International Space vs. International Environment: New Phenomena and New Challenges for Poland’s Foreign Policy

While analysing Poland’s foreign policy and its dilemmas from the perspective of changes in the international environment at the turn of the 21st century, the Author introduces a new analytical category – “international space”. This is a new analytical term with larger explanatory content and more capacious than the category of international environment. This paper explains the validity of such a procedure and its analytical strength. Against the significance of changes, it is the international space, not international environment, that is able to explain the depth of changes in morphology of the international system, where access to knowledge and information has become the source of changes and their dynamics. These phenomena and processes critical for the international system force the post-industrial country to develop a new approach to Poland’s foreign policy. They also impose reflection on Poland’s presence in the global “post-modern” international space, segments of international relations that are important for its development. This paper should be treated as an introduction to the difficult but very important debate on Poland’s foreign policy, dilemmas that it has to face, and areas of special sensitivity for the state and its development.