Lenses, both real and metaphorical, can be very useful things. They provide vision and clarity – but use the wrong ones, and things start to appear blurry. A hundred years ago “the war to end all wars” came to an end. The vision of those that framed the Treaty of Versailles came crashing down only 20 years later.

A century later, we are definitely inter-something, as the seams of the post-war liberal consensus come apart under the strain of nationalist populism and intensifying geopolitical competition. The far-sighted economic and security architecture of Pax Americana, which underpinned the economic miracles of Western Europe and East Asia, is now seen as a raw deal in Washington and the Rust Belt. Instead of being regarded as a triumph of human development, China’s emergence from poverty as an economic superpower is viewed through the lens of strategic rivalry in a “new Cold War”.

International businesses in 2019 will mourn the demise of the post-war liberal consensus because it was demonstrably good – for them. Since the end of the Cold War, multinationals have massively increased their share of the global economy and now dominate global trade – around two-thirds of it, according to the UN – through global supply chains. Multinationals often maintain traditional national associations, but are predominantly stateless when it comes to assets and employees.

A global footprint naturally increases exposure to the vagaries of geopolitics, from trade wars to real conflict. But recently, the degree of political risk faced by companies has intensified. A generation of business leaders conditioned by globalisation finds itself on the sharp edge of fierce national competition for jobs, technology and tax revenue. These business leaders are having to quickly recalibrate.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, a key challenge for the real estate business in 2019 will be to avoid being overly distracted by geopolitical drama. Major construction and real estate companies ensnared by corruption scandals, capricious regulatory implementation or attacks on local partners often find they were not focusing enough on local, material threats to their business.

Take Asia. It wasn’t superpower proxy competition that upended Malaysia’s political landscape in 2018, leading to a regulatory shake-up, corruption investigations and project cancellations, which disproportionately impacted major construction projects. Nor did geopolitical rivalry trigger the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the ensuing reputational unease for foreign real estate interests in that country.

Meanwhile, the brief success of Islamist extremists in the Philippines was as much to do with southern Mindanao’s chronic mismanagement and religious nationalism as anything conceived on the battlefields of Syria – a fact reflected in just how contained the violence was and how little impact it had on the buoyant domestic economy. Similarly, domestic legislation has played as great a role as the territorial losses of Islamic State (IS) in reducing violence in Mindanao.

Going forward, key regional risks for 2019: Indonesian elections, Prime Minister Modi’s bid for a second term, and the prospect of Thai elections – are all driven by how the local interplays with the geopolitical. For real estate investors this interplay can be seen particularly in transport infrastructure development. This is one of the biggest demand drivers of new real estate construction on the outskirts of major cities such as Bangkok and Jakarta in anticipation of these links. Indonesia and Malaysia have had great success in funding their transport infrastructure with the help of foreign capital, in part a corollary of strategic competition between China and Japan. But as we have seen in Malaysia, real estate investors’ – and particularly Chinese ones – optimism has been upended by profound and very locally driven political change.

In Thailand too the prospects are far from clear. The incoming Thai government will not have the political authority to push ahead with major rail, road and industrial estate projects. Anticipation of those projects had been driving up land prices, but the stagnation of Thai politics and the government’s inability to execute could see price rises stall.

Investors can’t drop one ball to pick up another. They can’t lose track of prosaic local risks to focus on global issues. But they may not have local risks to manage if they fall foul of fundamental changes in geopolitics. Doing business across borders is getting harder and doing business within them is getting more bespoke – and that goes for real estate as much as any other sector.

It’s not clear what future lens will be applied to this era. A US-China cold war? A revived liberal consensus led by like-minded middle powers such as Japan, Canada and Germany, with avuncular approval from China? Or, more darkly, the inexorable slide into conflict as one power rises to challenge the established one? Regardless, the lenses that companies and investors use to understand their world will need to be multiple and more complex than ever before. As such, investors need to rigorously prioritise what really matters to them – commercial, political, global, local – and be constantly mindful of where those strands intersect.