For three decades, the global order seemed relatively simple: one dominant superpower, a handful of close allies, and a set of rules framed as “global” but largement conçues à Washington, Bruxelles et Tokyo. That world is fading fast. From BRICS expansion to sanctions wars, from chip alliances to currency experiments, global power is now negotiated in real time, secteur par secteur, deal par deal. For companies, investors and policymakers, this is not just a geopolitical story – it’s a new operating system for the world economy.
From unipolar moment to competitive multipolarity
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the 1990s and early 2000s were often described as a “unipolar moment” dominated by the United States. In 1995, the US accounted for roughly 25% of global GDP at market exchange rates; China weighed less than 3%. Today, the US still represents about 24% – but China has climbed to around 18%, according to IMF data. Add India, the EU, Japan, plus regional powers like Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Brazil, and the picture looks far more fragmented.
This shift is not just about growth rates. It is about the capacity to turn economic weight into influence. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, has financed infrastructure in over 150 countries, creating long-term political and financial ties. The European Union, with its market of 450 million consumers and strict regulatory frameworks, has become a “regulatory superpower” shaping global standards on data, privacy or competition. Meanwhile, the US still dominates finance, tech platforms and security alliances. The result is not a balanced “concert of powers” but a competitive multipolarity where alliances are more fluid, more transactional and often issue-specific.
New blocs and flexible alignments
Traditional alliances like NATO or the US-Japan security treaty remain central to the Western camp. But alongside these, new groupings have emerged – some formal, some ad hoc, many overlapping. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is the most visible example. Initially a loose economic label, it has evolved into a political platform that, in 2024, expanded to include countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE. Together, the enlarged BRICS could represent more than 40% of global oil production and a growing share of global GDP in purchasing power parity.
On the security and technology side, the picture is different. The QUAD (US, Japan, India, Australia) focuses on Indo-Pacific security and maritime issues. AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) is centered on nuclear-powered submarines and advanced defense technologies. Meanwhile, regional players experiment with “multi-alignment”: India buys weapons from Russia, partners with the US in the Indo-Pacific, and joins Western efforts on critical supply chains, all while sitting in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Gulf monarchies hedge between Washington and Beijing, signing long-term oil deals in yuan while maintaining security ties with the US. The old question “Which bloc are you in?” is being replaced by “On which topic are you aligned with whom?”
Energy, trade and currency: hard levers of new influence
Energy has always been political, but the last few years have made this explicit. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions regime triggered a radical reconfiguration of Europe’s gas supplies. In 2021, Russia covered around 40% of EU gas imports; by 2023, that share had collapsed, replaced by LNG from the US, Qatar and others. Moscow redirected flows to Asia at discounted prices, tightening its energy links with China and India. OPEC+ (OPEC plus Russia and allies) has used coordinated production cuts to manage prices and signal its autonomy from Western agendas, especially around climate and price caps.
Trade is undergoing a similar politicisation. The US-China trade war, initiated in 2018, has escalated into a long-term decoupling in strategic sectors: tariffs, export controls on advanced semiconductors, restrictions on investment, and scrutiny of supply chains in solar, batteries and critical minerals. The new keyword is “de-risking” rather than full “decoupling”: companies and states try to reduce dependency on any single supplier or route, even at higher cost. Vietnam, Mexico, India and Eastern Europe are among the main beneficiaries of this partial reconfiguration of value chains.
On the currency front, talk of “de-dollarisation” has intensified. The US dollar still accounts for nearly 60% of global foreign exchange reserves and over 80% of forex transactions, according to the BIS. But more trade is being invoiced in euros, yuan or local currencies, particularly between Russia, China and their partners. BRICS countries have discussed alternative payment systems to SWIFT and, in some cases, use local currencies for energy deals. None of this dethrones the dollar overnight, but it fragments the monetary landscape and creates pockets of influence where Western financial sanctions are less effective.
Technology alliances: chips, AI and digital sovereignty
If energy is the fuel of the industrial age, chips and data are the fuel of the digital one. Here too, alliances are shifting fast. The US has built a coalition (Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, among others) to restrict the export of cutting-edge semiconductor equipment to China. Washington’s CHIPS and Science Act, worth around $52 billion in incentives, aims to reshore or “friend-shore” chip production. The EU Chips Act targets 20% of global chip manufacturing by 2030. Japan and South Korea negotiate both as rivals and partners in this race.
China, for its part, pours tens of billions into its domestic semiconductor sector, accelerates its AI capabilities and expands its digital footprint via companies like Huawei, Alibaba Cloud or TikTok’s parent ByteDance. Many emerging economies now face a choice: whose 5G infrastructure to deploy, whose cloud to use, whose cybersecurity standards to adopt? The decision is rarely purely technical. It comes with long-term lock-in, data flows, and sometimes explicit political strings.
Digital sovereignty has become a central policy goal. The EU’s GDPR set a global benchmark for data protection. Its upcoming AI Act could similarly shape how AI is developed and deployed worldwide. China’s data laws, the US debate on platform regulation, India’s data localisation policies – all of these build competing normative frameworks. The “rules of the game” in tech are no longer negotiated in neutral forums but emerge from regulatory competition between blocs.
Information, narratives and the battle for attention
Power is not only about tanks, pipelines or chips; it is also about narratives. Who gets to define what counts as “development”, “security” or “democracy”? In the past, Western media and institutions dominated this symbolic space. Today, Russian, Chinese, Qatari and Turkish media, among others, offer alternative narratives in multiple languages. Social platforms further fragment the information ecosystem, amplifying disinformation but also allowing new voices to emerge.
Conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza or the South China Sea are fought both on the ground and online. Hashtags, viral videos and carefully crafted leaks shape public perceptions and, indirectly, political decisions. States invest heavily in digital diplomacy, troll farms, influence campaigns and content platforms. At the same time, citizens and NGOs use the same tools to document abuses or organise boycotts. The balance of power in this domain is less about raw GDP and more about agility, credibility and control of key platforms.
Implications for businesses and investors
For companies, this new landscape is not an abstract geopolitical chessboard. It translates into concrete risks and opportunities that have to be managed at board level. Supply chains, financing, compliance, talent – almost every strategic dimension is now exposed to alliance politics. Ignoring geopolitics has become a luxury very few firms can afford.
Several trends stand out:
- Regulatory fragmentation: Firms must comply with diverging regimes on data, AI, competition, sanctions and export controls. A product or service acceptable in one bloc may be restricted or heavily scrutinised in another.
- Supply-chain rewiring: “China+1” strategies, nearshoring to Mexico or Eastern Europe, and diversification into Southeast Asia are no longer limited to manufacturing; they extend to services, R&D and digital infrastructure.
- Financing constraints: Sanctions, investment screening (CFIUS in the US, similar regimes in the EU, UK, Australia) and reputational risks limit access to certain markets, partners or technologies.
- Energy and commodity volatility: Production cuts, embargoes or new alliances around critical minerals (lithium, cobalt, rare earths) can disrupt pricing and availability within months.
- Reputational and ESG pressures: Operating in conflict zones or authoritarian contexts is scrutinised by investors, employees and consumers, especially when supply chains touch forced labour, surveillance or environmental damage.
In this context, “geopolitical due diligence” becomes as essential as financial or legal due diligence. Multinationals build in-house risk intelligence teams, subscribe to political risk analyses, and integrate scenario planning into their strategy. Investors reassess country risk profiles not just on macroeconomic fundamentals but on alliance dynamics: a state’s position vis-à-vis the US, China or Russia can affect access to capital, markets and technology overnight.
How states are rewriting the rules of influence
Governments themselves are learning to operate in this more complex environment. Instead of stable blocs with clear red lines, they navigate a mosaic of overlapping forums: G7, G20, BRICS, ASEAN, African Union, Gulf Cooperation Council, various trade agreements and security partnerships. Influence is built less through one grand alliance and more through a dense network of selective commitments.
Middle powers – countries like Türkiye, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, the UAE or Mexico – use this fluidity to increase their bargaining power. By positioning themselves as indispensable hubs (for energy, logistics, finance or mediation), they extract concessions from larger powers and shape regional norms. For instance, Turkey leverages its NATO membership, its control of the Bosphorus and its role in drone exports to negotiate on multiple fronts. The UAE mixes sovereign wealth investments, logistics infrastructure (DP World) and diplomatic activism to punch above its demographic weight.
At the same time, competition between major powers pushes them to offer more: infrastructure financing, vaccine donations, security guarantees, technology transfer, climate funding. The G7’s “Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment”, the EU’s “Global Gateway” and China’s evolving BRI can be read as competing offers to the Global South – each with its own conditions, timelines and political expectations.
Practical levers for companies and policymakers
Faced with this moving landscape, what can economic actors actually do? Three sets of levers stand out: anticipation, diversification and influence.
1. Anticipation. Businesses and public agencies need better early-warning systems. That means combining quantitative indicators (trade flows, sanctions lists, election calendars, military incidents) with qualitative intelligence (local partners, sector associations, think tanks). Boards should regularly test their strategies against “what if” scenarios: What if a key strait is blocked? What if a major market faces secondary sanctions? What if export controls are extended to a new technology?
2. Diversification. Over-optimising for cost or efficiency in a single geography is becoming a strategic vulnerability. Diversification does not mean abandoning China or any other major market, but building redundancy: alternative suppliers, multiple logistics routes, dual or multi-sourcing for critical components, and financial buffers to absorb shocks. In practice, this often involves:
- Developing regional production hubs closer to end markets.
- Splitting IT architectures or data storage to comply with local rules.
- Structuring contracts with clear force majeure and sanctions clauses.
- Mapping second- and third-tier suppliers, not just direct ones.
3. Influence. Companies are not passive victims of geopolitics. Through business associations, standard-setting bodies and public-private partnerships, they can help shape the emerging rules. This requires transparency about interests, robust compliance frameworks, and the ability to engage with multiple regulators without being captured by any single political camp. For policymakers, working closely with the private sector can turn national strategies (on energy, tech, skills) into credible offers in the global marketplace of alliances.
A more complex, but also more open, global game
The end of the unipolar moment has made the world less predictable and, in some areas, more dangerous. Military tensions, trade wars, sanctions and information battles impose real costs on economies and societies. But this diffusion of power also opens space for new actors, new coalitions and more plural visions of development and governance. The rules of global influence are no longer written in one or two capitals and exported to the rest of the world; they are contested, adapted and sometimes reinvented in Nairobi, São Paulo, Jakarta or Riyadh.
For businesses, investors and citizens, the key is not to wait for a new “stable order” that may never come. It is to accept that fluidity is the new normal, and to build strategies – economic, technological, diplomatic – that are resilient, adaptable and informed. In a world of shifting alliances, the most valuable asset may not be sheer size or even capital, but the ability to read the map as it changes, and to move before the tectonic plates lock into place.
