Defence and strategy

Dear readers,

In this issue of our journal, we bring you six papers, four of which deal with armed conflicts or related issues. Each of them offers its own and certainly interesting perspective. Let us have a look at them.

The first one was written by the duo of authors Kateřina Fridrichová and Adriana Ilavská. Their paper is a contribution to the use of quantitative methods in international relations and represents a forward-looking methodological approach to the prediction of armed conflicts. Lucia Yar is the author of the second article. She looks at the well-known topic of fighting against the so-called Islamic State from a remarkable perspective of Kurdish female fighters and in the context of their emancipation efforts. We will stay with the topic of terrorism also in the third contribution. Daniel Svoboda offers a view of the current Nigeria and the operation of the terrorist organization Boko Haram seen as a possible alternative to the Nigerian state. The fourth paper will bring us to the Middle East. Marek Čejka pays attention to the neglected topic of Christian armed groups in the region, their motivations and their specific presence in the regional conflicts. We will remain in the same geographical area with a study by Sepehr Ghazinoory and Javad Vaziri, both authors from Iran, who give our readers an unusual and interesting view of the development of the Iranian defence industry. The final paper is an inspirational contribution to the discussion on the subject of Active Reserves. Its author Tomáš Zwiefelhofer addresses the possibilities of using or rather not using civilian skills of the active reservists.

The issue also includes several reviews of academic publications. Antonín Novotný and Richard Stojar introduce the title Přístupy k tvorbě bezpečnostních a obranných strategií (The Approaches to Creating Security and Defence Strategies) written by Josef Procházka and Pavel Nečas, a book that will certainly attract attention of many experts from the defence department. Daniel Svoboda reviews the publication called Muslimské bratrstvo v současnosti (The Muslim Brotherhood Today) from the trio of authors Bureš, Čejka, Daniel, which will be certainly appreciated by those readers, who have become interested in the papers on related topics in this issue. Richard Stojar and Martin Doleček have had a look at the very topical monograph Psychologie terorismu a radikalizace (The Psychology of Terrorism and Radicalisation) by Josef Smolík. The whole publication is closed with the review by Petr Rožňák, assessing the book Teoretické prístupy k skúmaniu bezpečnosti (Theoretical Approaches to Studying Security) from the team of authors led by Vojtěch Jurčák.

Dear readers, finally, let me thank you on behalf of the entire editorial team for your continued support and wish you, in particular, good health in 2021.

Chairman of the Editorial Board