2022 Vol. 14 №3

This article tracks how relations between two neighbouring states of the Baltic region, Po­land and Lithuania, developed over the last decades. These relations cannot be described in unambiguous terms. On the one hand, common aspirations for European integration created conditions for rapprochement and cooperation. On the other, the partnership has been complicated by disagreements and mutual claims. The main problem is the situa­tion of the correspondent ethnic minorities in the two countries: Poles in Lithuania and Lithuanians in Poland. According to the Polish authorities, the interests of Lithuania’s Polish residents are not safeguarded, and their rights are infringed. Similar complaints are voiced by Vilnius regarding the situation of ethnic Lithuanians in Poland. These contradictions are partly smoothed by common political interests: cooperation within the North Atlantic Alliance, defiance of the notorious ‘threat from the East’ and joint support for the pro-­Western opposition in the neighbouring Belarus.

The formal indivisibility of security, which theorists in the field of international relations speak of, is an indisputable thing. Although the development of military technology, the format of globalization, a critical attitude towards classical geopolitics have led to an underestimation of the spatial factor, regionalisation has once again proved that it is an integral part of globalisation and its alter ego. At the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, political developments in Europe are closely connected with military security. Although this interdependence is not new, the regional security system has been relatively stable for quite some time. The steadily, albeit gradually aggravating situation around the Kaliningrad region and the Republic of Belarus has caused a response — co­ordinated cooperation in the framework of the Union State. The consequence of which was the formation of a sub-regional security complex (SRSC), which includes the Republic of Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad region. And a theoretical justification for the formation of this complex is the focus of this article. The authors determine the floating boundaries of the SRSC, where spatial effects of military-political ties take on a special character. This study aims to apply and adapt the concept of regional security complexes to the military-political space of the eastern part of the Baltic Sea. The practical implica­tions of this research include substantiating the interconnectedness and interdependence of security doctrines and practices in a troubled region of Europe.