Tina Fordham: “It's a mad world – and it's here to stay”
Geopolitical strategist Tina Fordham tells Matthew Partridge that investors will have to adjust to new risks
Tina Fordham is the former chief global political analyst at Citigroup and founder of Fordham Global Foresight. Tina has spent more than 25 years advising senior business, government and military leaders on navigating political and geopolitical risk; she has served as a senior adviser to the UK prime minister and advised military leaders. She also sits on advisory boards at Columbia University and the University of Cambridge. Her forthcoming book, Mad World: A Geostrategy Survival Guide for Leaders, is published by Whitefox in September 2026.
Matthew Partridge: Your new book, Mad World: A Geostrategy Survival Guide for Leaders, argues that in the current geopolitical climate, companies no longer have the luxury of ignoring politics?
Tina Fordham: Yes, ignoring geopolitics was something you could only afford to do in the era of globalisation, which happens to be the time that most of today's executives, myself included, grew up in.
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Matthew Partridge: You've talked about the emergence of a new geopolitical supercycle.
Tina Fordham: The data for that study examines the period between 2010 and 2025. So even before Donald Trump's second term, we detected a tripling of events posing geopolitical risk. People hope things will get better after Trump leaves office in January 2029, but the evidence suggests that the drivers of geopolitical risks are multiplying and have been for a long time. Moreover, the guardrails that temper the risks are either eroding or being actively dismantled. So the idea that we only have to survive another year and a half before things return to normal is misplaced.
Matthew Partridge: Which guardrails in particular are being eroded?
Tina Fordham: There's a diagram in the book of the supercycle framework, where we talk about some of the long-term drivers, like declining trust, climate change and income inequality. However, when there are risky events or shocks, good government, liquidity from central banks, institutions or even social cohesion can help you mitigate these problems. But when these guardrails are damaged, even relatively small risks can become quite disruptive. This is difficult for most executives to get their heads around, but it's how we try to apply a systematic conceptual framework to thinking about geopolitical risk.
Matthew Partridge: Your book is primarily aimed at business leaders and executives, but would it also apply to ordinary investors deciding how to structure their portfolios and which assets to choose?
Tina Fordham: There are certainly implications for everyday people who are having to think about how to manage their own lives, their families and their careers in a time of unprecedented global change.
Most people have yet to recognise that we are in a new age. They assume we are still in the period most of us became used to: one of continuously improving living standards. In fact, the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall [1989] and the collapse of Lehman Brothers [2008] was actually the most peaceful and prosperous period in all of human history – not the baseline for the future. You can mess it up.
Matthew Partridge: Turning to specific issues, I've noticed that in your recent talks you've been a lot more pessimistic about the prospects for a lasting resolution to the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. Why is that?
Tina Fordham: We were among the few to come out strongly and say that the conflict between Iran, Israel and the US would not be a short war, which was counter to the consensus at the time that it would all be over very quickly. Our reasoning was based on how Iran has always negotiated. It was never going to be enough simply to order them to meet the White House's maximalist demands.
I also felt that there is vanishingly little evidence in history of aerial bombardment causing regime change, one of the original aims of the conflict. Every US president since Jimmy Carter in the 1970s has wargamed and studied possible options for dislodging this regime and concluded that it was too hard to do without massive loss of life and huge disruption, so president Trump wasn't going to change that.
So now, we've got the situation where the US has seemingly depleted its stock of long-range munitions, while Iran can regenerate its drones faster than the US can replenish its stocks. While the markets have been reacting to the good news – in the short term – that there may be a resumption of oil supplies to the Strait of Hormuz, the actual long-term effect of this war has been to give Iran a source of leverage that it didn't have before, a power it is not going to relinquish. Meanwhile, Trump seems to have got bored with this conflict, except he's realised he can't just walk away.
Matthew Partridge: What is the most likely outcome?
Tina Fordham: Most market participants have assumed that America doesn't want to have high petrol prices before an election. However, while this might have applied over the last 25 years, I think this time we're going to end up in a situation that is between war and peace, where Trump will keep threatening because that's the only tool he has.
What's more, the Gulf states have prevailed upon the White House not to destroy Iran's energy infrastructure because of what that would do to the rest of the region. So, we are likely to be left in a situation where Iran is more powerful – if battered – after this war. What's more, the situation sends a message to the rest of the international community that if they don't like their present borders, or have some beef with their neighbour, the US has a much smaller capacity to stop them.
Matthew Partridge: On a more positive note, it looks as though Ukraine is fighting back against Russia and seems to be regaining some of the territory the invader stole. Will that continue?
Tina Fordham: The Ukraine conflict is being fought over feet and yards of territory. While this is a quagmire for Russia, with China prevailing on Putin not to go nuclear, neither is he going to come to the negotiating table in any meaningful way and agree to a ceasefire. Russia will not seek a deal that gets sanctions rolled back. That is simply not how Putin thinks.
Given that 40% of Russia's energy infrastructure has been destroyed, resulting in queues for petrol, Putin may want to make a grand gesture to demonstrate control. There is therefore a material risk of Russia attacking a Nato member. Most British people don't seem to have factored this risk in, even though we're being attacked by Russia all the time.
Matthew Partridge: Could Putin end up like the Serbian dictator Slobodan Miloševic – who was overthrown in 2000 – and succumb to internal dissent or a palace coup?
Tina Fordham: While there is no chance of Putin ending up in The Hague, a palace coup is more plausible than a popular revolution. But, the trouble with palace coups is you really need an alternative. And Putin has made sure that there are no plausible successors to him. So, while he and his policies are increasingly costing the Russian elites more than they're gaining, leaders like this can hang on for a long time.
Matthew Partridge: Do you think Ukraine's brave resistance and the fact it's actually been able to at least block Russia will give hope for other countries like Taiwan?
Tina Fordham: Ukraine has certainly given Beijing pause for thought. The fact that both the US and Russia have been dealt a serious blow by much weaker middle powers suggests that might doesn't necessarily win and can leave you stuck in a very awkward position for a long time.
Matthew Partridge: Trump will have to leave office in January 2029. The Republicans are now expected to lose at least one House of Congress seat in the midterms. Do you think that a bad result in the midterms will rein in Trump, or do you think that he might become even more unpredictable?
Tina Fordham: This is the question on the minds of many. The Iranian regime have said that they weren't going to negotiate any longer with the US but are going to wait until after Trump has left office.
While the US constitution means that Trump is limited to two terms, he is printing “Trump 2028” hats already. There's also the possibility that Trumpism may outlast Trump himself. In the most sinister scenario, the dubious behaviour by many in the administration means that even if they are voted out, the threat of possible investigations may complicate the usual peaceful transfer of power.
Matthew Partridge: In your book, you say that while the big losers from automation had been older, blue-collar workers, the worst affected by AI will be middle-class people in their 20s and 30s, who tend to be more politically aware. Will this fuel opposition to AI?
Tina Fordham: Absolutely. It will also increase demand for policy solutions. Covid has led to a rise in both benefits and expectations of government support. The historians who speak very grandly about previous waves of innovation and industrialisation forget that during the Industrial Revolution, working-class people didn't have the vote, which is not the case today.
In any case, revolutions are not fought by the poor, they are launched by the middle classes, and it's not only university students and recent graduates who are angry, but also those in the their 50s who are being told they need to work longer because the pension age is being delayed. All of this is going to add to pressure on governments at the same time that Europe needs to spend more on defence.
Matthew Partridge: What is the upshot of all this for investors?
Tina Fordham: We used to think about geopolitical risk in terms of what could go wrong and undermine a portfolio. But recent geopolitical developments and other themes such as AI have led to a situation of constant potential danger, as opposed to sporadic upsets. The threats won't dissipate within a year or two; this backdrop is set to last longer than a decade.
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