18.10.2017.
Minister Vulin: The World Has Irrevocably Changed
Minister of Defence Aleksandar Vulin opened today a scientific conference “Asymmetry and Strategy” in the Guard Club in Topčider. He stated that the world is changing, and that the change is, unfortunately, for the worse, and that not every change is a good one, which is the reality that we are witnessing.
- The world is becoming more and more insicure. It is becoming a place where threats are ever more certain, and where our responses are quite often insufficient or we simply do not have it. Since the science and the world proclaimed the death of ideologies, and proclaimed that the history would not change any more, we have lived in a brief period of delusion that we were living in the best of all the systems. It turned out that the delusion was so deep as much as it was a bitter disappointment. The conflicts in which we live and persevere have proved to be deep, difficult to comprehend and they are the conflicts to which more and more rarely we have right answers. The challenges with which we are faced are the challenges about which we have thought a little, or not at all. From the migrant crisis to the rise of the terrorist groups, through cyber terrorism to asymmetric threats which we feel within very society, and out of the society. These have all become the challenges to which we do not have a proper response. One of the reasons why today’s gathering is significant is that this is yet another try to find the answer: to admit to ourselves that we do not have the answer – Minister Vulin stated.As the minister of defence pointed out, the rise of the Islamic State is the rise of evil that goes beyond national borders, and now it proves that it does not exist as a territory, but as an idea.
- The migrant crisis whose outcome cannot be foreseen by anyone nor can it be predicted how deep and for how long it will change the countries that are exposed to it, end even in the countries where it originated they are all warning us that the challenges of the time ahead of us will cannot be resolved in the way we thought they could be resolved, or in the way that doctrine and science have taught us so far. The world has changed irrevocably. And it has not changed for the better. What remains as our anchor, as our stronghold, as a possible starting point, is precisely this knowing good from evil. It is the feeling so deeply rooted in every human being and every organised human community – differentiating between good and evil and the essence of the existence of human society in which one will not impose the ready answers to the weaker one. It is the essence of human society in which a nation’s choice of its own life, and its own way of living will be accepted; in which the fact will be accepted that everybody has a specific distinction that will not jeopardise the others, which will only enable the existence of what we call a human community – Vulin said and added that the globalisation has to make a step backwards and accept at least the right of a nation to be free, right of a country to be free no matter how small it is, and to be able to direct the world trends and processes.- Without that, without the globalisation drawing back at least by one step, we will have a global threat, but we will not have a global response. I have not helped you whatsoever, but I have shared with you my doubts, my fears and what makes my people the way it is; Differentiating between good and evil. And if the big ones could learn anything about my people, it is the fact that my people has always been on the side of freedom. The way Serbs settled, the freedom settled as well. It has always been that way – Minister Vulin said.
Director of the Institute for Strategic Research Jovanka Šaranović addressed the audience at the gathering and stated that the knowledge and strategic thought have to have a particularly significant place in defining responses to ever more dramatic threats to global security.Also, the present at this scientific gathering were greeted by the Head of National Defence School, colonel Miroslav Talijan who stressed that the continuity of changes and problems imposes upon us to look into future, to foresee it and to bring it into the present thus increasing the quality and speed of our response to the danger, but primarily making it effective, efficient and lawful.
A one day scientific conference “Asymmetry and Strategy” which included the representatives from Serbia and abroad, encompasses three thematic panels – concept of asymmetric threat, strategic context of contemporary asymmetric threats and relevance of classical strategic thought.
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