Provenance
This standalone page was migrated from the February 2026 compendium corpus.
What is predicted: The post-1945 US-led unipolar system is fragmenting into distinct economic-security blocs, not because of ideological choice but because five-factor constraints force nations into regional partnerships based on material complementarity. Political agreements will be subordinated to economic survival logic.
Evidence supporting: Trade data confirms reorganization along alliance lines. US-Mexico trade hit records in 2024-2025, consistent with nearshoring logic. ASEAN internal trade is growing as China-displaced manufacturing relocates to Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. The EU is pursuing Open Strategic Autonomy across all five-factor dimensions simultaneously. The BRICS+ expansion (2024) added Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and Indonesia, explicitly positioning itself as an alternative economic governance framework. China-Russia trade volumes have surged since 2022, with settlement increasingly in renminbi. CSIS, Brookings, and the IMF all document a pattern of “fragmentation” or “reglobalization along alliance lines” rather than continued integration.
Evidence against: The strongest counterargument is the “reglobalization” thesis documented in Research 08. Trade volumes are not collapsing; they are reorganizing. US-China direct trade has fallen but intermediary trade (via Vietnam, Mexico) has surged, suggesting supply chains are lengthening, not breaking. The WTO 2025 outlook notes resilient global trade, and digital trade is accelerating regardless of physical goods flows. True autarky is economically suicidal — modern technology products require inputs so diverse that no nation can control the entire stack. The “bloc” framing may overstate the hardness of boundaries; many nations (India, Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia) are explicitly pursuing “multi-alignment” strategies that resist bloc membership. Cross-bloc interdependence in critical inputs remains deep, contradicting hard segmentation predictions.
Falsification criteria: If countries continue deep cross-bloc interdependence in critical inputs rather than hard bloc segmentation through 2030, multipolar economic partition is overstated. Specifically: (1) Global trade-to-GDP ratios re-expand materially by 2028. (2) Cross-border portfolio allocation breadth increases rather than contracts. (3) Major “swing states” (India, Turkey, Indonesia) successfully maintain deep economic ties with both US-aligned and China-aligned blocs without being forced to choose.
Timeline and testability: Partially testable now, fully testable over a 5-10 year window. Trade data, FDI flows, and reserve currency composition provide continuous signals.
Current assessment: On track directionally, but the “economic necessity” framing understates the degree to which blocs remain porous and multi-aligned strategies persist. The prediction would be more precise if it specified “regionalization with persistent cross-bloc leakage” rather than “bloc consolidation.”