ECONOMIC SECURITY AS A TOOL FOR THE PROTECTION OF NATIONAL INTERESTS

Economic security serves as a basic platform for the protection of the national interests of each country and creates conditions for the realisation of the intended strategic intentions of future development. As a tool for the protection of national interests, it is considered a priority tool in the management of economic cycles. Accordingly, economic security can be defined as an integral category that provides countermeasures to a systemic set of negative factors. Such countermeasures require the application of a set of measures of an institutional, legal, organisational and economic nature. Therefore, economic security acts as a tool capable of adjusting the mechanism of protection of the country's national economic interests from internal and external threats and, on this basis, exerting a positive influence on ensuring balanced and stable growth of the country's economy, which improves the competitiveness of the national economy in general. The subject of the study is economic security, its content and its place in the protection of national interests of the country. The authors set themselves the task to formulate the main segments of economic security as a priority component of the system of protection of national interests and to propose the modernisation of its content for a more objective definition of the directions of protection against internal and external threats to the economic development of the country. The methodological basis of the study is based on the general principles of scientific knowledge: the principle of objectivity, which requires identification of all factors and threats that led to the creation of the economic security system; the principle of historicism, which provides for coverage of the emergence of the understanding of economic security in their historical context; the principle of multifactoriality, as a study of various objective and subjective factors that influenced the level of economic security. The paper uses such general scientific methods as description, observation, comparison of economic phenomena, provisions of economic theory on economic security; analysis and synthesis to determine the theoretical foundations of economic security in the context of ensuring the national interests of the country. The study of such a tool for protecting national interests as economic security has made it possible to identify several key segments of its essential content, which are taken into account by scholars and justified by the existing modern threats to the national interests of countries. Individual stages of the development of the concept of economic security are analysed in terms of their historical formation, relevance and interrelation with the national interests of the country. Special attention is paid to existing modern ways of protection against internal and external threats to the economic development of countries in order to preserve their national interests. It should be noted that in today's conditions it is difficult to establish a single system of protection of national interests of countries through the chosen system of economic security, as each of them has its own strategic intentions for future development and is under the influence of external and internal factors, which are inherent in the specific environment of economic development. At the same time, all of them are united by the common task of strengthening economic security in order to ensure compliance with national interests. That is, directions for strengthening economic security for one country do not always correspond to the national interests of another, therefore it is advisable to modernise the content of the segments of economic security on the basis of today's realities, which will contribute to a more objective understanding of the system of protection against external and internal threats to the development of economic cycles of countries and will have a positive impact on the preservation of their national interests. Results. Economic security is a priority tool for protecting the national interests of countries, the implementation of measures to strengthen it leads to the creation of an effective system of prevention of negative impact of external and internal content on the economic cycles of their development. Achieving the intended strategic economic goals of development of countries, ensuring the preservation of their national interests is impossible without the implementation of an effective system of protection against negative factors influencing their development. Therefore, the inclusion of economic security in the list of priority tools for protecting national interests as an economic category and modernisation of its content, in the authors' opinion, will contribute to a more objective understanding of the content of measures aimed at levelling various threats arising in the system of economic development of countries. On the basis of the research conducted, the authors believe that the use of the economic security system to preserve and protect the national interests of countries is connected with the implementation of such directions as the introduction and modernisation of the theoretical and methodological content of the methods and techniques of the economic security system (model); the selection and filling of the economic security system with the latest segments (models); the development of directions for the protection of national interests with the participation of the economic security system at the level of the governments of countries, in accordance with the chosen system (model) of economic security.