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The acts of violence have swept the whole Central African Republic (CAR) since March last year. When the Muslim fighters of Seleka rebel groups had deposed a Christian president Francois Bozize, the fighting between Christian militias and Muslim population broke out. The provisional government of the Muslim Michel Djotodia allegedly intentionally massacred civilians, including women, children and old people. In December 2013, under the resolution by the Security Council, UN, the French troops of 1600 men were sent to help to African Union soldiers to keep growing chaos at bay. But up to now, the violence has not been stopped. Nearly a million of people have been internally displaced in the country. A total of 935 thousand of Central Africans are currently sheltering in scrublands or living with their relatives. More than half of the city's population fled Bangui, some 60 per cent of those displaced are children, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

The process of modelling the new multipolar world will last for several decades, its key features will be evident till 2020. The rise of multipolar world is as important as the end of "cold war", some twenty years ago. The author sees the United States as the only global superpower, but confronted with Asia, with leading power of China, and raising power of India. Russia and the EU are going to be only regional powers. He enumerates main geopolitical priorities of key world's actors: raw materials, namely oil, gas, water; intellectual potential, combat of ideologies, with selfconfident militant Islam. All variants are still opened. Military power will remain important for completing main strategical aims, alongside with ?soft power?, economic cooperation, and diplomatic ties. The author also mentions organizations and institutions less known in Central Europe: Shanghai Cooperation Organization, APEC, ASEAN, African Union, ECOWAS, Mercosur, last but not least Barcelona Conference and European Neighbourhood Policy.

This article contains the essence of the modular part of an automated artillery fire control system, which will enable automated detection of artillery ammunition ballistic characteristics using barcodes placed on missiles and cartridges. The article describes the current state of evidence of artillery ammunition ballistic characteristics, presents possible approaches to the concept of evidence of artillery ammunition ballistic characteristics using barcodes, defines the framework requirements for the automation of this part of artillery fire ballistics preparation, describes the determination of the distance individual corrections resulting from the artillery ammunition ballistic characteristics and states possible ways to automated processing overview of artillery ammunition carried by the conveyors of missiles and cartridges.

This text is focused on current situation in Syria and Iraq and so called Islamic State, the one of the biggest threats of contemporary world. The rise of this quasi­state at background of civil war in Syria and still not fully solved conflict in Iraq is the result of involvement of many internal and external actors. The form of their involvement and especially their goals are very different from each other and despite sporadic and declaratory agreements in partial points the main reason the Islamic State still exists in very good shape is disunited attitude of local and external powers against it. The main aim of this text is to explain and to analyze main motives and goals of all relevant actors and sides of mentioned conflict and describe the way they affect its dynamics. Due to that it is possible to increase the knowledge of readers in such a chaotic, unclear and often misinterpreted situation in the Middle-East.

This article analyses frozen Conflict in separatist region of Transnistria in the light of recent crisis on Ukraine. Despite standing in the shade of Ukraine, the importance of Transnistria has been once again highlighted by Russian support to separatist movements in post-soviet area. Hence text also argues, that by precise analysis of important agents involved in Transnistrian conflict, such as Russia, Ukraine or Romania, we can better understand not only current development in this "de-facto state", but also put annexation of Crimea (or war in eastern Ukraine) into context. On the other hand, influence of Russian military presence in Transnistria on Ukraine war effort is also important and deserves to be closely studied.

Each officer is obligated to meet his or her qualification requirements, identified in the job description. In order to obtain a required military qualification, officers are usually send to a training course, which is either provided or organized under the auspice of the Ministry of Defence. The discussion within the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic about the system of military courses has been ongoing for the last two decades. Although the system of officers´ development is periodically reviewed, a certain economic paradox still remains. While the number of officers without adequate qualification is not diminishing, at the same time there is a segment of officers who exceed their qualification requirements, but they do not make any progress in their military careers. Despite the situation, these officers are required to take additional training and educational activities.

The article specifies combat rations developed specifically for military catering in tropical regions (CRTRs). The ingredients and use value of foods used in these rations identified as CRTRs are different from those of previously established combat rations (CRs). When establishing them, specific requirements for each food component had to be respected, in particular with respect to storage conditions, use of foods with a long minimum shelf life (MSL) at extreme temperatures, reduced weight of the foods used, and adequate amount of beverages. The TCRs were developed by MEDIAP Slušovice, who designed 7 variants of these rations in total. Nutritional value tests and sensory evaluations following the storage test at modified temperatures after the thermostat test at a tropical temperature of 55 °C were made by the panel of evaluators in the laboratory of the College of Business and Hotel Management in Brno, Tomas Bata University in Zlín.

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.

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.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature relating to the effects and implications of water scarcity and the potential for water wars. The theme has evident military consequences. Experts provide rather pessimistic forecasts about the situation with freshwater on the planet. The early warning models seem to be quite useful as well as early warning conflict indicators. The author deals with the problem from the level of the Czech Republic.

The main goal of the article is to present the activities of members of the Slovak Armed Forces in the military operation ISAF and familiarize the reader with the main facts involving the Slovak Republic as a member of the Alliance in this operation. The text outlines the genesis of the ISAF and structure of the components of the Slovak contingent. SAF members during their tenure at ISAF gain valuable experiences that make up their professional competence and achieve greater compatibility with other members of the Alliance. In conclusion, the most important awards are presented by the coalition partners for professional use, so competence and commitment of the SAF to assist and defend basic human rights and freedom of the Afghan people, to help them take responsibility for themselves and their country.

The lecture discusses the possible forms and methods for further development of Population protection, focusing on implementation of measures to protect the population at higher crisis status. The aim of the lecture is to analyze possible priorities, resources, and procedures for population protection in serious and large-scale crisis situations using all available forces and capabilities of the State and citizens. The work also deals with the possibility of more effective measures of population protection during announcement of higher crisis status generating additional forces and means and methods for the management of these measures. The aim of the work is among other things to point out the fact that the measures of population protection must be prepared in perspective and comprehensive and must reflect the potential risks, including the large scale crisis, which may be occur in the territory.

Attributes and quality of the security system of the Czech Republic depend on the quality of human potential, which is part of institutions to guarantee security in the broadest sense of the word. The preparation of the staff of each part of the security system, as defined in the Security Strategy of the Czech Republic (2011), is performed in universities, colleges, and middle schools, training facilities, scientific research facilities and by employers. The capacity of educational institutions, in effect exceeds requirements of practice. The coordination of their activities and the content of education are managed by twelve-year-old conceptual document that has been in need of updating. This paper discusses those aspects and points out directions and ideas for addressing of some problems of current practice, and also some of the challenges of the future.

The article deals with a strategic document that currently represents understanding of trends, which form the future security and operational environment,and that sets up the vectors for building-up and development of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic. The first aim is to assess the Long Term Perspective for Defence 2030 and its significance in context of other strategic documents adopted in the Czech Republic. Another aim is to confront its contents with a structured analysis of large quantity of the state-of-the-art foresight studies,differentiated in geographical and thematic scope. The comparison allows identifying convergence and divergence between the Czech document and relevant findings from the foreign foresight documents. This approach enables the judgement whether the Long Term Perspective for Defence 2030 provides a relevant guideline for the defence sector development, and whether it does or does not miss some of the issues found significant in the foresight documents in the outer world.

The article deals with the development of the security system since the November 1989 events. Special attention is paid to the situation near the year 2005, when the last opportunity to update a comprehensive concept of security system occurred. The text deals with the comprehensive management of the security system issue. The authors of the article present key events and strategic documents forming the current shape of the Czech security system. In the final part of article, you can find the proposal of the strategic document management system within the security development system. Article results in the knowledge that the modern security system concept is still challenge for us.

The article aims at highlighting the dangers of long underestimating the need to permanently improve the defense capabilities to deal with current and future security threats. Authors suggest propositions on where to direct the efforts to improve the competence of the Defense to meet the Act Of Defense Requirements. The first part of the article describes, after brief analysis, the options of collective defense and explains the need to solve demanding tasks on own territory under national responsibility in parallel. The second part of the article describes the main thoughts of the theory of "territorial defense", which is missing in current Doctrine of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic. Theory of territorial defense makes a foundation, upon which the preparedness of the Armed forces of the Czech Republic should be built. In the third part of the article the authors discuss the alternative of implementing the collective defense principle by building multinational joint forces, independent of national armed forces, in transnational responsibility of the coalition of member states, dedicated to the territorial defense of member states and to crisis response expeditionary operations.

One of main task while preparing new security documents is to identify, analyze and evaluate newly emerging, self-generating security threats. They menace cybernetic, economy, bank, and religious security. The special menace, as for inner security it is lobbyism. Cybernetic threat is today regarded as more dangerous than nuclear strike. The American lived through those experiences in Iraq. Another example is cyber attacks on Estonia in 2007 that swamped websites of Estonian organizations, including Estonian parliament, banks, ministries, newspapers and broadcasters.The attacks triggered a number of military organisations around the world (including NATO) to reconsider the importance of network security to modern military doctrine. There is a paradigm: the more modern country, the more risks are opened. The situation is complicated by the fact that in sophisticated society there is hard to identify attacking enemy. The author underlines that we are the last member nation in the EU that has no official CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) to react cyber /terrorist attracts.

Such exercises are regular part of European exercise process that in periodical cycles examines individual capacities of solving crisis situations, conducting crisis operations under methods developed by the EU. European training process does not cover only the preparation of military units, but also those of civil elements (police, rescue teams, diplomats). Since 2007 the exercises have been ran according to a common scenario "ALISIA", with the purpose to practise crisis operations control by commanders and staffs of EU nations, without any means and elements or support by NATO. European exercise process allows to the EUMS to organize and harmonize two exercises of solving crisis situations in a year. Five members of the Czech Army took part in the exercise MILEX 09 last year. They were involved in the operational planning process at the EU OHQ Specialist Staff, CJ2, CJ4, CJ5 and CJ7 departments. The article is mostly based on the experiences of Czech offi cers at the EU OHQ LARISSA.

To fulfil Czech obligation as an EU Battle Group Framework Nation according to the regulating document EU BG Training and Certification, the Czech Army is to certify that the CZE/SVK Battle Group EU meet the standards and criteria stated in Standards and Criteria for EU BG. It is recommended that the CZE/SVK Battle Group EU certification process should be analogous with NATO Response Force (NRF) certification procedure and practical methods. Further it is suggested that the CZE/SVK Battle Group EU certification procedure is divided into several evaluation procedures: preparation planning evaluation, war-fighting evaluation, and technical evaluation. Each procedure will be developed by specialized teams with representatives in the sub-working group to ensure that the different procedures harmonize. The views expressed in this assessment are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of EU Military Structure or the Czech Ministry of Defence. All information and data for this paper were drawn from unclassified sources. The written sources are listed in the matrix above.

People commonly imagine terrorist attack as hijacking or improvised explosive device hidden in crowded place. However terrorists can also attack against food, cattle, farm crops or water resources. These kinds of attacks can be ranked among agroterrorism or food terrorism, whereas agroterrorists attack against cattle, farm crops or water resources; food terrorists attack against foodstuffs. This paper is intended to provide information about agroterrorism and food terrorism as possible forms of wilful violence. Food security became discussed issue especially after anthrax incidents in 2001. There are many authorities that deal with these issues, for example EU, NATO or World Health Organization.

The paper deals with the data were obtained from the set of variables published in the International Country Risk Guide. The variables were as follows: Government Stability, Socio-economic Conditions, Investment Profile, Internal Conflict, External Conflict, Corruption, and Military in Politics, Religious Tensions, Law and Order, Ethnic Tensions, Democratic Accountability, Bureaucracy Quality. To analyse the current situation in selected 140 countries, authors employ multivariate statistical techniques. They classify the analysed countries by means of cluster analysis to prove the existence of differentiated groups. The results were evaluated with the help of a dendrogram. The conclusions indicate that traditional NATO member countries achieve above-average values in the selected variables.

In the previous Military Review we introduced the article "Will Military Deception Pass Away?" by the same author. In the Army of the Czech Republic we have no manual dealing with military deception (MILDEC). The only manual concerning MILDEC was abolished without any substitute. But military art can't be further developed without similar documents. Today we take MILDEC as a complex set of provisions misleading enemy's commanders and staff, by means of false information and counterfeit data that deliberately deceive adversary decision-makers and planners. Use of MILDEC during any phase of an operation also helps to mislead adversaries as to the strength, readiness, locations, and intended missions of friendly forces. The MILDEC could contribute to the successful accomplishment of the assigned mission by many ways.

This essay is focused upon the concept of Perpetual Peace (1795) by the German Philosopher Immanuel Kant. To reach this goal, he advocated the establishment of a word federation of republican states. But some key prerequisites (s.c. preliminary and definitive articles) must be completed. The authoress compares the Kant's concepts with the ideas of solidarity by the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka. The readers themselves must pass the judgement whether Kant's prerequisites of eternal peace-even for more then two centuries-are fulfilled, or not. This subject matter belongs to a relatively young field of study dealing with war and peace, the so-called paxology, the theory how peace can be maintained in the world.

This essay is focused upon the concept of Perpetual Peace (1795) by the German Philosopher Immanuel Kant. To reach this goal, he advocated the establishment of a word federation of republican states. But some key prerequisites (s.c. preliminary and definitive articles) must be completed. The authoress compares the Kant's concepts with the ideas of solidarity by the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka. The readers themselves must pass the judgement whether Kant's prerequisites of eternal peace-even for more then two centuries-are fulfilled, or not. This subject matter belongs to a relatively young field of study dealing with war and peace, the so-called paxology, the theory how peace can be maintained in the world.

The life and work of General Dr. Milan Rastislav Štefánik is without doubts the life and work of one of the three leading crisis managers of extraordinary skills operating in an enviroment of first escalating global crisis of the 20th century. The phenomenal result of their activivities was the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic. The author concludes that Štefánik´s work is timeless, from which we ought to draw a continual inspiration.

The higher levels of STANAG 6001 examinations assume the knowledge of English life and institutions, i.e. the country of tested language. Without knowing cultural context, complementary to everyday life, some misunderstandings might come into existence. Some English words have become established in Czech (revolver, tank, tanker, tram, jam, safe), whereas others are still being adapted. A particular role in this process is ascribed to military community. The following text makes therefore some enquiries into English words of Czech origins or with Czech background, both military and civil ones, in the past or still in use.

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.

Operation Serval (French: Opération Serval) is an ongoing French military operation in the Republic of Mali, West Africa. The aim of the operation is to oust Islamic militants in the north of Mali, who had begun a push into the centre of Mali. Operation Serval follows the Security Council Resolution 2085 of 20 December 2012. The operation is named after the medium-sized African wildcat species Serval. The author analyzes historic and geopolitical context, including activities of AQMI terrorists. The Serval Operation is of dissymmetric character. At the rear of advancing French troops some groups of rebels and terrorist stayed to make acts of sabotage. According to the author it is necessary to prevent from long-term involving into the conflict, among others, as French territory or territories of other countries might become a target of terrorist attacks.

The article reviews contemporary traditional approaches towards the evaluation of ground military vehicles and equipment, oriented on the role and potential of top-ranking officials in this area. The author promotes the introduction of some electronic Log Book for monitoring and rating the operational data of the military equipment, with the help of new General Packet Radio Service module, to improve the effectiveness of operational system, maintenance and savings.

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 article deals with the issue of creation and realization of space policy. Space programs of individual states are closely connected to decision-making processes of the (general) state (public) policy. Therefore we can raise a question which factors influence these processes and the formulation of space policy and also if they are so unique that could be related only to one particular state. The aim of this article is to focus on one of the factors influencing space policy-strategic culture. Its influence is analysed through case studies of seven nations. Each case study is divided into two parts. First, we identify relevant characteristics of the state's strategic culture. Then, we analyse whether and how the identified characteristics of the respective strategic culture influence the space policy of a state in question. This article seeks to contribute to the growing debate about space as "the next" strategic area and highlights rather overlooked reasons of space exploration.