CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF STRATEGISING UKRAINE’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AS A FACTOR IN FORMING ECONOMIC POWER AND STRENGTHENING UKRAINE’S NATIONAL SECURITY

Abstract

The relevance of the topic is determined by the need to rethink the strategising of Ukraine’s economic development under conditions of war, structural uncertainty, and prolonged security pressure. For Ukraine, economic policy cannot be limited to the logic of restoring lost indicators or returning to the pre-war trajectory. Its subject should be the formation of such a quality of the economy that is capable of supporting state agency, creating complex added value, accumulating national capabilities, and strengthening security resilience in the long term. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the conceptual foundations of strategising Ukraine’s economic development as a factor in forming economic power and strengthening national security. The object of the study is the process of strategising economic development under conditions in which the developmental and security dimensions of public policy are combined. The theoretical basis of the study consists of approaches from institutional economics, economic development theory, strategic management, national competitiveness, and geoeconomics. The article applies conceptual analysis, categorical differentiation, theoretical generalisation, and systemic interpretation of the relationship between economic development, economic power, and national security. Strategising of economic development should be considered as a process of forming the country’s economic power, understood not as a derivative of the volume of gross output, but as the integral capacity of the economy to produce higher added value, understood as a value proposition, to form agency and competitiveness at the international level, and to convert accumulated potential into broader national power and the security resilience of the state. The article proposes an analytical distinction between economic growth as a quantitative measurement of the economy and economic development as a subject of strategic choice. It substantiates that strategising is a function of state agency rather than a procedure for drafting documents, and that its quality is determined by the institutional maturity of the decision-making system. The drivers of development are analysed through the logic of their contribution to the formation of economic power, with particular attention to the role of human capital, innovation, the defence-industrial complex, institutional quality, and regional capability. The practical significance of the article lies in the fact that its conclusions can be applied to reorient strategic planning from the logic of measures and indicators towards the logic of capabilities, development drivers, and the long-term resilience of the state. This approach makes it possible to assess economic policy by its contribution to the formation of Ukraine’s economic power.