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Genesis of Russian propaganda as a serious security threat of the 21st century from the perspective of NATO and EU
Stejskalová, Jana ; Kučera, Tomáš (advisor) ; Střítecký, Vít (referee)
The thesis entitled "Genesis of Russian propaganda as a serious security threat of the 21st century from the perspective of NATO and EU" examines the phenomenon of contemporary Russian propaganda. Russia commonly uses propaganda as a tool of promoting its interests. Russian propaganda is very sophisticated, aggressive, and massive. Mainly due to the effective use of the internet and social networks, Russian online actors are able, in a short space of time, to successfully generate an information chaos, which is difficult to navigate in. Contemporary Russian propaganda has several key aspects, namely the anti-American and anti-European orientation, attacks on Western democratic values, and the mixing of truth with fiction. Thus, propaganda becomes an effective weapon in the information war that the Kremlin has initiated. The West is aware of these alarming issues and tries to respond. The thesis analyzes the development of the perception of the Kremlin propaganda by the Western international security organizations NATO and EU. At the same time, it attempts to identify the moment when Russian propaganda began to be perceived as a serious security threat. Whereas the key of the analysis is to interpret the perception of Russian propaganda, the concept of securitization was chosen as the theoretical...
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From revolutionary armed forces to revolutionary regimes, empirical analysis of the transformation
Cuby, Alexandre ; Kučera, Tomáš (advisor) ; Aslan, Emil (referee)
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the role that political ideologies plays in determining the target of insurgency movements. In order to understand how these groups operate, I use Janowitz's military establishment to apply it on the three main revolutionary ideologies of the 20th century, Khomeinism, Marxism/Leninism and Fanonian. Based on these analyses, I hypothesize the three main targets by ideology based on the clarity of the indoctrination and on the level of bureaucracy entailed in the revolutionary texts. I then proceed to compare these theories to three case studies, the Hezbollah, the FARC and finally the PKK. I try to offer an explanation on why religious insurgencies target most of their attacks towards rival factions or why nationalist left-wing groups are mostly focused on attacking security forces. I argue that a well-structured hierarchy, a reliance on the civil society and a clear definition of the political and military targets are quintessential to prevent civilian causalities. But contrarily to most papers on the topic, I find that a strict military discipline has the reversed result that expected. For instance, the FARC and the PKK have such a strict internal code of discipline that it led the members to desert the organizations by thousands and have civilians as...
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Understanding of hybrid warfare in Ukraine: to what extent this understanding is shaped by its internal experience?
Demyanchuk, Tetyana ; Kučera, Tomáš (advisor) ; Laryš, Martin (referee)
CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of Political Studies Department of Security Studies Master thesis 2019 Tetyana Demyanchuk CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of Political Studies Department of Security Studies Tetyana Demyanchuk Understanding of hybrid warfare in Ukraine: to what extent this understanding is shaped by its internal experience? Master thesis Prague 2019 Author: Tetyana Demyanchuk Supervisor: Mgr. Tomáš Kučera, Ph.D. Academic year: 2018/2019 Bibliographic note DEMYANCHUK, Tetyana (2019) Understanding of hybrid warfare in Ukraine: to what extent this understanding is shaped by its internal experience? 50 p. Master thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Security Studies. Mgr. Tomáš Kučera, Ph.D. Abstract Hybrid warfare has achieved notoriety of being a buzzword attempting to explain the changes in the modern warfare that blur the lines between war and peace, conventional and irregular warfare. Despite its definitional shortcomings, it made its way into the official discourse of the politicians commenting on the conflict in Ukraine and Russia's involvement in it, which did not add clarity. This thesis aims to bring a Ukrainian perspective to the discussion, and it attempts to provide a deep interpretation of sufficiently...
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Securitization of migration in Czech Republic
Lukašík, Petr ; Kučera, Tomáš (advisor) ; Špelda, Petr (referee)
The thesis in your hands focus on foreign Fighter phenomenon in the Czech Republic. It argues, that Foreign Fighters are specific kind of migrants who travel both short-term and long-term into a conflict area of their choice. Some do come back to their countries of departure. The thesis has two goals. First one is to find out if there is potential for securitization of Foreign Fighters in the Czech Republic present in Czech society. For this purpose, securitization theory is used. Second goal of the thesis is to look closer on the Foreign Fighter phenomenon both in general and in local circumstances. The thesis presents analysis of academic literature on the topic of Foreign Fighters. It discusses definitions, Foreign Fighter numbers and threat assessment, and approaches adopted to deal with the phenomenon. Next, specifics of foreign Fighters in the Czech Republic are discussed. A survey was launched in order to gain data for this study among Czech society. Results of the survey indicate there is not much interest for securitization of the topic in the Czech Republic. Further results yielded there is not much of a difference in Czech Foreign Fighters and their compatriots from other countries, except maybe focus of Czech fighters on Ukraine except Middle East.
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Demographic transition, population growth, demographic ageing - interrelations and development contexts at the regional level
Avram, Cristina ; Kučera, Tomáš (advisor) ; Bleha, Branislav (referee) ; Fiala, Tomáš (referee)
Demographic transition, population growth, demographic ageing - interrelations and development contexts at the regional level Abstract This thesis aims to examine how the timing and pace of the demographic transition correlated with the timing and pace of ageing at the regional level in Czechia and also to contribute to understanding the determinants and evolution of demographic transition, specifically mortality and fertility decline, and connect it with the population ageing. It is a common belief that ageing is the result of demographic transition, but there is a limited number of studies that investigate the interrelations between these two processes. The greatest challenge was the difficulty in comparing historical and current data caused by changes in the administrative division during 1868-2017. Thus, the recalculation of data was needed to analyse trends in mortality and fertility. 2011 statistical units at the level of districts were chosen as basic units for analysis. The data recalculation was preceded by the reconstruction of historical districts maps and population data estimation for intercensal periods. Data were recalculated using spatial overlays in GIS software and database processing operations both for population and vital statistics. This step was followed by the data analysis....
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Analysis of the Special Forces Role in the complex of Armed Forces - Present and Future; Comparison of the Belgium, Portugal and the Czech Republic's Current Special Forces
Bejlovec, Jan ; Kofroň, Jan (advisor) ; Kučera, Tomáš (referee)
This thesis deals with the position of Special Forces of the Czech Republic within the army and the potential need to invest in their further development. Along with that, the thesis compares special units in the Czech Republic with Belgium and Portugal. The work is based on literature and scholarly articles based not only on theories of war and conflict. It shows the role of special forces within the conventional army and in asymmetric conflicts and then compares special forces in the Czech Republic with those in European countries with similar facilities and capabilities. The work answers 2 questions, the first question is what are the advantages and disadvantages of the special forces in different strategic environments and the second question is, if it would be advantageous to strengthen the development of special forces at the expense of conventional forces. Despite the extensive topic of the thesis, both questions are partially answered.
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Strategic Culture of the Czech Republic
Beneš, Jan ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Eichler, Jan (referee) ; Kučera, Tomáš (referee)
Jan Beneš Strategic Culture of the Czech Republic Abstract The aim of the dissertation is to define in a complex manner the strategic culture of the Czech Republic. Strategic culture is at first analysed as a conceptual phenomenon both in relation to strategy itself and to the theories of international relations. The dissertation introduces the different streams of thought about strategic culture and then studies the approaches of the key involved authors with a special focus on the discussion between the first and the third generation of strategic culture scholars. Concerning the fact that the strategic culture has been originally created for the study of the behaviour and strategic thought of major powers, the author analyses the historical and geostrategic peculiarities of a small state in the Central Europe and then defines own conceptual and methodological framework. Using the method of grounded theory, the important symbols and narratives from the Czech history as well as the most important moments in the Czech political and strategic thought and decision-making are being examined. The historical narratives re-appear and influence the decision-making, thinking and argumentation of the key actors in the Czech security community. The research of the key decisions and historical moments after the 1989 is...
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Berlin Plus - Relevant or Obsolete Mechanism of EU-NATO relations?
Hložková, Veronika ; Kučera, Tomáš (advisor) ; Karlas, Jan (referee)
This bachelor thesis deals with the verification of the relevance of the Berlin Plus Agreements, which became the official mechanism for the implementation of European Union- led operations using NATO's planning capabilities in 2003. To determine the relevance, I set out three aspects. The first assesses this mechanism by its use in practice in the form of military missions. The following perspective examines it from the perspective of involvement in planning and its occurrence in the key documents of both organizations. The last one looks for his presence in the professional discourse. I use assumptions based on historical institutionalism to determine the causes of the present state of relevance of these agreements. These include, in particular, an emphasis on historical and contextual assessment of the empirical survey, path- dependency, and unintended consequences. With this research set up, I have come to the conclusion that the Berlin Plus Agreement is partially relevant from today's perspective. I came up with the result after the Berlin Plus mechanism was not assessed positively by a single criterion. At the same time, however, it has proved that its existence has helped to maintain communication and a certain level of cooperation between the two organizations at times when there was no...
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Coalition Formation in Multiagent Systems Using Genetic Algorithms
Kučera, Tomáš ; Uhlíř, Václav (referee) ; Zbořil, František (advisor)
This thesis discusses the basics of software agents and the way they form the multiagent coalitions. Genetic algorithms are introduced as one of the methods of solving the coalition formation problem. MAPC 2018 competition is introduced, which inspired the final design and implementation of the solution by using the tools described. A demo project was created, in which agents communicate with the MASSim server and gather data which is then used as an input into the genetic algorithm. Its purpose is to assign the agents to the tasks based on the input data, so that the tasks can be accomplished in the most effective manner possible. The results of this algorithm are evaluated in experiments which are focused on the quality of the solutions found as well as the time required for the calculation.
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