By Sam Bayat
The world map has not changed much on paper, but if we coloured it by influence rather than borders, it would already look radically different.
An increasing number of analysts argue that the foundations of international relations and law are being reshaped in ways that challenge assumptions formed over recent decades. Globalisation is no longer expanding; in key respects, it is stalling or reversing. The ideal of frictionless borders, open capital flows, and predictable multilateral rules is giving way to reinforced national controls, trade barriers, and renewed assertions of state power.
For individuals and families with significant assets or who desire mobility and freedom, this shift is already visible in practice. The practical map, the one that determines where capital can move, where people can travel and which assets remain protected, is being redrawn in real time. The old presumption that a stable, rules-based global order would reliably safeguard cross-border wealth has eroded. In its place is a more volatile reality, in which sanctions, regulatory shocks, capital controls, asset freezes or sudden political upheaval can rapidly change what is permitted, accessible or secure. In this environment, genuine security increasingly rests on a single principle: preserving meaningful options for capital, families and future generations when the rules are changed overnight.
From rules to power politics and spheres of influence
A recent political caricature circulating on social media captures the spirit of the moment. In it, US, Russian and Chinese leaders each claim that Greenland, Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, are essential to their national security. The image is satirical, but the message is serious. It reflects an era in which actions once considered unthinkable are now framed as necessary, even defensive. It’s the old Condoleezza Rice, former US secretary of state, popularising preemptive strikes, or my motto, NPM (necessary precautionary measures – acting before you are forced to react). In each case, the justification is security. Yet the practical outcome is the same. Borders and norms that were once treated as fixed are increasingly open to contestation. What was previously governed by restraint and shared rules is now shaped more openly by leverage and power.
The United States is reasserting its traditional sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, taking a harder line toward regimes such as Venezuela and declaring that the Americas remain a strategic priority. Russia has demonstrated in Ukraine that, under the shadow of nuclear deterrence, borders can be redrawn and territory absorbed at enormous human cost. China, meanwhile, continues to test the limits in the Taiwan Strait, closely reading every statement and every silence from Washington and its allies as evidence of what may ultimately be tolerated.
This is not a return to Cold War binaries. It is something more fluid and less predictable: a world in which power assertions and shifting alliances, rather than agreed rules, determine outcomes. In philosophical terms, the international system is moving away from the power of justice toward the justice of power.
Carney’s message: The old order is not coming back
At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney offered a blunt assessment: the “old world order is not coming back.” Citing Thucydides’ observation that the strong do what they can while the weak suffer what they must, Carney highlighted a reality in which great powers increasingly pursue their interests with limited regard for the post-1945 frameworks that once constrained them.
He warned that economic integration is now routinely weaponised through sanctions, export controls, financial restrictions, and tariffs. In this environment, Carney argued, states must practice realism rather than nostalgia. His message was directed primarily at governments, especially middle powers such as Canada and European states. Yet the same logic applies beyond diplomacy. Affluent families and globally exposed companies that fail to position themselves deliberately within this fractured system risk having critical choices made for them.
Recent reports are backing Carney’s diagnosis. News that Washington is prepared to impose punitive tariffs, including the threat of 100 percent duties, should Canada proceed with a trade agreement with China that was reached during Carney’s visit to Beijing, further illustrates how economic relationships are increasingly treated as conditional instruments of strategic alignment. For middle powers, the space to balance commercial interests against geopolitical expectations is narrowing.
Carney’s remarks also challenged a long-held assumption: that the “West” still functions as a cohesive political and security bloc bound by shared norms and predictable coordination. Efforts to ease tensions following Davos, including reassurances from Washington regarding cooperation with Denmark and Europe over Greenland, have not dispelled the deeper unease now evident across transatlantic relations.
What is unfolding is a broader structural shift. The current US approach increasingly treats Europe less as a unified strategic partner and more as a collection of individual counterparts. Bilateral engagement with specific states is often favoured over coordination through European Union institutions, while the bloc itself remains subject to open criticism. These dynamics point to diverging priorities and reinforce the sense that Western alignment can no longer be taken for granted.
The fragmented world
The Greenland episode has further strained transatlantic relations at a time when unity was already being tested by differing approaches to Ukraine and Russia. Moscow has openly commented on the tensions with a mix of encouragement and caution, showing how the fractured West can be exploited by other powers.
As the United States clearly asserts its interests across the Western Hemisphere, reminiscent of the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine, several European powers still maintain sovereign territories in the region.
France manages overseas departments and collectivities such as French Guiana on the South American mainland, along with Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Barthélemy, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The Kingdom of the Netherlands oversees Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten as autonomous countries within the kingdom, along with the special municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba. The United Kingdom keeps sovereignty over Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Falkland Islands (Malvinas).
These arrangements are legal, longstanding, and often stable, but they are not immune to pressure. In several of these territories, latent sovereignty debates, whether over independence, shared governance, or external claims, could spark future standoffs, especially amid rising geopolitical competition.
These enduring sovereignty debates, combined with the broader return to realpolitik tactics, underscore the fragility of Western unity. This fragility is further illustrated by the reluctance of several key European governments to endorse the proposed Board of Peace, a US-backed initiative intended to coordinate ceasefire enforcement and post-conflict reconstruction in Gaza and potentially other conflict zones. Concerns have been raised that such mechanisms could bypass established multilateral institutions, including the United Nations, and concentrate excessive authority in a single chair.
What fragmentation means for wealthy families
For family offices, entrepreneurs and globally mobile professionals, these shifts are no longer abstract geopolitics; they are operational risks that affect how wealth is structured and protected. The most consequential risks today no longer stem solely from market volatility or economic cycles. They arise from being caught on the wrong side of a geopolitical or regulatory line that can shift faster than portfolios can be adjusted. Sanctions, capital controls, sudden changes in tax or residency law, and the increasing politicisation of banking and compliance have shown how quickly assets can be frozen, access restricted, or mobility curtailed.
In this environment, jurisdiction itself has become a strategic variable. Where assets are held, where companies are incorporated, where banking relationships sit and where families have legal residence now matter as much as what is owned. Many family offices have begun to treat jurisdiction as an asset class in its own right, moving away from single-centre structures toward diversified arrangements spanning multiple legal and political systems. A common approach combines exposure to North America or Europe with positions in the Gulf and carefully selected Asian or neutral jurisdictions, reducing reliance on any single bloc’s rules or priorities.
This reassessment often begins with an uncomfortable but necessary question: if a family’s primary country were to become politically contested, sanctioned, or unstable, as in Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Ukraine, or Taiwan at different moments, what practical options would remain the following day? For many, the answer is sobering. Passports, residency rights, banking access, and corporate structures are often concentrated within a single system, leaving families highly exposed if that system itself becomes part of the problem.
Insurance through jurisdictional diversification
As a result, mobility and legal optionality have taken on a new significance. Residency by Investment (RBI) and Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programmes, once viewed largely through the lens of convenience or lifestyle, are increasingly understood as instruments of resilience.
A second citizenship in a stable, rule-of-law jurisdiction is no longer simply a travel document. It can function as a contingency against exit taxes, compulsory service, currency controls or sudden travel restrictions. A well-structured residency strategy can anchor children’s education, secure access to healthcare and provide a physical safe harbour if regional tensions escalate.
When combined with diversified banking relationships, trusts, and holding structures across multiple jurisdictions, these mobility strategies create something that scarcely existed a generation ago: private sovereignty insurance. The objective is not to evade responsibility to any one country, but to ensure that no single political decision, sanctions regime, or regulatory shift can immobilise an entire family’s future. In a fragmented world, resilience increasingly lies in lawful redundancy: having more than one place to stand.
Redrawing individual and family maps
The practical challenge, then, is to redraw personal and corporate maps before geopolitical ones are redrawn by others. This process begins with a sober audit of existing exposure: where passports and residencies are held, where core assets are legally domiciled, which currencies dominate balance sheets, and how closely all of these elements align with a single political or security system. Families that discover all their critical interests sit within one jurisdictional orbit may find themselves far more vulnerable than they realised.
Families and family offices that wish to audit and rebalance their own “maps” should do so before the next shock, not after it. The exercise is not about predicting the exact shape of the next crisis, but about recognising how concentrated their current exposure may already be. A structured review of passports, residencies, holding structures and banking relationships often reveals where a single jurisdiction, currency or security system quietly dominates the picture. Once that reality is visible, it becomes possible to build lawful, measured redundancy – additional options rather than dramatic relocations – so that future geopolitical turns narrow choices less than they do today.
From there, a coherent strategy may involve acquiring an additional citizenship or long-term residence in a neutral or predictably governed state. It can also mean restructuring ownership so that key assets are held in jurisdictions aligned with, but not identical to, personal nationality. At the same time, families should ensure that the next generation has educational and professional options spanning more than one region. This combination of diversified status, structures and life opportunities provides a practical buffer against future geopolitical shocks.
Final thoughts
For more than three decades, my work has operated at the intersection of geopolitics and private decision-making, helping entrepreneurs and investors from volatile regions build lawful pathways out of uncertainty. What has changed since the optimistic 1990s is not the desire for opportunity, but the awareness that opportunity now carries a very real map-risk. In a world where leaders openly frame territory, trade and capital flows as matters of national security, prudence lies in designing one’s own security through law, jurisdictional choice and mobility, rather than hoping that the old order will somehow reassert itself.
