Much is still shrouded in mystery about the doctrine on economic security promised by the European Commission. It will rely on the Commission's risk assessments of critical technologies and coordinate the use of existing and upcoming economic statecraft tools, but that’s about the extent of what’s known.
During the EPC’s annual conference, DG Trade Director General Sabine Weyand, shed some light on the Commission’s thinking on the doctrine. While not being able to give any estimation of when it will be published, Weyand emphasised that the doctrine will not be a one-and-done – it will be an iterative concept.
This approach aligns with EPC thinking. We have argued that economic security should suffuse all policy areas in the new Commission. Formulating a set doctrine would run counter to such an approach, leaving it a wholly reactive instrument.
Some argue that a clear doctrine would benefit the EU by defining its responses to various scenarios for both foreign adversaries and partners. However, effective doctrines are often adaptable and flexible.
During the early days of the Cold War, the US diplomat Georg Kennan formulated the doctrine of containment. Wherever Communist regimes made advances, the US would enact countervailing measures to hold them back. The overall thought was clear. Yet how containment was to be carried out in practice was left vague.
The doctrine gave the US flexibility in identifying where the risk of communist influence was the greatest and how to counter it. In East Asia, support for early industrial policies in Taiwan, Korea and Japan was successful. Strategic clarity and doctrinal flexibility could also serve the EU well.
As another panellist at the conference emphasised, EU economic security will depend on effective measures of deterrence. Value chain resilience, as prescribed by the Economic Security Strategy, is something to strive for but increasingly the bloc will have to scare off global rivals from undermining EU economic policy. Resilience will enable you to take punches as they come, but ideally, you want to stop others from striking you in the first place.
Serious deterrence arises from strategic interdependencies that can be weaponised. Detecting such dependencies is contingent on private-public cooperation and information sharing to identify choke points controllable by the EU. No such trust between EU officials and private industry exists though, making the sharing of confidential information unlikely. A new or renewed form of dialogue has to be put in place.
This lack of trust will make it hard for the Commission to identify the interdependencies it can reliably and convincingly use as deterrence, making it more difficult to deliver on a fixed doctrine.
When duly identified, using interdependencies as deterrence will also entail trade-offs. In some cases, prosperity will have to be treated as subservient to economic security. More so than the concrete formulation of the doctrine, this reality will be the greatest challenge in effectuating our economic security ambitions in the coming years.
