On Wednesday, March 20, 2024, the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies of the University of Defence (CSMSS) commemorated one of the most significant dates in our modern history – the 25th anniversary of the Czech Republic’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (March 12, 1999) with a panel discussion entitled NATO: Our Security Guarantee. On this occasion, four speakers spoke at the premises of the University of Defence Club, the first being the Director of CSMSS, Associated Professor Josef Procházka, stressing the importance of Czech membership in NATO in the context of the turbulently changing security environment.

Thereafter three more contributions followed, first by Oldřich Sklenář, Association for International Affairs analyst (topic: NATO and Energy Security of the Czech Republic), second by Libor Bohuslav, the Defence Policy and Strategy Division of the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic officer (topic: Practical cooperation between the Ministry of Defence and NATO structures), and the final one by Antonín Novotný, Ph.D., from CSMSS, who put the 25 years of the Czech Republic’s membership in NATO in the context of the 75th anniversary of the Alliance´s founding which is about to be commemorated in April this year. The hour-long series of individual presentations continued with a 45-minute Q&A session where students and the University of Defence staff discussed primarily  the Alliance cohesion, collective defence, deterrence, and support of the struggling Ukraine.