Strategic Dispatch
Strategic Dispatch
Durability Without Stability: Iran’s Unravelling Order
Iran enters 2026 in a condition of managed instability rather than imminent collapse. Sustained domestic unrest, economic contraction, and deepening legitimacy deficits have narrowed the regime’s strategic options, pushing it toward repression as a default mode of governance. While the state retains formidable coercive capacity, its margin for error is shrinking. Internal fragility now intersects with heightened regional risk, increasing the likelihood that external escalation becomes a tool of internal survival rather than deliberate strategy.
Hedging or Heading Away? The Quiet Drift of US Allies Toward China
US allies are quietly recalibrating their relationships with China, exploring economic and technological partnerships while maintaining security commitments to Washington. This hedging reflects pragmatic flexibility rather than outright abandonment, but signals a growing multipolar reality. Europe and Asia are diversifying trade, infrastructure, and tech ties with Beijing, testing limits of US influence. The trend highlights a critical choice for Washington: adapt to conditional loyalty and shared influence, or risk incremental erosion of its global primacy as allies hedge for security and opportunity
Negotiations and Tariff Threat of Ongoing US-Europe Territory Dispute
The US-Europe dispute over Greenland reflects a new era of geopolitically driven trade policy. President Trump’s threats of escalating tariffs aim to force European acquiescence, prompting discussions on Europe’s anti-coercion measures. NATO deployments to Greenland, debates over US missile defence, and concerns from Russia and China underscore the stakes. Failure to reach agreement risks severe economic disruption for Europe, particularly Germany, while US-EU trade faces uncertainty. The crisis signals that tariffs are increasingly a tool of strategic coercion rather than revenue generation.
U.S. Capture of Nicolás Maduro and the Inception of a New, Volatile Foreign Policy Doctrine
The U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro marks a watershed in global politics: a shift from rules to raw power. Framed as law enforcement by United States under Donald Trump, the operation signals a new doctrine of unilateral regime removal tied to strategic resources. The immediate prize is Venezuelan oil; the long-term cost is a destabilized international order, where sovereignty becomes conditional and retaliation increasingly likely.
2026 Geopolitics: Power Without Dominance
Geopolitics in 2026 is defined by power without dominance. Major states retain significant military and economic capacity, yet lack the ability to impose durable outcomes unilaterally. Strategic competition has shifted toward chokepoints in technology, energy, and finance, while unresolved conflicts are increasingly managed rather than resolved. Fiscal constraints, alliance recalibration, and regional power assertion are reshaping global behaviour, producing a fragmented international system marked by calibrated escalation, persistent friction, and heightened strategic uncertainty.
Electoral Uncertainty in Latin America
Latin America is entering a period of heightened electoral uncertainty as a dense cycle of elections from late 2025 to 2026 reshapes the region’s political trajectory. Voter fatigue, economic pressures, and dissatisfaction with inequality are fuelling a potential shift away from left-leaning governments toward more centrist or market-oriented leadership. While this transition may unlock reform and investment opportunities, it also heightens risks of policy volatility, social unrest, and intensified geopolitical competition between global powers.
Publications
Reports
Nigeria Stands Risks -2027
The stakes are unusually high: the economy is under intense pressure from inflation, unemployment and widening inequality; insecurity persists in multiple regions, from banditry and terrorism in the North to communal clashes and militancy in the South; and public institutions are grappling with questions about their credibility, autonomy and capacity.
Will Nigeria’s Diaspora be Silenced Again in 2027?
Nigeria’s diaspora, over 17 million strong, contributes more than USD 20 billion annually—often surpassing oil revenues—while transferring skills, mentoring startups, and shaping Nigeria’s global image. Yet, despite their profound stake, they remain excluded from federal elections, creating a democratic deficit. With diaspora voting legislation gaining momentum, Nigeria faces a defining choice: act decisively to enfranchise its global citizens by 2027 or risk another cycle of exclusion. This moment offers a blueprint to strengthen democracy through its worldwide citizenry.
Reimagining Nigeria’s Business Environment for Inclusive Growth
Nigeria’s private sector holds immense potential, but systemic frictions—regulatory inefficiencies, infrastructure gaps, and weak contract enforcement—continue to limit growth. This report offers a structural assessment of the business environment across five critical pillars, highlighting the urgent need for institutional reform. While recent policy efforts show intent, deeper, systemic change is required to unlock investment, drive innovation, and position the private sector as a key engine of national development. The time for coordinated, transformative reform is now.
Monthly Geopolitical Policy Brief – July 2025 Edition
This edition of the Monthly Geopolitical Policy Brief explores pivotal developments reshaping the global policy landscape—from Syria’s $800 million Tartous Port deal to landmark privacy and AI legislation in the United States and European Union. With insights on Africa’s continental agrifood framework and Gulf re-engagement in the Levant, this brief offers diplomats, policymakers, and business leaders timely intelligence on emerging regulatory paradigms and strategic power shifts across regions. Essential reading for future-focused decision-making.
Global Strategy Outlook 2025: Navigating Risks and Harnessing Opportunities
Global Strategy Outlook 2025 provides a framework for navigating these complexities, offering insights from global leaders in finance, governance, and technology.
Global Strategy Nexus
Africa’s economic future hinges on the ability to unlock the full potential of the private sector. With over 1.4 billion…
The Sovereign Brief
The Sovereign Brief is The Sixteenth Council’s exclusive quarterly intelligence report, crafted for senior decision-makers navigating global complexity. Reserved for select leaders in government, business, and international institutions, it delivers confidential insight on geopolitics, governance, security, technology, and global markets. Each edition equips recipients with strategic foresight to anticipate change, mitigate risk, and shape bold, timely responses to emerging challenges across the world.
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Spotlight: Global Strategy Outlook 2025
Global Strategy Outlook 2025 analyzes the shifting geopolitical, economic, and technological landscape. Rising global tensions, inflation, and supply chain disruptions are reshaping economies, while AI, digital finance, and climate policies present both opportunities and challenges.
The report examines systemic risks such as escalating defense spending, economic fragmentation, and the impact of emerging technologies on labor markets. It highlights trends in renewable energy, digital currency regulations, and global health security.
By assessing current policies and their effectiveness, Global Strategy Outlook 2025 offers actionable recommendations to strengthen economic resilience, technological governance, and geopolitical stability.
A vital resource for policymakers and business leaders, the report provides strategic insights to navigate uncertainty and harness emerging opportunities for sustainable growth.
Commentary
Expert Commentary
The Fragmentation of Western Politics
Western politics is fragmenting as unilateral power eclipses post-WWII cooperation. Assertive US interventions, from Venezuela to Greenland, expose weak international enforcement and embolden rival powers. Europe faces alliance uncertainty, rising nationalism, and economic coercion while NATO’s credibility strains. The precedent of unchecked interference risks normalising ‘might makes right,’ encouraging China and Russia to test boundaries. Without renewed collective security and democratic oversight, Western cohesion erodes, reshaping global stability and accelerating a volatile, multipolar order under growing strategic mistrust worldwide today.
EU–Mercosur: A Win–Win Partnership in an Era of Strategic Uncertainty
After more than two decades of negotiations, the EU–Mercosur Agreement creates one of the world’s largest free trade areas, connecting over 700 million consumers. It offers Mercosur preferential access to the EU’s high-income market for agri-food and bioeconomy exports, while providing the EU improved access to Mercosur markets for industrial goods, machinery, automobiles, and services. This structural complementarity drives mutual gains rather than zero-sum competition, enhancing economic resilience, investment flows, and supply-chain diversification for both partners in a fragmenting global order.
Who Checks Trump? Who Checked the U.S.?
The U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro marks a dangerous rupture in global governance. By openly declaring its intent to “run” Venezuela, the United States has crossed from influence into occupation, undermining the very rules-based order it once championed. For Africa and states like Ghana, the message is stark: sovereignty is now conditional, and unchecked power—not law—risks becoming the new global norm.
AI in 2025: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
By 2025, artificial intelligence has shifted from disruptive innovation to strategic infrastructure. It is boosting productivity, accelerating scientific discovery, and expanding access to knowledge, while simultaneously intensifying labour disruption, market concentration, and governance gaps. More troublingly, AI is eroding trust in information, enabling surveillance, and compressing decision-making in ways that strain democratic and security systems. AI is no longer a neutral tool; it is a force multiplier whose impact depends less on capability and more on the strength of institutions that govern it.
Global Trade in 2025: From Efficiency to Power
By 2025, global trade stopped pretending to be neutral. Efficiency gave way to resilience, markets to strategy, and institutions to power. Shipping routes, carbon rules, currencies, and data flows became tools of statecraft rather than technical details. Trade did not collapse; it realigned around security and political trust. The era of frictionless globalization ended quietly, replaced by a world where who you trade with now matters as much as what you trade.
Trending Global Issues
Power, Policy, Perspective
This section explores how President Trump’s policies are reshaping America’s global alliances and power dynamics.
Exploring shifts in global power and institutional relevance, offering deep insights and foresight into the emerging dynamics shaping the future of the international order.
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Trump Can’t Take Greenland – and the World Knows Why
Any attempt by the United States to annex Greenland would collapse under its own contradictions. Washington cannot credibly defend Ukraine’s borders, threaten war over Taiwan’s sovereignty, and simultaneously flirt with territorial acquisition from a NATO ally. Such a move would not signal strength but moral exhaustion, eroding the very principles that give U.S. power global legitimacy. In a rules-based order the U.S. designed, restraint—not expansion—is what sustains leadership.