Critical minerals, strategic corridors, securing supply chains, friend-shoring, etc., are interconnected issues that heavily impose themselves on economic diplomacy today, but are now strongly dependent on one structure: geopolitics.
Today, geopolitical rivalries, changes in government, sanctions, strategic interests, sovereignty, and ideologies are redefining the business climate and environment everywhere. Economic and financial issues are increasingly dependent on geopolitical questions. Geopolitical intelligence, between monitoring, understanding, and strategic analysis of geopolitical dynamics, is becoming a necessary dimension of the economic diplomacy of states, especially around their companies and securing supply chains.
Until now, economic intelligence was the best-known aspect of the debates as a dimension of economic diplomacy. It emphasizes the mastery and protection of strategic information for the benefit of companies, economic, and commercial interests. It is often limited to market dynamics and decision-making. Geopolitical intelligence goes beyond that. It broadens the traditional scope of economic intelligence by systematically integrating political, security, diplomatic, and geostrategic dynamics.
Geopolitical intelligence in the service of economic diplomacy thinks, monitors, understands, and reacts to inter-state and intra-state dynamics that redefine the economic and financial environment in which companies, institutions, banks, etc. operate. A sanction against a Russian company, a coup d'état in Mali, a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a Chinese restriction on lithium exports, etc., are all issues that can affect not only companies but also states.
Geopolitical intelligence must help understand the geopolitical issues to which an entity is vulnerable, monitor them, track and detect weak signals of disruption, opportunities and risks, and provide solutions and alternative pathways in case of crisis. Just as economic diplomacy (at the state level) must now align with these issues, companies, even SMEs, must understand the necessity of monitoring and economic intelligence.
