Contemporary Security Environment: A Threat-Based Approach

The chapter presents theoretical analysis of terms and concept (security, threats, security strategies) well situated in reality and discussed in the literature. The general review constitutes the canvas for describing contemporary security environment by creating the picture of prevailing threats and justifying the thesis (included in the arching question of the book) that they are borderless, affect the state security and personal security irrespectively of the continent or a state and its capacities and vulnerabilities. In an attempt at presenting the general outline of the threats challenging humans on the globe, I selected the threats according to the criterion of their sources: political, military, ecological, demographic, natural, cyber (Kitler, 2004) and their occurrence in the most populated countries on each continent: Brazil, The USA, The Russian Federation, Nigeria and Poland as the border country of the EU.