Economics as a Prime Interest

Today, the world is such that the interdependence of states in it has assumed practically an all- encompassing character. Frankly, the problem of economic security is generated first by such interdependence. This process carries not only benefits and profits, but it is fraught with great potential threats for the security of states, especially of the states of the so-called average level, whose economy largely hangs on export, import, financial, raw material and other ties with the external agents. This means that serious failures or crisis among foreign economic partners immediately create serious threats to the economic security of own country. We still remember the case of the foot-and-mouth disease occurred in late 90-th in Europe and which brought to the brink of disaster the meat and dairy production not only in UK, but also threatened the same kind of production in many other countries of the world. These are special cases and they are very indicative and symptomatic for the contemporary of interdependent world. The same is about raising the U.S. tariffs on export of metallurgical products in early 2002, which created a tough condition in the metal industry of many countries causing sharp protests and bankruptcies in related sectors of their economies.