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Home > Analysis > Geoeconomic Futures: The Americas, The Northern Frontier of Mexico, The Arctic, and Africa

Geoeconomic Futures: The Americas, The Northern Frontier of Mexico, The Arctic, and Africa

10/22/2025 | Written by: Daniel Pereira

This era of polycrisis, defined by intertwined risks and accelerating feedback loops, is reshaping the strategic architecture of entire regions. This integrated assessment explores how these transformations are unfolding across the Americas, the Northern Frontier of Mexico, the Arctic, and Africa, drawing from recent OODA Loop analyses.

As economic, environmental, and geopolitical shocks collide—the balance of global power is shifting rapidly. The BRICS nations’ collective share of global GDP is projected to surpass that of the G7 by 2028—a symbolic threshold marking the shift of global gravity- signaling a structural realignment that reverberates from the Arctic to Africa.

Across the Western Hemisphere, great-power competition, regional reindustrialization, and emerging technologies are reshaping strategic frontiers. The world is entering a new phase of geopolitical realignment, where economic multipolarity, technological acceleration, and environmental disruption collide.

Geoeconomics Futures: The Americas, The Northern Frontier of Mexico, The Arctic, and Africa

Polycrisis: A cluster of interdependent global risks create a compounding effect, such that their overall impact exceeds the sum of their individual parts.

Geoeconomics is the use of economic instruments to achieve geopolitical objectives, or conversely, the influence of geopolitical dynamics on economic behavior and outcomes. It encompasses the intersection of state power, markets, and strategy, where trade, investment, technology, sanctions, energy, and supply chains become tools of national competition and coercion.

In short: Geoeconomics is the logic of conflict expressed through economic means, and the logic of markets constrained by geopolitical realities.

The Americas and the Northern Frontier of Mexico

“…a region where demography, AI innovation, and geopolitical contestation intersect to define the next stage of the Americas’ strategic evolution.”

China’s influence across the Western Hemisphere is expanding through port infrastructure that doubles as leverage points for military and economic coercion:

As described in Ports as Pressure Points: China’s Strategic Leverage in the Americas, Beijing’s control over critical maritime nodes from Panama to Argentina forms a strategic web that can shape hemispheric trade flows and logistics under crisis conditions.
Meanwhile, the U.S. response hinges on industrial and technological self-sufficiency. Reports such as Strategic Access to Critical Minerals and Rare Earth Metals and Critical Minerals and the AI Supply Chain emphasize how rare earths, lithium, and cobalt have become the new oil—core to AI and defense manufacturing—and how North America must diversify and harden these supply chains to ensure resilience.

The region’s technological momentum is accelerating as reshoring transforms North American industry:

Globalization Transformed: Recent Development in North America Innovation Hubs and Manufacturing Reshoring and Globalization Transformed: Deep Tech Ecosystems will Catalyze Global Regional Innovation describe how U.S.–Mexico–Canada innovation corridors are emerging as magnets for R&D, AI, and advanced manufacturing—reshaping the map of industrial geography.
Simultaneously, the OODA Network Discussion on AI Acceleration underscores the need for “strategic clarity” amid rapid AI diffusion, framing North America’s advantage as rooted in governance alignment and foresight.

Geoeconomic realignment is not confined to production—it is also reshaping social and political power:

The rise of the Latino GDP, now equivalent to the fifth-largest economy in the world, highlights an underappreciated source of U.S. resilience.
At the same time, instability along the Mexican frontier—captured in the OODA Network’s discussion on drone countermeasures, border risk, and international crime syndicates—underscores how technology, criminal networks, and state weakness are merging into a hybrid security challenge. The result is a region where demography, AI innovation, and geopolitical contestation intersect to define the next stage of the Americas’ strategic evolution.

Africa: The Next Frontline of Global Competition

Africa is no longer peripheral—it is the proving ground where new forms of hybrid warfare, digital sovereignty, and economic realignment converge.

Across Africa, the intersection of information warfare, paramilitary operations, and technology competition defines a volatile new battleground:

Russia’s “Wagner 2.0” strategy—outlined in Paramilitary Proxies and Mass Exodus: Russia’s Wagner 2.0, Africa Corps, and the Strategic Use of Refugee Crises—shows how induced migration and hybrid operations across the Sahel serve to destabilize Europe through engineered humanitarian crises.
Beijing is embedding Africa into its technological sphere of influence through quantum communications; China’s Quantum Satellite Achieves Unhackable 8,000-Mile Link to South Africa marks a milestone in establishing a “quantum corridor” linking the Global South to China’s secure information networks.

The information domain itself has become a theater of competition:

A 4X Increase in Disinformation in Africa is Fundamentally Destabilizing documents how synthetic media and deepfake-driven propaganda are eroding institutional trust, often amplified by Russian and Chinese actors seeking influence in fragile states.
Yet, amidst this turbulence, innovation ecosystems are emerging. From Lagos to Nairobi: Startup Pathways in the AI Economy highlights Africa’s rapid digital ascent, where entrepreneurs leverage AI, fintech, and open-source models to leapfrog legacy systems—turning the continent into a crucible for the global AI economy.

On the military front:

Global Drone Proliferation Accelerates, Reshaping Modern Warfare and Future of Supply Chain Wars show how low-cost drones and logistical coercion are rewriting the rules of conflict, from the battlefields of Sudan to the skies above the Red Sea. As a region central to critical mineral supply, Africa’s role in “the geopolitics of the green economy” is pivotal—its rare earths, cobalt, and lithium feed the same global competition shaping AI and clean energy. Together, these dynamics confirm that Africa is no longer peripheral—it is the proving ground where new forms of hybrid warfare, digital sovereignty, and economic realignment converge.

The Future of the Arctic

As OODA’s broader analysis of the “New Arctic” warns, the convergence of climate disruption, resource competition, and great-power rivalry has made the polar frontier both a barometer and accelerator of global instability.

In the Arctic, melting ice is exposing both vast opportunity and grave risk:

Melting Ice, Rising Stakes: U.S. Strategy in the Arctic details how climate change and strategic rivalry have transformed the region into a frontier for energy, sovereignty, and military readiness.
As highlighted in The Final North: Where Arctic Realities and Space Futures Collide, the Arctic’s role now extends beyond Earth: satellite coverage, orbital logistics, and space launch corridors are increasingly intertwined with polar operations.

This evolving domain has become a focal point for espionage and influence operations:

Escalating Espionage and Propaganda: Russia and China’s Strategic Maneuvers in the Arctic and Beyond traces how both powers employ hybrid tactics—from narrative manipulation to resource diplomacy—to undermine Western cohesion.
Navigating a Changing Arctic Amidst Environmental and Geopolitical Transformations captures Washington’s response: balancing environmental stewardship with defense modernization and indigenous engagement.
The Greenland Debate: The First Test Case of Thomas Barnett’s Re-regionalization Framework illustrates how Greenland’s strategic minerals and geography make it a laboratory for regional realignment within NATO’s northern architecture.

Finally, NORAD Interception of a Russian and PRC Jet Fighters in Joint Operation over Alaska demonstrates how this once-remote region has become a live theater of military signaling and joint deterrence. As OODA’s broader analysis of the “New Arctic” warns, the convergence of climate disruption, resource competition, and great-power rivalry has made the polar frontier both a barometer and accelerator of global instability.

Additional OODA Loop Resources

For further OODA Loop intelligence and strategic foresight on these regions, explore:

The Arctic
Mexico
Africa
The Americas
Brazil

About the Author

Daniel Pereira

Daniel Pereira is research director at OODA. He is a foresight strategist, creative technologist, and an information communication technology (ICT) and digital media researcher with 20+ years of experience directing public/private partnerships and strategic innovation initiatives.