From Policy Preference to Budgetary Priority
How energy security and defence-industrial dependence are turning strategic autonomy into a measurable criterion of spending, procurement, and industrial policy
The report starts from a precise analytical problem. In recent years, strategic autonomy has often been discussed as a broad political objective, but the relevant question is whether it is now becoming something more concrete: an operational criterion that shapes budgets, procurement choices, industrial programmes, and capital allocation. The Iran shock is treated here not as the origin of this shift, but as a stress event that makes an existing structural trajectory more visible. Under conditions of geopolitical strain, exposure to fuel imports, maritime chokepoints, fragile infrastructure, stock depletion, production bottlenecks, and external supply dependence ceases to be a secondary policy concern and becomes a measurable constraint on state action.
The report is structured to test that proposition in a disciplined way. It first clarifies the methodological frame and redefines autonomy in operational rather than rhetorical terms. It then examines how official language has evolved in energy and defence policy, before analysing energy autonomy through a comparative assessment of vulnerability, resilience, and infrastructure across key advanced economies. A parallel section addresses strategic-military autonomy through defence-industrial capacity, stock scarcity, and allocation competition. The final sections examine the passage from rhetoric to expenditure, identify the sectors gaining structural priority, assess the financial and industrial implications, and define the limits of the thesis by distinguishing political ambition from actual implementation capacity.