13th International Scientific Conference Security of The Republic of Poland in National and International Dimensions

GENERAL INFORMATION

The contemporary security environment is increasingly difficult to describe in terms of stable categories, predictable scenarios and established response mechanisms. Change is no longer periodic; it has become a permanent feature of how states function. Its sources include not only armed conflicts and great-power rivalry, but also emerging technologies, information pressure, cyber threats, economic and social change, infrastructure disruptions, and the growing interdependence of systems responsible for security. States must therefore prepare not only for specific threats but also for situations whose course, scale and consequences cannot be accurately determined in advance.

Strategic uncertainty changes how security is understood. Building systems based solely on responses to previously identified risks is becoming increasingly inadequate. What matters most is the ability to operate with incomplete information, recognise change quickly and make decisions despite uncertainty about how events will unfold. National security should therefore be understood not as a condition that can be attained and permanently maintained, but as an ongoing process of adapting structures, resources, procedures and modes of action to changing circumstances.

From this perspective, resilience takes on particular importance. It should not be equated solely with the capacity to withstand a crisis and return to the previous mode of operation. Amid strategic change, equally important is the state’s capacity to learn, modify its own mechanisms and use experience gained during crises to develop new capabilities. Resilience thus provides the foundation for adaptation, while adaptation prompts a deeper transformation of the security system.

Transformation entails more than modernising individual structures or increasing resources. It concerns the way the state is organised, its decision-making mechanisms, cooperation among public administration, the Armed Forces, services, businesses, civil society organisations and citizens, as well as the capacity to integrate military and non-military instruments. It requires determining which components of the security system remain effective, which need adaptation and which should be redesigned.

At the heart of contemporary security lies not only preparedness to absorb the effects of threats, but also the capacity for deliberate action in response to change. The state cannot confine itself to reacting to processes unfolding in its environment. It should develop instruments to anticipate possible directions of change, influence their course and help shape the conditions of its own security at national, regional and international levels.

From this perspective, the central research and practical question is: how can a state build a security system capable of withstanding strategic changes in its environment, responding to them effectively and helping to shape its security environment? Answering this question requires structuring the debate around three fundamental issues: what is changing, what does that change mean for national security, and what should be transformed, and how?

This year’s conference will provide a forum for discussion of these three dimensions. Its purpose is to combine an assessment of contemporary change with an evaluation of its consequences and a search for solutions that can strengthen the state’s capacity to act under conditions of strategic uncertainty. The debate will proceed from the premise that uncertainty need not lead to passivity and that resilience cannot be reduced to survival. A mature security system should enable the state not only to adapt to change but also to carry out deliberate transformation and actively shape its own security environment.