Strategic autonomy describes a government’s ability to make important policy choices without excessive dependence on a single external supplier or partner. The concept now appears in debates about energy, semiconductors, defence equipment, food security and digital infrastructure.
Complete self-sufficiency is rarely practical. The more realistic objective is diversification: maintaining enough alternative suppliers, domestic capacity and international partnerships to reduce vulnerability to disruption or political pressure.
The policy challenge is cost. Redundancy can make systems more resilient, but it may also be more expensive than highly concentrated supply chains. Governments and companies therefore have to decide which dependencies are strategically significant enough to justify that premium.
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