Smaller states and non-state actors will also seize opportunities to redraw boundaries or form part of a geopolitically plural world. The war in Ukraine and the escalating geopolitical conflicts in other parts of the world may be just the beginning.
Reduce risk in your global supply chain
The second feature of geopolitics in 2024 is risk mitigation. The COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have challenged countries’ global dependencies and achieving resilience in just-in-time, globalized supply chains, especially when production is concentrated in a few markets. highlighted the current issues.
Governments have responded by resuming or increasing their reliance on industrial policy. They are trying to push for increased domestic production of critical products. In certain markets, geopolitical competition is already built into these industrial policies. The year ahead is likely to see more of these clear connections between economic policy, foreign policy, and national security policy.
Countries compete to innovate and regulate AI
Building on the momentum of 2023, the geopolitics of AI will become more important in 2024. Governments will rush to regulate AI to reduce the potential for sociopolitical risks. But policymakers will also seek to foster domestic AI innovation to win geopolitical competition. As a result, AI will become a central dynamic in US-China relations. In 2024, dual competition over AI innovation and regulation will accelerate the transition to different geopolitical blocs.
The ocean occupies an important position in geopolitical strategy
But 2024 will also be different in some important ways. Maritime geopolitics will feature more prominently in the global zeitgeist. The oceans are home to 94% of all life on Earth and are an increasingly important economic and national security resource. A staggering 90% of global merchandise trade is transported by sea, but many of the world’s busiest maritime routes are at risk of geopolitical turmoil. And deep sea mining is projected to account for at least a third of the supply of critical minerals needed for the energy transition. Companies need to consider ocean geopolitics when setting supply chains and sustainability strategies.
Elections are held simultaneously in all regions
And 2024 will be an election year. We call it the Global Election Supercycle. Voters will go to the polls in a market that accounts for about 54% of the world’s population and nearly 60% of global GDP. This creates regulatory and policy uncertainty in the short and medium term. With competing visions for international relations and economic policies that fundamentally impact the global business environment, some elections, particularly in the US and EU, are seen as the most influential in decades. Maybe.
Geostrategic Outlook 2024
Current events are disrupting the geopolitical outlook and raising the risk of further significant conflict escalation in the year ahead. But what is clear is that geopolitics has become a plural world. This means overlapping bilateral, regional, and other types of institutional groupings, and a complex mix of alliances and conflicts. These dynamics, along with more countries heading to the polls in 2024 than in any year in recent history, increase the potential for geopolitical surprises in 2024, both on the downside and on the upside. There is.
AI and ocean geopolitics are just two of the top 10 geopolitical developments in the 2024 Geostrategic Outlook. Geostrategic Business Group selected these developments because they are most likely to have a significant impact on organizations across sectors and geographies in 2024. As executives look to anticipate and plan for geopolitical disruption, it will be important to keep two key themes in mind in 2024. The first theme is multipolarity. This is because geopolitical power becomes more dispersed as competition increases between blocs or alliance networks. The second is risk aversion, with countries’ policy stances aimed at reducing global dependence and prioritizing national security (broadly defined) over purely economic considerations.
