The Contours of 21st-Century Geopolitics Will Become Clearer in 2026: A New World Is Starting to Emerge

The world stands at an inflection point. As 2026 unfolds, the post-Cold War order that shaped global affairs for three decades is giving way to something fundamentally different. This isn’t just another year of geopolitical tensions—it’s the moment when the emerging world order crystallizes into recognizable contours, reshaping how businesses operate, how nations interact, and how power itself is distributed across the planet.

The evidence is everywhere. Nearly 75% of CEOs have either localized or are localizing some part of their production within the country of sale, while just over half are reorganizing supply chains to serve particular regional blocs. The multipolar world has solidified, and 2026 will be the year we see its architecture clearly defined.

The Architecture of a New World Order

Three fundamental shifts are converging to create this new geopolitical landscape. First, economic sovereignty has replaced free-market globalization as the dominant paradigm. Second, technological competition—particularly in artificial intelligence and semiconductors—has become inseparable from national security. Third, resource geopolitics centered on critical minerals and energy is redefining which nations hold strategic leverage.

These aren’t isolated trends. They’re interconnected forces creating what analysts call a “geopolitics of scarcity” where access to technology, minerals, and capital will determine winners and losers in the 21st century. For business leaders, policymakers, and investors, understanding these dynamics isn’t optional—it’s existential.

Economic Realignment: The End of Rules-Based Trade

The architecture of global commerce is undergoing its most dramatic transformation since the establishment of the Bretton Woods system in 1944. The world economy isn’t collapsing, but it is fundamentally reorganizing around new principles where national security trumps economic efficiency.

Key Takeaways:

• Economic sovereignty has replaced free-market efficiency as the organizing principle of global trade
• BRICS expansion to 11 members accounting for 40% of global GDP signals genuine power redistribution
• China controls 70% average market share in refining 19 of 20 critical minerals, creating strategic vulnerabilities
• AI and technological competition have become inseparable from national security concerns
• 75% of CEOs are localizing production, reflecting permanent supply chain restructuring
• Multipolarity is creating overlapping regional blocs rather than a return to Cold War bipolarity
• Investment must now incorporate geopolitical risk analysis as central to decision-making

The Dawn of Economic Blocs

The BRICS bloc now accounts for 40% of the global economy measured by purchasing power parity, with projections rising to 41% in 2025. The group’s expansion to eleven full members—including Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates—represents more than geopolitical posturing. It signals a wholesale reconfiguration of trade flows, investment patterns, and financial architecture.

But BRICS expansion is just one dimension of this fragmentation. With the 2025 expansion, the BRICS group is forecast to account for 58% of GDP growth from 2024 to 2029, while the G7’s share of GDP growth is expected to decline to around 25%. This isn’t merely about emerging markets growing faster—it’s about structural power shifting from the traditional centers of global capitalism.

The North American operating environment exemplifies these tensions. The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) review is reshaping regional supply chains, forcing companies to recalculate decades of cross-border investment. Meanwhile, Europe faces its own reckoning as internal divisions deepen over defense spending, energy policy, and fiscal coordination.

De-Dollarization: Threat or Mirage?

Perhaps no trend captures more attention—or generates more confusion—than efforts to challenge the US dollar’s dominance. BRICS has launched initiatives like BRICS Pay and the BRICS Bridge to facilitate trade in local currencies and bypass SWIFT, with a new BRICS currency backed by commodities like gold and oil under discussion.

The reality is more nuanced than the headlines suggest. The dollar still accounts for nearly half of global payments and maintains unmatched liquidity and legal certainty. However, the direction of travel is unmistakable. Russia and India settling oil transactions in rupees, China expanding yuan-denominated trade, and multiple nations building payment systems outside the dollar infrastructure—these moves represent incremental but irreversible shifts.

For businesses, this creates immediate complexity. Companies must now navigate multiple currency zones, maintain relationships with banks in different jurisdictions, and hedge against currency risks that were previously negligible. The era of frictionless dollar-based global commerce is ending.

Trade Policy as Weapon

Governments are enacting new trade policies—including tariffs, export controls and local content requirements—to mandate or incentivize companies to modify existing supply chains and trade patterns. What began as targeted measures has evolved into comprehensive industrial strategies where every major economy is using trade tools to reshape domestic manufacturing.

The International Monetary Fund projects global growth at 3.2% in 2025 and 3.1% in 2026—below the pre-pandemic average of 3.7%. This slower growth reflects the friction costs of fragmenting supply chains. Companies face higher expenses, longer lead times, and reduced economies of scale. Yet these inefficiencies are deemed acceptable costs for enhanced economic security.

Technological Sovereignty: The New Strategic Frontier

If the 20th century’s geopolitical battles were fought over territory and resources, the 21st century’s defining contests will be won or lost in the realm of technology. And 2026 is when this competition intensifies to unprecedented levels.

The AI Arms Race Accelerates

Governments are increasingly treating AI assets as a national security priority and an important piece of critical infrastructure, with AI serving as a force multiplier of cyber conflicts. This transformation from commercial technology to strategic asset has profound implications.

The United States and China dominate this landscape, but their approaches diverge sharply. America relies on private-sector innovation led by tech giants, while China pursues state-directed development with tighter integration between commercial and military applications. DeepSeek’s surprise emergence in January 2025—releasing a reasoning model competitive with the most advanced US systems but at significantly lower development costs—demonstrated that assumptions about insurmountable American leads were premature.

For businesses, AI competition creates a minefield of compliance requirements. Export controls determine which companies can access cutting-edge chips. Data localization laws restrict where AI training can occur. Governments impose requirements on which AI systems can be deployed in critical infrastructure. The result is what analysts call a “two-speed AI ecosystem”: giants capable of navigating regulatory complexity across jurisdictions, and smaller firms confined to single markets or dependent on platforms controlled by others.

The Semiconductor Chokepoint

Nothing illustrates technological interdependence—and vulnerability—more starkly than semiconductors. Taiwan produces the majority of the world’s most advanced chips. The Netherlands’ ASML holds a near-monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography machines essential for cutting-edge production. The United States dominates chip design and specialized manufacturing equipment.

This concentration creates acute geopolitical risk. Any disruption to Taiwan’s production would cascade through global supply chains, affecting everything from smartphones to fighter jets. Nations are responding with massive investment in domestic semiconductor manufacturing, but building fabs requires years and faces immense technical barriers.

Water scarcity adds another dimension. Data centers and semiconductor manufacturing consume vast quantities of water. As freshwater scarcity grows worldwide and demand for water increases for semiconductor manufacturing and cooling data centers, more water rights conflicts will arise. Geography and geology—not just technology and capital—will determine which nations can sustain advanced manufacturing.

Digital Sovereignty and Data Balkanization

The free flow of data that underpinned the digital economy is fragmenting into national and regional silos. The European Union’s data protection regime, China’s cybersecurity laws, and emerging frameworks across dozens of countries create incompatible requirements for how data is collected, processed, and stored.

This “splinternet” imposes real costs. Companies must maintain separate infrastructure for different markets. Cloud providers face restrictions on where they can locate data centers and which customers they can serve. The seamless global digital infrastructure of the 2010s is being replaced by a patchwork of national digital territories.

Critical Minerals: The New Oil

Energy dominated geopolitics for a century. In 2026, critical minerals are assuming that role—with even higher stakes because alternatives are scarcer and concentration is more extreme.

China’s Commanding Heights

For 19 out of 20 important strategic minerals, China is the leading refiner with an average market share of 70%. This dominance extends beyond refining to manufacturing. China’s share of sintered permanent magnet production—magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, industrial motors, data centers and defense systems—has risen from around 50% two decades ago to 94% today.

Beijing has demonstrated willingness to weaponize this control. In April 2025, China introduced export controls on seven heavy rare earth elements. By October, these controls expanded to include five additional elements and equipment for processing rare earths. Most significantly, from December 2025 onward, controls extend to internationally manufactured products containing Chinese-sourced materials or technologies.

The implications are staggering. Defense contractors, automotive manufacturers, renewable energy companies, and consumer electronics firms all depend on supply chains that flow through China. Even when minerals are mined elsewhere, they typically travel to China for refining and processing.

The Race for Diversification

Between 2020 and 2024, growth in refined material production was heavily concentrated among leading suppliers, with the average market share of the top three refining nations of key energy minerals rising from around 82% in 2020 to 86% in 2024. Concentration is increasing, not decreasing, despite years of stated diversification goals.

The obstacles are formidable. Building a rare earth processing facility requires years of permitting, billions in investment, and expertise concentrated in a handful of companies. Environmental regulations in many countries make domestic processing challenging. The economics favor continuing reliance on Chinese infrastructure even as the geopolitical risks mount.

Countries are pursuing multiple strategies. The United States signed an $8.5 billion rare earths agreement with Australia. Africa’s cobalt-copper belt in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia is seeing expanded investment. Gulf states are positioning themselves as critical partners through infrastructure investments across multiple continents.

Yet even aggressive expansion may not bear fruit quickly enough. Given the long lead times for development of critical mineral mining, processing and manufacturing assets, even aggressive expansion of new, de-risked supply chain activity may not yet protect the United States from a severe supply chain disruption.

Resource Nationalism and Strategic Stockpiling

Producing nations are asserting greater control over their mineral wealth. In February 2025, the Democratic Republic of Congo announced a four-month suspension of cobalt exports to curb falling prices. More than half of energy-related minerals now face some form of export controls.

This resource nationalism creates a paradox: nations seeking to secure supply chains face restrictions from the very countries they’re trying to partner with. The result is a complex negotiation where access to minerals is traded for technology transfer, infrastructure investment, and geopolitical alignment.

Institutional Reordering: From Multilateralism to Minilateralism

The international institutions built after World War II and expanded after the Cold War are struggling to adapt to this multipolar reality. 2026 will see these pressures intensify as nations seek alternatives that better reflect current power distributions.

The BRICS Alternative

The New Development Bank is expected to play a key role in providing investment flows into BRICS countries through loans and credit arrangements that may be given at relatively modest interest rates and near condition-free financing. This represents an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, institutions often criticized for imposing stringent conditions.

The BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, with $100 billion in capital, provides emergency liquidity without requiring countries to first seek IMF assistance. These parallel institutions don’t replace Western-dominated frameworks, but they provide options that didn’t exist a decade ago.

Regional Blocs Strengthen

While global institutions fracture, regional frameworks are gaining strength. The African Continental Free Trade Area creates a market of 1.3 billion people. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership links fifteen Asia-Pacific economies. The European Union, despite internal tensions, remains the world’s largest single market.

These regional architectures will be the building blocks of the emerging order. Rather than a single global system, we’re moving toward overlapping regional spheres with variable geometry—some nations participating in multiple blocs, others forced to choose between incompatible frameworks.

Middle Powers Navigate

Countries like South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the UAE face a delicate balancing act. They seek to maintain economic relationships with both China and the West while avoiding being forced into binary choices. ASEAN countries are particularly adept at this balancing approach due to their intertwined commercial and strategic interests with both Washington and Beijing.

This “strategic autonomy” represents a distinct approach from Cold War non-alignment. These nations aren’t staying neutral—they’re actively engaging with multiple power centers, extracting concessions and maintaining flexibility. The success of this strategy depends on major powers tolerating such flexibility rather than demanding exclusive alignment.

Energy Transition Meets Geopolitical Reality

The transformation of global energy systems is accelerating even as geopolitical fragmentation complicates the transition. This creates tensions between climate ambitions and national security imperatives.

The Green Energy Paradox

Renewable energy reduces dependence on oil and gas but creates new dependencies on critical minerals and manufacturing capacity. Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicle batteries require materials that flow through concentrated supply chains. The energy transition, rather than reducing geopolitical competition, is redirecting it toward new chokepoints.

With Saudi Arabia, Iran, and UAE as BRICS members, the bloc now controls over 40% of global crude oil production and produces 32% of global natural gas output. Traditional energy producers aren’t being displaced—they’re repositioning themselves for the new energy landscape while maintaining leverage from hydrocarbon production.

Petrostates Pivot

Gulf nations are using oil revenues to invest heavily in renewable energy, positioning themselves as future clean energy hubs. The UAE’s massive solar installations and green hydrogen projects exemplify this strategy. These investments aren’t just about diversification—they’re about maintaining geopolitical relevance in a decarbonizing world.

Russia and Iran face different calculations. Heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports and facing sanctions, they have fewer options for managed transition. This creates potential for disruption if energy markets shift faster than these economies can adapt.

What This Means for Business

The emerging world order fundamentally changes how companies must operate. The era of optimizing purely for efficiency is over. Resilience, redundancy, and regional adaptation are now strategic imperatives.

Supply Chain Transformation

Companies cannot rely on single-source suppliers, even if they offer the lowest costs. Building resilient supply chains means accepting higher expenses and reduced margins in exchange for greater security. The 75% of CEOs localizing production represents recognition that globalization’s golden age has ended.

This doesn’t mean complete de-globalization. Rather, it’s “selective reglobalization”—maintaining international networks while building regional capabilities and reducing critical dependencies. The challenge is identifying which components require local sourcing and which can remain globally sourced.

Navigating Regulatory Complexity

Businesses face conflicting requirements across jurisdictions. Export controls, data localization, local content rules, and cybersecurity mandates often contradict each other. Companies need compliance architectures that can adapt to rapidly changing rules while maintaining operational continuity.

Small and medium enterprises face particular challenges. The cost of navigating multiple regulatory regimes may exceed their capacity, forcing difficult choices between markets or dependence on larger platforms.

Investment Priorities Shift

Capital allocation must now incorporate geopolitical risk analysis alongside traditional financial metrics. Questions that were once peripheral—political stability, resource security, regulatory trajectory—are now central to investment decisions.

The IMF projects global growth at 3.2% in 2025 and 3.1% in 2026, with advanced economies expected to grow around 1.5-1.6% while emerging markets hold above 4%. This divergence reflects the structural shift toward emerging economies even as mature markets face the costs of adjustment.

The Year Ahead: Five Critical Developments

As 2026 progresses, several key developments will clarify the emerging order’s contours:

1. US-China Coexistence Framework: Despite competition, both powers recognize the need for managed coexistence. Trade agreements and summit outcomes will signal whether they can establish predictable parameters or whether relations deteriorate further.

2. BRICS Institutional Deepening: The bloc will test whether its expanded membership can translate into effective coordination. Progress on payment systems, the New Development Bank’s lending, and joint infrastructure projects will indicate whether BRICS becomes a functional alternative or remains primarily symbolic.

3. Critical Minerals Diplomacy: Deals between major economies and resource-rich nations will reveal which partnerships can actually deliver diversified supply chains. The gap between announced agreements and operational supply is the measure that matters.

4. AI Governance Fragmentation: Attempts at harmonized AI standards will collide with national security imperatives. The AI Action Summit outcomes will show whether any degree of international coordination is possible or whether complete fragmentation is inevitable.

5. Regional Bloc Consolidation: Economic integration within regions—Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America—will either accelerate or stall based on whether nations can overcome internal divisions and present coherent alternatives to China or Western-led frameworks.

Preparing for the Post-2026 World

The multipolar world emerging in 2026 won’t be stable or comfortable. It will be characterized by persistent tensions, periodic crises, and the constant need to adapt to shifting alignments. Yet it also creates opportunities for those who can navigate complexity.

For Business Leaders

Success requires abandoning assumptions of stable global rules and embracing radical flexibility. Scenario planning must incorporate geopolitical disruptions as baseline expectations rather than tail risks. Building optionality—alternative suppliers, regional operations, flexible logistics—becomes as important as optimizing existing operations.

Partnerships with governments will be essential. Companies that align with national priorities on supply chain resilience, technology development, or resource security will find support. Those that resist state priorities will face increasing pressure.

For Policymakers

The challenge is managing competition without triggering outright conflict. Maintaining channels for dialogue, establishing guardrails for rivalry, and finding areas for cooperation even amid strategic competition will determine whether multipolarity leads to relative stability or devastating confrontation.

Middle powers have particular opportunities and responsibilities. By maintaining connections across blocs and refusing to accept false binaries, they can preserve some degree of system-wide integration even as major powers pursue strategic separation.

For Investors

Understanding geopolitical trajectories becomes as crucial as analyzing balance sheets. Sectors like defense, cybersecurity, semiconductor manufacturing, and critical minerals processing will see sustained investment regardless of short-term market conditions. Companies with regional footprints matching emerging bloc structures will outperform those tied to fading global models.

Conclusion: A World Being Remade

The contours of 21st-century geopolitics are indeed becoming clearer in 2026, but clarity doesn’t mean simplicity. We’re witnessing the most significant restructuring of the international system since the Cold War ended—arguably since the post-World War II order was established.

This isn’t returning to Cold War bipolarity. The multipolar world taking shape is more fluid, with multiple centers of power, overlapping institutions, and nations maintaining diverse relationships across blocs. Technology rather than ideology drives competition, though values still matter. Economic interdependence hasn’t disappeared but is being restructured around security concerns.

As Morgan Stanley describes 2026: “The Year of Risk Reboot,” a period where market focus shifts from macro anxieties to micro fundamentals. Yet underneath that shift, the fundamental architecture of global commerce, technology, and power continues its dramatic transformation.

For decades, globalization seemed inevitable—an unstoppable force of markets and technology integration. Now we understand it was a particular configuration of geopolitical conditions that has ended. What replaces it will be shaped by the choices leaders make in 2026 and the years immediately following.

The new world emerging isn’t inherently worse than what came before, but it will be different in fundamental ways. Success in this environment requires understanding that change, accepting its permanence, and adapting strategies accordingly. Those who cling to the old world’s assumptions will find themselves increasingly unable to operate effectively. Those who recognize the new contours and position themselves accordingly will find opportunities others miss.

2026 is the year the fog lifts and we see the new landscape clearly. What we do with that clarity will determine whether this transition leads to a more balanced international system or to deeper instability. The choice isn’t whether to accept this new world—it’s already here. The question is how we navigate it.