Uwarunkowania bezpieczeństwa Polski na przełomie XX i XXI wieku
Determinants of Poland’s Security at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries

Summary/Abstract: Poland – one of the countries of the former communist bloc, and a member of the Warsaw Pact after World War II – has undergone two major states of functioning on the international arena to this day. As a satellite country of the Soviet Union, it built its foundations of security and defence, based on the military and political strength of the Warsaw Pact against Western Europe, the United States, and generally against NATO. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformations that took place across Eastern Europe in the early 1980s resulted in a situation in which the country detached itself from the communist system, built its democracy and, as a neutral country, sought membership in NATO and the European Union, the two guarantors of building its own security policy and defence, given Poland’s geopolitical location. The goal of this paper is to familiarize the reader with the ways in which Poland built its national and international security at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries against the background of the wave of geopolitical changes taking place in Europe. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of Poland’s security environment after 1989, presents the chronology of changes made internationally to join Poland to both NATO and European structures, and the country’s contribution to supporting world peace.

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