| Abstract [eng] |
The Assessment of National Security from Economic Perspective The perception of a state’s security emerged in the seventeenth century and varied over time. At first, it included only military threats later on developing and expanding the understanding of the national interests. The national interests of each country were legislated by legal acts and laws afterwards. Nowadays, the concept of national security is extremely complex and unique for each country depending on its historical context and political, social, and economic backgrounds. The aim of this paper is to evaluate Lithuania’s national security from different perspectives as the object of the paper is national security. Increasing significance of China’s contribution to the world economy, the trade war between the US and China, an emerged coronavirus crisis, protests around the world imply international instability that is exceptionally detrimental to small countries, such as Lithuania. What is more, for the past few decades the biggest threats to Lithuania’s national security were posed by Russia as Lithuania was, is and will be in its interest zone due to close historical, political and economic cohesion with Russia. This paper consists of two parts. The first part discusses the concept of national security and its implementation by Lithuanian legal acts and laws. The approach of the analysis of Lithuania's national security is explained by discussing the events in Ukraine as it illustrates Russia’s political motives, economic goals and the range of manipulative tools when it comes to its interest zone. The war in Donbass was the result of Russia‘s influence in the region, the annexation of Crimea, two newly formed states – the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics emphasize the seriousness of Russia's expansive political attitude and the threats Russia poses. The expansion of the influence spheres is also implemented through information tools and media in order to form common opinion that is advantageous to the Kremlin. Moreover, a country's economic situation is fundamentally important as it describes a country's ability to cope with threats and can be interpreted as a certain measure of security, therefore, economic factors are discussed in parallel. The second part of this paper briefly discusses the methodology of the analysis on Lithuania’s national security. The study includes the construction of a regional security index in order to analyze regional differences within Lithuania and the construction of a security index based on macroeconomic variables to assess Lithuania's security from the economic perspective. The latter security index includes economic aspects to reflect the economic development of the country, economic potential, and general economic situation. Meanwhile, the regional security index is used to assess economic vulnerability of potentially problematic Lithuanian regions as it is compared to the average of Lithuania, Moscow and Minsk. The latter two regions were not chosen randomly – most of the "news" broadcasted by Russia‘s and Belarus’ media are dedicated to demonstrate achievements and progress, and as a counterbalance to the stagnant Western economy, the Russia‘s and Belarus’ breakthrough is most closely linked to the Moscow and Minsk regions. The robustness of both constructed indices is tested with different sets of weights. The results reveal high vulnerability of selected Lithuanian regions, except for Klaipėda as it is prosperous city in a strategically good location. Even though Lithuania has one of the smallest central government debts, it is considered as one of the most vulnerable EU countries due to high energy import dependency and lack of financial reserves. Also, it is expected to have lower level of economic resilience as an emerged coronavirus crisis raised a number of social and economic issues. |
