Prague, Nov 7 (CTK) – The prognoses of the country´s development for the next 15 years worked out for the Czech government in 2000 have turned more or less true, but the political elites did not follow most of the recommendations, Antonin Rasek has written in daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD).
The governing elites naturally cannot react to all threatening troubles, yet they should concentrate on those most essential, he says in the MfD Saturday issue.
The Vision 2015 was worked out by the Centre for Social and Economic Strategies of Charles University in Prague. It focused on ten fields, one of which was the security, defence and military policy, Rasek writes.
Strategical decisions were made by the politicians only when a catastrophic situation really occurred. From the security point of view, the formation of the comprehensive rescue system can be praised. However, even this system would not have been developed unless the country was hit by massive flooding twice, Rasek writes.
How many summer droughts will the Czech Republic have to endure before an effective strategy of water management will be prepared and applied? he writes.
How many problems with migrants will people have to experience before they create an efficient strategy of dealing with their stay on Czech territory? Rasek says.
The authors of the Vision 2015 ruled out some threats as unrealistic, such as a global conflict with mass destruction weapons, the deployment of the Czech army in a serious regional conflict, the occurrence of pandemics of fatal diseases, and extremist parties seizing power in the United States, the EU or the Czech Republic. Neither of these scenarios occurred, Rasek writes.
The Vision 2015 writes about several “wild cards,” including an unforeseen attack, Rasek says, referring to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that made the global security situation more serious.
Same as the European Union and NATO, the Vision 2015´s authors based their considerations on the assessment that the Czech Republic had the best security situation since the beginning of the 20th century. This is also why part of the Czech political representatives underestimated the issues of the country´s security and defence capability, Rasek writes.
This could be seen especially in the crisis of the civilian control over defence and the military. Defence ministers and deputy defence minister often were politicians absolutely unprepared for this field, some of whom had to face police prosecution, Rasek writes.
In emergency situations, these politicians were replaced by soldiers who did not have sufficient political support. This led to a political isolation of the military commanders and to low civic support for the country´s defence capabilities, Rasek says.
Other factors that contributed to this bad situation were a chaotic process of making the military professional, the lowering of the number of soldiers under the level of combat readiness and the underestimating of the importance of the preparation of reserve troops, Rasek writes.
Security strategies started to be worked out, but they were too general and served the foreign policy rather than the development of the security system, Rasek writes.
The Vision 2015 recommended to focus on effective anti-aircraft defence and provide territorial protection using adequate ground forces and rapid reaction forces. This was achieved only partly, however, Rasek writes.
The Czech army was primarily adapted to the participation in foreign missions, he adds.
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