(Advances in Defence Studies)
by Vitor Bento (Author)
This book examines the effect of economic power on a state’s strategic autonomy.
Strategic
autonomy is a fundamental condition for the availability of strategic
options in the interaction of states. This book provides the first clear
operational definition of the concept and offers an analysis of the
relevance of the national economy to strategic autonomy. The main
sources of economic power – size of the economy, position in trade and
technological networks, savings, wealth, and finance – and their impact
on strategic autonomy are analyzed in depth. The strategic governance of
the national economy is also addressed as a way of ensuring that
national economic power can work as strategic power for a country,
providing it with strategic autonomy. The strategies pursued by China –
which in under four decades has gone from an underdeveloped state to the
main challenger of the dominant world power – and Germany – which,
despite being defeated in World War II, having no nuclear weapons and
having chosen to be a "civilian power", became the dominant power in
Europe – are analyzed in depth, as two paradigmatic examples of the
theory developed by the book.
This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, economics, foreign policy and International Relations.
