A US strategic retreat, intensifying global volatility and European hybrid conflict feature in this latest edition of monthly highlights from research by the Centre for Risk Analysis (CRA) on political, economic, trade and climate risks affecting South African businesses.
CRA clients receive a range of weekly and monthly reports, including Client Notes. Published on an ad hoc basis, Client Notes provide real-time analysis of topical current events.
A more contested world: 2026 as a turning point
Chris Hattingh, executive director of the CRA, argues that this decade is reaching a critical geopolitical inflection point driven largely by the United States retreating from the post-1945 rules-based order in favour of selective, transactional engagement.
Highlighting outlooks from the World Economic Forum, Eurasia Group, and the Stimson Center, Hattingh notes that state-on-state economic warfare, armed conflict, and the hollowing out of multilateral institutions are compounding global volatility. These global shifts, manifesting in flashpoints like potential US-Iran clashes in the Middle East and ongoing hybrid contests across a politically fragmented Europe, create direct economic, fiscal, and diplomatic risks for import-dependent economies like South Africa.
The primary threats include spikes in the Basic Fuel Price due to oil shocks, rand weakness, and threatened trade access as historical US trade generosity comes to an end. Hattingh cautions that African nations can no longer rely on a shrinking multilateral safety net and must urgently build their own institutional strength. Ultimately, he observes that “the CRA’s most likely outcome is a more volatile, less predictable operating environment,” and advises clients to prepare by “stress-testing exposure to oil price shocks, rand volatility and abrupt shifts in US trade policy as recurring features of the operating environment through 2026 and 2027.”
Russia’s winter hybrid campaign: what it means for risk and energy
According to Hattingh, Russia is preparing an intensified winter hybrid campaign against European nations supporting Ukraine. This includes utilising tactics designed to look “accidental” to “paralyse or at least weaken” NATO’s collective-defence response. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that Russia planned to use high-speed jet-powered drones, that are harder for air defences to intercept, to sever resupply logistics before winter. While French President Emmanuel Macron similarly cautioned that “the Russian hybrid threat against Europeans and against France has intensified.”
Hattingh notes that this strategy relies on plausible deniability to stay just below the threshold of triggering NATO’s Article 5, making a run of border strikes, drone incursions, and infrastructure threats probable through the winter months. For clients and businesses, this shifting landscape carries significant economic implications, including rising defence and insurance premiums, potential disruptions to European gas and power transmission that could drive up imported energy costs, and accelerated militarisation that will increase procurement costs and supply chain lead times.
Ultimately, Hattingh warns that while deniability is the core design feature of Moscow’s strategy, “subscribers should treat the probability of such a miscalculation as low but rising, and as the main tail risk attached to an otherwise slow-moving trend.”
For more on the CRA’s products and services, which include Risk Alerts and Strategic Intelligence Briefings, contact Chris Hattingh: chris@cra-sa.com
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