The Importance of the Economic Field in Modern Political Warfare. Case Study: NATO Eastern Flank Member States

"The aim of this paper is to present the importance that the economic field has in the concept of modern political warfare. Correlating the economic field with that of geopolitics and security has become a variable that NATO member states can no longer ignore. Using the descriptive analysis method, we aim to show the importance that economic policies have in influencing the political and strategic regional landscape, and have chosen the Eastern Flank countries to do that. We plan to test this theory by studying three major areas in economic policies that we consider have impacted the security and defence landscape in recent years. The first area is defence expenditure, the second one is fiscal policies and the third one is energy policies. Recent security events have fundamentally changed the European Union green energy policies and objectives. Some of them have been postponed, others replaced, therefore, we seek to analyse the way in which European states on the Eastern Flank mitigate through these rising issues, in terms of both the energy field and the correlation of energy policies with the other ones."