Slovakia Finally Adjusts to Growing Insecurity

After 16 years, Slovakia finally has new security and defence strategies. Both documents highlight growing insecurity, the realisation that the state’s security and defence begins at home but, first and foremost, reflect the much-needed political will to implement the strategies’ principles.

The Slovak National Council adopted new security and defence strategies. After 16 years, and much political wrangling, this is no doubt most of all an important political development.

The last time the parliament adopted both strategies was in 2005. This came in a changing context of Slovakia’s accession to both the European Union (EU) and NATO in 2004, and reflected the broader security threats facing the Transatlantic space, including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), failed states, as well as regional and unresolved conflicts, including those in the post-Soviet space.

Both the security as well as the defence strategy broadly reflected the 1999 NATO Strategic Concept, while the defence strategy further focused on the continued need for reform and the modernisation of the country’s armed forces. It also highlighted the need to spend two per cent of GDP on defence, although in reality Slovak defence spending as a per centage of GDP continued to fall from 2005 (1.68 per cent of GDP) and did not recover until 2019 when it reached 1.76 per cent.