ECONOMIC SECURITY AS A DETERMINING FACTOR FOR STATE SECURITY

In the West, between the two wars, because of the deep economic crisis and the Great Depression, the concepts of were mainly related to the social and economic well-being of states. The post-war economic remake, accompanied by the increasingly fierce military-political confrontation between superpowers, brought new meaning to interests. In 1952, Arnold Wolfers (political science researcher) recorded this transformation as follows: “Changing the meaning of national interest from social welfare to security is reasonable.We live under the influence of the Cold War and under the threat of external aggression before the economic depression and social reforms1”. Until the seventies of the last century the economic problem, although it was implicitly present in all security factors, was not explicitly related to the issue of security. However, the rapid rise of oil prices in 1973 showed dramatically that there is a strong link between foreign policy and security on the one hand, and economic policies on the other2. With the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the bipolar world, military tensions in international relations are also diminishing. At this time of the boom of the global economy and the overall growth of economic factors came to fruitionof the international relations.This is immediately reflected in the security strategies of the great powers. Thus, the US security strategy for the first time during the nineties discusses economic issues as an integral part of security policy. For example, the United States National Security Strategy in 1991 for the first time clearly and unequivocally showed that national security and economic strength are inseparable3.Such a perception was associated with institutional regulation.So, for example, in 1993 it was decided that the National Security Council in the United States should also include the Minister of Finance, as well as the president's assistant for economic policy.According to the model of the National Security Council, was created National Economic Council.71A particularly important aspect of economic security is energy security, which was incorporated in the US strategy in 19964.The global economic crisis, which began in 2008, will further accelerate this process of securitization in the economic field.This is clearly reflected in the 2010 US National Security Strategy, which states that at the core of our commitment are our efforts to rebuild our economy, which serves as a source of US power.5The expansion of the understanding of security in economic matters has also been confirmed in the National Security Strategy in almost all Balkan countries.The purpose of this chapter is, first of all, to emphasize the different meanings of economic security.Thereafter, we will provide a framework for understanding complex relationships through the development of the economic security sector as an analytical subject.Finally, in the last section will be addressed the most important economic threats.