The Rise of the Chief Geopolitics Officer?

The Centrality of Geopolitics to Commercial success

Much has been written about the collapse of the post-WW2 world order.  Much more will be written about whether a return to fragmentation, de-globalisation and the undermining of trust in global institutions is a deliberate strategy, or is merely collateral damage for the MAGA movement.  But what is incontrovertible is that the certainties which have governed international relations for the last 80 years have gone. Instability has replaced reliable certainties. Europe can no longer take the American security umbrella for granted.  The Rule of Law and faith in its supporting international institutions is no longer indisputable.  International economic cooperation and liberalised markets have been replaced by trade wars and protectionism.  Might, rather than right is the order of the day as we regress to a doctrine which most closely resembles that of the 19th Century Spheres of Influence.  

With geopolitics suddenly crashing into every board and living room across the globe, dictating, as it does so, the price and availability of everything from food to furs, it is not surprising to see the former US Treasury Official Dane Alivarius urging all companies to create a new role of “Chief Geopolitics Officer (CGO) to navigate the increasingly blurred lines between commerce and statecraft” where the “referees [i.e. governments] have changed the rules”.

The reason for the sudden importance of understanding geopolitics is the erratic Trump juggernaut. The post-WW2 world order, which prioritised liberalised and rational economies and a rules-based international system over the volatility of politics, has been upended.  Even if someelements of President Trump’s trade war have been walked back by its collision with economic reality, his economic policy remains shocking to the international investment community precisely because it is so at odds with the long-accepted standards of neoliberal economics: politics has leap-frogged economics to suddenly take the driving seat in the US.  

Rational economic and political behaviour has been replaced by an obsessive focus on rivalry and relative position in the global pecking order. In the US, resistance to the prospect of it its economy being surpassed by China’s has led Trump to withdraw American willingness to cooperate on the international stage, legitimising a disregard for the international norms deemed to stand in the way of national primacy.  The US is not alone in this shift of approach. Globally, the breakdown of respect, trust and cooperation has accelerated, aided by an increasingly broad definition of national security (think semi-conductors or rare-earth minerals) that is used to justify a political readiness to sacrifice long-term political stability and economic prosperity in order to gain short-term domestic political advantage.

But President Trump’s America-first political agenda is not an isolated example of nationalist populism.  It is part of a global phenomenon which has seen the political rise of the hard-right - Brexit and the EU’s focus on building its own ‘Strategic Autonomy’ are part of this political shift towards harder physical, trade and immigration barriers.

It is not merely coincidence that the rise of the hard-right has accelerated over the last decade: with the passing of each survivor of the Second World War, the hard-earned lessons ofthe dangers of nationalism are being forgotten. The understanding that cooperation and collaboration were better than rivalry and competition as tools for ensuring our collective welfare was the principle underlying the 1941 Atlantic Charter, and later the UN, the EU, the WTO the IMF and a host of other international institutions, which were created to avoid a return to the nationalist-inspired hostility that characterised the lead-up to the Second World War.  As we have allowed nationalism to become worryingly normalised in our collective modern political psyche, we have lost sight of the hard-won recognition that the surrender of alittle sovereignty is a small price to pay to enable all boats to float, creating the peaceful, stable conditions which have delivered the historic levels of prosperity and poverty reduction from which we have all benefitted over the last 80 years.

This change in attitude can be seen in the way that Governments are increasingly no longer just the ‘rule-makers’, who, once the rules are set, step aside leaving the private sector to deliver prosperity, economic growth and employment through regulated competition. Rather, Governments are becoming increasingly active players in the market, pursuing a transactional approach to international trade, using policy to skew economics and commerce for their political advantage.  

This is not ‘normal’ or comfortable territory for companies accustomed to operating in a world where rules-based economics were the driving force. Corporations find themselves plunged into a world where geopolitics has gained primacy over economics leading to irrational economic policies and behaviour becoming the norm.  In this new world, understanding the complex interplay between national security, trade, and industrial policy is a prerequisite for effective commercial leadership. Companies that recognize the inevitability of unexpected government intervention andtherefore make geopolitical considerations a key driver oftheir supply chain and growth strategies will gain a competitive advantage.

Which leads me back to the centrality of the Chief Geopolitics Officer.  As governments shift gear to become more interventionist, companies will need to play a new game with rules governed by politics.  That response will need to be both strategic and be political in nature. With the global shift towards protectionist economic nationalism likely to accelerate, the CGO will become a (probably the) key advisor to successful CEOs.  We might not like this new world.  We may look back with nostalgia on the comfortable era of the Washington Consensus.  But this new world is the new commercial reality: companies must adjust to it, or risk failure.