Economic security as national security

Economic security as national security is the doctrine that protecting selected economic capabilities, critical systems and strategic dependencies is necessary to preserve national welfare, freedom of action and defence capacity. The doctrine does not make every economic policy a security measure. It applies when a state identifies an external threat, dependency or strategic capability whose disruption or control could impair essential functions or sovereign choice.

Strategic position

Economic security overlaps with Economic statecraft but is not identical to it. Economic statecraft concerns the intentional use or strategic shaping of economic relationships to pursue foreign-policy, security or geopolitical objectives. Economic security concerns the capacity being protected. A domestic measure enters the statecraft ontology when it manages an external strategic dependency, creates leverage, supports collective resilience or shapes an international rule or relationship.

The doctrine is expressed differently across jurisdictions. The European Commission and High Representative's 2023 European Economic Security Strategy organises policy around promoting the economic base, protecting against identified risks and partnering with other countries. It identifies supply-chain resilience, critical-infrastructure security, technology security and the weaponisation of dependencies as core risk areas. Japan's 2022 National Security Strategy links economic security to self-reliance, technological advantage, private-sector cooperation and continuous assessment of industry risks. These are official policy formulations, not proof of a single universal doctrine.

Mechanism

Economic-security policy has four linked functions.

1. Risk identification: map critical functions, dependencies, ownership, control points and plausible disruption paths.
2. Protection: use security standards, investment screening, export controls, trusted procurement and infrastructure safeguards against defined risks.
3. Capacity and resilience: diversify supply, support innovation and production, maintain stockpiles or alternative routes, and prepare recovery arrangements.
4. Partnership and response: share assessments with allies, coordinate standards and controls, and arrange support when a partner faces disruption or coercion.

The state nexus can run through public agencies or regulated private intermediaries. Most infrastructure, supply chains and financial channels remain commercially operated. Economic security therefore depends on public authority, private information and incentives that preserve investment and competition. Security language alone does not establish a strategic nexus.

Institutional application

The doctrine changes how governments organise decisions. Trade, finance, industry, intelligence, foreign policy and defence agencies must compare economic benefit, strategic exposure and security effect. Japan's strategy calls for whole-of-government execution and continued industry risk assessment. The EU strategy similarly calls for dynamic risk assessment with member states and private-sector input, combined with proportionate and precise responses.

Australia's institutional problem is examined in James J. Tennant, James Corera, Alice Hudson and John Coyne's 2026 ASPI report *Markets as the New Front Line*. The report argues for stronger integration across policy, intelligence, economic and security functions. It is evidence for an Australian policy case, not a universal definition of economic security.

Effects, evidence and contestation

Economic-security measures can reduce vulnerability, preserve critical services and support deterrence by denial. They can also impose material costs. Redundancy, screening, stockpiling and domestic capacity may reduce efficiency or delay investment. Controls can shift risk to partners, encourage target substitution and fragment the systems they are intended to protect.

The main contest concerns boundary discipline. Governments can use national-security claims to shelter firms or sectors from competition without demonstrating a strategic risk. Overbroad securitisation can also treat interdependence itself as a threat, forfeiting the diversification and innovation that open trade can provide. The EU's stated principles of proportionality and precision respond to this problem but do not eliminate it.

A defensible classification therefore requires five elements: a specified critical function, an evidenced threat or dependency, a plausible transmission path, a proportionate intervention and a review mechanism. Measures without those elements may be industrial, social or commercial policy, but they should not automatically be catalogued as economic statecraft.

See also

Economic statecraft · Strategic economic autonomy · Collective resilience · Supply-chain resilience · Weaponised interdependence · Integrated deterrence (United States, 2022) · Outbound investment screening · Economic coercion

Sources

• European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, *European Economic Security Strategy*, JOIN(2023) 20 final, 20 June 2023.
• Government of Japan, *National Security Strategy of Japan*, 16 December 2022.
• James J. Tennant, James Corera, Alice Hudson and John Coyne, *Markets as the New Front Line: Fusing Australia's Economic Statecraft* (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2026).
• David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985; new edition, 2020).