Smart states, through alliances, synergistically enhance the capacity, readiness, responsiveness, resilience, sustainability and interoperability of their instruments of national power. NATO is ...constantly continually responding in a multidimensional way to changing security threats and operational circumstances, including by updating and upgrading concepts, plans and measures. The Alliance is also an opportunity for self-reflection; not to judge in retrospect, but to prevent mistakes in the future. We need to discuss honestly why we might be elsewhere, as had been desired and planned, but at the same time, despite our small size, we could be more courageous in pursuing different and original solutions.
The aim of this article is to highlight the issue of the inclusiveness of lesbian and gay man members in the Slovenian Armed Forces. Based on focused structured interviews, we studied both the social ...(perception of lesbians) and institutional aspect (perception of the Slovenian Armed Forces). The findings suggest that more attention should be paid to this issue and it should be explored from other methodological perspectives, which would help the Slovenian Armed Forces to follow the patterns of change in Slovenian society in order to maintain its legitimacy and an inclusive working environment also for social groups with different sexual orientation. The research concerns a sensitive and still mostly hidden topic of the Slovenian Armed Forces, which is not much talked about. The article brings the first military sociological research on the inclusion of lesbian and gay man members in the Slovenian Armed Forces.
Approximately 470,000 refugees and migrants passed through Slovenian territory between September 2015 and March 2016, creating a crisis that required a great deal of organisational and field work on ...the part of many governmental and non-governmental institutions. In the social sciences, a discourse on "security versus humanitarian approach" on the refugees and migrant issue appeared; however, the article goes over such a discourse and deals with roles and problems of different institutions - mostly the military - that responded to the crisis. Namely, coping with the crisis was characterised by significant institutional adjustments, difficult co-ordination, and intense public debate. The Slovenian Armed Forces were included in this process as support for Civil Protection and Police. The military's role followed the military missions defined by the Defence Act; however, the government also proposed some changes to the act that were met with some doubts on the part of the public and different institutions.
Today, almost as a rule, the military boasts a high level of public trust throughout the world. The Slovenian Armed Forces are among the most trusted institutions in the country. A comparative ...analysis of the public trust in the military in other countries, however, shows that the level of trust in the Slovenian military is below the global average. In this article, the level of trust in the Slovenian Armed Forces is presented and compared with the public trust in the military in other countries. This article presents the concepts of trust of Almond and Verba, Inglehart, Banfield and other authors, and discusses the level of trust in the military in Slovenia through these concepts. The analysis shows that several factors diminish trust in the military in Slovenian society: from a lack of knowledge and little interest in the military, defense and security matters, to dissatisfaction with political processes.
This article gives an overview of how civilian control of the military in Slovenia is implemented in practice. It utilizes the perspective of the controlled entity itself, that is, the Slovenian ...Armed Forces. The findings show the type and characteristics of civilian control in Slovenia and how they hinder military effectiveness. As one of the European transition countries to have concluded the democratization of its civil–military relations, civilian control over Slovenia’s Armed Forces is now in place; however, the control mechanisms have had several debilitating effects on the country’s armed forces—the democratization of civil–military relations has been achieved at the partial expense of military effectiveness. Because of this experience, the Slovenian case could serve as an example of how successful democratization of civil–military relations can sometimes produce negative outcomes, or collateral damage, for the military, especially when the employers of the control mechanisms are not aware of the effects that the exercise of their control might have on the military’s ability to execute core missions. Methodologically, this article brings an approach for analyzing interrelations between civilian control and military effectiveness.
The acceptance of risk in a certain society is tested when de facto or merely potential military death casualties are raised. Several dimensions influencing the acceptability of risk have already ...been analyzed, although only three are examined in this article—namely, the historicopolitical, sociodemographic, and cultural. The Slovenian public opinion survey persistently shows strong risk aversion among Slovenians and the article’s purpose is therefore to (1) establish how can the strong risk aversion be explained by the selected dimensions; and (2) identify what part of the population is most risk-aversive. To that end, over twenty years of Slovenian public poll data are analyzed using a triangulation of statistical methods, revealing a cultural pattern of safety bubble versus risk awareness. As the risk aversion model reveals, Slovenian society represents a safety bubble, with strong risk aversion and a very narrow selection of activities worth making sacrifices for. Death casualties are rarely accepted, even if incurred in support of ideals society strongly appreciates, like humanitarian causes.
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