Politically, the world as you know it has not changed appreciably in terms of world leadership. China, Japan, the U.S. and Russia all enjoy the same interdependent and oftentimes chilly relationship they've largely had for the past 25 years, while many regions in the Middle East are still fighting bloody wars and battles to this very day. If anything, many of the world superpowers are more united than ever, and many political analysts have said that the likelihood of an armed conflict directly between large nations is almost unthinkable at this point.
However, the major reasoning for the unification of international government interests is the burgeoning threat of fighter terrorism. Though the majority of the world's fighters are recognized as completely benign and often idolized athletes, there still exists certain members of the community who have gone black, or otherwise taken up the reins as the blackguards of the fighting caste. Motivations vary, running the gamut from world peace through subjugation, ideological reform of the nations, creation of the strongest fighters through any means necessary, or simply gaining a financial straddle over the entire world.
Political commentary has pointed out that these darkly motivated fighters represent the evil side of a new informal samurai caste system. They represent the potential to spark a new kind of international civil war, one for which no world government wants to be caught on the wrong end of. As a result, many governments are actively training, indoctrinating or recruiting soldiers who are also high level martial artists, training special task forces to deal with politically motivated fighters, or are simply leasing or developing their own bizarre technologies from powerful megacorporations to provide safety and security for the citizens of their countries.
As long as martial artists continue to persist as some of the world's most publically recognized figures, sentiment amongst the populace will continue to be strongly in favor of many of these superathletes. However, it has not stopped a certain amount of political tension between civilian fighters and various agencies of the world's governments from bubbling just underneath the surface. Groups like Shadaloo are ongoing proof that governments are not entirely wrong in regarding even the most noble of fighters as yet another threat.