Under the heading "Economic Defence and Security", this issue is the subject ofone of the five majors of the IHEDN National Session. This article is a summary of the pedagogical document establishing the scope of this major.
WHAT ARE ECONOMIC DEFENCE AND SECURITY?
In 1990, the American economist and strategist Edward Luttwak announced in his book a famous article that the logics of conflict and international rivalries are now based more on economic and commercial issues than on diplomatic and military imperatives. The economy has become a major arena for confrontation and domination, even between allies.
In a globalised market, economic interdependencies and asymmetries have therefore been "weaponised" by States, to be used as a means of influence, domination or coercion. In France, in the 2013 White Paper on national defence and security, the development of networks and flows is presented as "an asset", but also "a factor of vulnerability".
In this context, the decree of 20 March 2019 states that "economic security policy aims to ensure the defence and promotion of the nation's economic, industrial and scientific interests, consisting in particular of tangible and intangible assets that are strategic for the French economy." Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the meaning of economic security, heir to the concept of economic intelligence forged in an essentially national and tactical framework, has gone from strength to strength.
In addition to protecting companies and their assets, it now covers issues such as digital or technological sovereignty, the fight against economic coercion, and the availability of skills. Motivated by the existence of intentional threats, it must also respond to unintentional risks, such as a pandemic.
The €100 billion "France Relance" plan presented at the end of 2020 has been designed to "accelerate sovereignty", in the words of the French President: "It's about no longer depending on others for essential goods, no longer risking critical supply disruptions". The "France 2030" investment plan is designed to secure access not only to materials and components, but also to sovereign digital technologies, training and capital.
To ensure effective economic defence and security, Europe is the appropriate level for most of the necessary measures: RGDP, digital sovereignty and data policy codes, derogation rules for major projects, exchanges on foreign investment control, etc. As Josep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, pointed out at the end of 2020, "strategic autonomy has been extended to new economic and technological issues". Since the war in Ukraine, the EU has been rethinking "many elements of its internal organisation", in particular to deal with geo-economic threats.
HYBRID AND SOPHISTICATED MODES OF ACTION
Economic competition, and even confrontation, employs a range of different modes of action, aimed at both immediate effectiveness and the possibility of shaping the environment in the longer term. They emanate from different players (public or private) and frameworks (national, European), whose interactions and coherence need to be considered.
A - Force actions are the most threatening:
- use of the right (lawfare): extraterritorial laws and standards, exorbitant local laws, use of the opponent's domestic law ;
- capturing resources or data: infiltration and espionage, predation and pillage, unbalanced economic contracts ;
- hindering companies (through cyber-attacks, boycotts, legal action against managers, damage to image, etc.);
- exploiting massive indebtedness (as China is doing in Africa);
- the exploitation of global asymmetries: who controls or monitors financial, energy or environmental flows? supply chain can exclude an opponent or use it to destabilise him;
- economic coercion: customs duties, embargoes, freezing of assets, etc.
B - Influential actions shape the environment :
- the definition of international standards, which gives an advantage to those who initiate them and control their content;
- influence: diplomacy (political, commercial, cultural, etc.), co-opting elites, cooperation, and even more aggressive means such as corruption or disinformation;
- conquering and protecting markets ;
- Non-state actors (NGOs, multinationals, etc.) have a growing influence.
C - Actions to support resilience and autonomy help to reduce vulnerability in the medium and long term :
- by technological competition (AI, quantum, etc.);
- by reducing critical dependencies (components, rare materials);
- by regulating the internal market to weaken oligopolies (particularly digital oligopolies).
A STRATEGIC APPROACH AND MEANS OF ACTION
In the light of the above, economic defence and security policy can have four types of objective.
A - Protecting, promoting and supporting economic interestsby :
- regulating foreign investment ;
- counter-intelligence and counter-espionage ;
- combating misinformation ;
- legal responses to extra-territorial laws ;
- political support for exports, and shaping the environment.
B - Ensuring the availability of essential safety resourcesIn order to meet the needs of the population (food, energy) and the economic fabric (components, raw materials, etc.), :
- anticipation and planning ;
- economic practices oriented (towards stocks, domestic production, diversification of sources, etc.);
- securing imports through diplomatic or military channels;
- political action (for European funding of the defence industry, for example).
C - Creating a favourable environmentin :
- strengthening digital and technological sovereignty, in particular through research and innovation;
- ensuring a fair and equitable trade order through multilateral negotiations.
D - Using the economy for political security purposes
Economic defence and security sometimes require weakening an adversary by depriving it of access to goods or resources, for example:
- combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ;
- restrict technology transfers ;
- issuing and enforcing embargoes or sanctions ;
- using an economic advantage as part of transactional diplomacy ;
- combat illicit financial flows.
