Strategic Risk Snapshot #10
Strategic Risk Snapshot provides focused insights into emerging geopolitical, regulatory and security developments shaping today’s global risk landscape.
Prepared by The Mentors, each edition highlights early signals and trends that may carry strategic implications for organisations operating in complex and high-risk environments.
The Fragmentation of Power: Why the Global Order Is Becoming Harder to Manage
The global order is not simply shifting from one dominant power to several. It is becoming more fragmented, more transactional and increasingly difficult to manage.
For decades, strategic decision-making was largely shaped by relatively stable blocs, alliances and institutions. Today, power is distributed across states, regional groupings, corporations, technology platforms, financial networks and increasingly influential non-state actors.
The result is not necessarily a world with less power.
It is a world where power is harder to identify, align and control.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 reflects this shift. Some 68% of respondents expect the global political environment over the next decade to become a “multipolar or fragmented order”, while only 6% anticipate a return to the previous rules-based international order.
From blocs to overlapping interests
The emerging system does not fit neatly into the old model of competing blocs.
Countries increasingly cooperate with one partner on security, another on trade, another on energy and another on technology. Middle powers are using this flexibility to increase their strategic room for manoeuvre, while major powers compete for influence across multiple domains simultaneously.
This creates a more fluid environment, but also a more difficult one for decision-makers.
An actor can be a partner in one area and a competitor in another.
A supply chain can be economically efficient but strategically vulnerable.
A technology platform can be commercially private while becoming relevant to national security.
A financial decision can have geopolitical consequences.
The boundaries between economic, political, technological and security risk are therefore becoming increasingly difficult to separate.
Fragmentation creates second-order risk
The greatest danger may not be fragmentation itself, but the consequences of fragmentation across interconnected systems.
Trade and financial fragmentation is already imposing significant economic costs. The World Economic Forum estimates that geopolitical fragmentation is costing the global economy between $213 billion and $307 billion annually, while adding pressure to global inflation.
But the strategic implications go further.
Fragmented systems can reduce transparency, weaken coordination and make collective responses slower precisely when speed matters most.
A geopolitical dispute can disrupt trade.
Trade restrictions can affect technology access.
Technology restrictions can affect defence capabilities.
Energy insecurity can alter political calculations.
Political instability can influence capital flows.
The risk therefore moves through systems rather than remaining inside a single category.
The rise of the strategic middle
One of the most important consequences of fragmentation is the growing importance of countries that are neither traditional superpowers nor passive followers.
Middle powers increasingly have the ability to choose, switch, hedge and negotiate.
They can participate in one coalition without fully joining another. They can diversify economic relationships while maintaining security partnerships elsewhere. They can use access to resources, geography, markets or technology as strategic leverage.
For major powers, this makes influence more difficult.
For smaller states and businesses, it creates both opportunity and exposure.
The question is no longer simply:
“Which side are you on?”
Increasingly, the question is:
“Which relationships can you maintain when the system itself is becoming less predictable?”
The management problem
Fragmentation also creates a problem of strategic coordination.
In a more integrated system, institutions and alliances provide mechanisms for communication, crisis management and collective action.
In a fragmented system, those mechanisms become weaker or more selective.
The risk is that decision-makers begin operating with different assumptions about rules, red lines and acceptable behaviour.
That increases the possibility of miscalculation.
It also creates space for actors willing to exploit ambiguity.
The result can be a form of strategic competition that remains below the threshold of open conflict but produces continuous pressure through sanctions, cyber operations, economic coercion, disinformation, supply-chain disruption and political influence.
The “grey zone” therefore becomes less of an exception and more of a permanent feature of the strategic environment.
What decision-makers should watch
The critical question is not whether fragmentation will continue.
It already is.
The strategic question is how far it will go, and where fragmentation begins to undermine the systems on which organisations depend.
Decision-makers should therefore watch for:
- Critical dependencies: Where does the organisation rely on a single country, supplier, technology or financial system?
- Alignment risk: Could a political shift suddenly change the reliability of an existing partner?
- Cross-domain exposure: Could a geopolitical dispute rapidly become a trade, cyber, energy or technology problem?
- Middle-power positioning: Which countries are becoming strategically important because they can influence multiple competing networks?
- Institutional weakness: Which international mechanisms are becoming less capable of managing disputes or coordinating responses?
- Second-order effects: What happens if a seemingly regional event moves through interconnected economic and technological systems?
The strategic takeaway
The next phase of global competition will not necessarily be defined by a single confrontation between great powers.
It may be defined by the interaction of many smaller confrontations across an increasingly fragmented system.
For organisations, governments and investors, this changes the nature of strategic risk.
Resilience can no longer mean simply preparing for disruption.
It means understanding where power sits, how relationships can change, and how quickly risk can move between systems.
The greatest strategic risk may no longer be instability itself, but the growing difficulty of knowing who has the power to influence it.
Strategic Risk Snapshot is a series by The Mentors, providing concise analysis of emerging geopolitical, security and operational risks that influence strategic decision-making in an increasingly complex global environment.
Prepared by The Mentors
Strategic Risk & Crisis Advisory
