European Open Strategic Autonomy and an Anarchic International System: A Neorealist Analysis
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- Since 2013, the European Union has increasingly framed its foreign, trade, and security policy around the concept of "Open Strategic Autonomy" (OSA), an ambition to make independent choices and shape global affairs on its own terms while remaining engaged with international trade and multilateral institutions. This thesis asks to what extent the EU's pursuit of Open Strategic Autonomy can be explained through the lens of Neorealist (specifically Offensive Realist) international relations theory, treating the Union as a state-like actor responding to the pressures of an anarchic international system. Covering the period from when the term first appeared in EU defence policy in 2013 to the onset of the second Trump presidency in 2025, the research traces the evolution of OSA through three phases: its early, defence-focused inception (2013–2016); its consolidation amid the first Trump administration's turn away from Atlanticism (2017–2020); and its acceleration under the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine (2021–2024). The thesis argues that while rising Sino-American rivalry and an increasingly unreliable United States were important catalysts, the 2020–2025 period specifically, defined by pandemic-driven supply-chain insecurity and the war in Ukraine, was the decisive juncture in which OSA matured into a coherent grand strategy. It concludes that the EU's behaviour during this period aligns closely with Neorealist expectations of how a state-like entity manages survival and autonomy under conditions of anarchy in the international system, offering support for the applicability of Neorealism to supranational, non-traditional actors in international relations.