The End of Easy Globalisation

This report provides an outlook of the current global context, arguing that the period of easy globalisation is over and that the 2020s constitute a fourth systemic crisis — a “crisis of global integration” — driven by three mutually reinforcing forces: the return of multipolarity under nuclear constraint, a structural shift from commodity abundance to recurrent bottlenecks, and deepening public dissatisfaction rooted in stalled living standards, widening inequality, and an algorithmic public square that amplifies outrage and erodes institutional trust. These forces interact rather than operate in isolation, rendering global integration increasingly politicised, fragmented, and shock-prone, suggesting that investment portfolios must be prepared for higher volatility, fatter tails, and greater dispersion, rather than a single benign macro baseline.