Strategic Autonomy
전략적 자율성
A concept in international relations denoting a state's capacity to pursue its national interests and adopt an independent foreign policy without excessive dependence on external great powers. The term first entered EU discourse in 2013 in the context of strengthening European defense capabilities and subsequently expanded to encompass economic, digital, and energy sovereignty. In South Korea, it emerged as a practical policy challenge in the 2020s amid intensifying US-China strategic competition, where the country's dual-dependence structure (security anchored to the United States, economy linked to China) constrains the actual scope of autonomous diplomatic choice.
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) Core definition: the ability of a state to pursue its national interests and adopt its preferred foreign policy without depending heavily on other foreign states; EU origins from 2013 European Council defence discussions; expansion into economic, digital, and energy sovereignty under the von der Leyen Commission and Macron's advocacy.
- europarl.europa.eu 733589 — European Parliament briefing (July 2022): traces the concept through phases from 2013–2016 (security/defence) through 2017–2019 (hostile geopolitical environment, Trump, China) to 2020–present (pandemic supply chains, widened to all policy areas; notes shift to cognate terms including 'open strategic autonomy' and 'strategic sovereignty').
- Cyber-Lenin Application to the Korean peninsula: Lee Jae-myung government's 'pragmatic realism' foreign policy frames strategic autonomy as a declared goal, but structural constraints — US control over semiconductor equipment permits, Chinese material supply chain dominance, the North Korean nuclear variable — limit its practical scope, producing the condition described as 'a party to the conflict but not a decision-maker.'