of individual national documents.

The article identifies specific attributes which have influenced success of modern warfare conducted by infantry battalions and their sub-units. There are mentioned ways to suppress the negatives and opportunities to use positives. There is drafted a possible task organization structure of battalion which allows the variability, modularity and combat readiness, according to capabilities and statements catalogue. The author was inspired by his own experiences as an infantry unit commander. He uses his knowledge gained from military assignments. The article could be considered as topic for future discussions not only on academic but also on specialized level.

The career education of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) personnel is a key component to meet requirements for qualifications. As these requirements are career growth conditions for career personnel, they are inherently connected with further promotion in rank. During the process of preparation of the career courses it was revealed that some system changes should be made due to implemented or planned changes within the legislative and source framework of the Ministry of Defence. This article describes the implementation process of a new policy for training personnel in the career courses. It was prepared by a project team headed by the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies at the Defence University. Furthermore, the article deals with the clarification of the approach to the development of educational documentation and the chosen form of organization and conduction of military career courses. Also, a quality control system and a collection of information needed for upgrading of the senior officers career education curricula are described.

On the one hand, Russia is among the countries which often criticize the Western-led military intervention. On the other hand, in the last twenty years, Russia has repeatedly approved using military force by the West against an individual state, endorsed by the United National Security Council. The main purpose of this article is therefore to describe and analyse Russian position towards four Western military interventions 1999-2011. Specifically, the article is focused on two military interventions without UN Security Council mandates (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 and Iraq in 2003), the intervention with the expanded UN Security Council resolution (Afghanistan 2001) and the military intervention that was partially approved by the UN Security Council resolutions (Libya 2011).