The increasingly geopolitical world has led to calls for greater strategic autonomy. European societies rely on a limited number of globally operating companies for critical components of vital infrastructures, such as energy and digital networks. How can we address this dependency in a fragmenting world order? What should be the European and Dutch response to the international competition over strategic autonomy.
This project examines the drivers that have turned strategic autonomy into the complex challenge it is today: the growing influence in the economic sphere of geopolitics, globally integrated production chains with key clusters concentrated in specific countries, and the crucial importance of scale in the development of new technologies. We assess the risks embedded in the broad notion of “strategic autonomy” and the related concepts of “economic security” and “de-risking.” And we explore the lessons and warnings that can be drawn from the policies pursued in the United States and China.