Much of the debate surrounding the global economy continues to treat the succession of crises since 2020 as a prolonged disruption to an otherwise familiar order. The pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the global energy crisis, the return of industrial policy, renewed tariffs, export controls and the accelerating technological rivalry between the United States and China are often analysed as discrete events, each demanding its own policy response.

Viewed together, however, they suggest something more consequential. They point not simply to a period of heightened geopolitical instability, but to the gradual replacement of the strategic assumptions that underpinned globalization itself.

For more than three decades, the international economy rested on a relatively stable bargain. Economic interdependence was expected to reinforce political stability, while global markets rewarded efficiency above all else. Production migrated to wherever costs were lowest, energy security became synonymous with access to global markets and technological innovation flourished within increasingly integrated supply chains. Governments accepted a growing degree of strategic dependence because the economic dividends appeared to outweigh the political risks.

That calculus is now being reassessed. The shift is frequently described as a move from globalization towards fragmentation. While not inaccurate, this framing risks obscuring what is actually changing. The defining feature of the emerging order is not fragmentation as an end in itself, but the elevation of economic security to a first-order policy objective. Efficiency has not disappeared as an economic imperative; it has been subordinated to considerations of........

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