A multipolar shitshow.
As usual, everyone is simultaneously at war and also somehow still doing summits like nothing's happening. US, in particular, is fighting on like four fronts at once and pretending it's fine. Nobody's in charge and everyone knows it - and just testing how far they can push without full collapse.
Iran now lets proxies do its dirty work. Houthis have just seized the entire Red Sea coast + an island (Perim), blockaded Saudi ships, now encircling Taiz, lobbing shit at Saudi oil sites.
America is still being held up by the same foreigners it's tariffing. Canada's retaliatory tariffs hit hard.
Middle East, somehow both on fire and technically on pause at the same time. Israel is still 3 years deep into a war that somehow still has no finish line because victory keeps getting redefined as whatever Netanyahu needs for the October 27 election. (Lebanon gets the same treatment, daily strikes and ground raids even after the fancy US-brokered deal that was supposed to disarm Hezbollah.) What happens next all depends on that election - and the US midterm. Netanyahu wants one more dramatic escalation to look tough before voters give Eisenkot/Bennett a shot, while Trump aides want quiet now so Republicans don't eat shit at the polls - and then maybe once the ballets are counted, they can greenlight heavier strikes or a deal.
Europe: still stuck dealing with Russian nonsense and high energy bills. It has finally began rearming for real. Everyone is quietly starting to build the exits.
The 7-month Iran war grinds on. Depleting US stockpiles are forcing pullbacks. Iran has now turned the chokepoint into its entire personality. It keeps lobbing shit and mining the strait just enough to hurt w/o inviting total annihilation - and occasionally floats reopen deals. Talks via Qatar keep flopping because Trump rejects Iran's ceasefire offers that reopen the strait without full nuclear surrender, and Tehran refuses to fold on sanctions relief or permanent Hormuz veto power. Most likely, really, is another inconclusive no-war-no-peace stalemate where both losers declare victory, Iran keeps enough asymmetric upper-hand to harass shipping forever, and the US walks away with depleted stockpiles (and a bill already past $30bn).
Ukraine is slowly bleeding ground. DC wobbles on whether it still gives a shit. Human cost of the war now absurd. 1.4mn casualties, 500k deaths. Russia keeps hammering Ukrainian energy grids for the coming winter, Ukraine hits Russian refineries right back.
Trump's approval is in the toilet across pretty much every tracker. Career lows. The hard MAGA core still clings hard, no revolt yet - and Trump copycats keep winning and consolidating. Still, his own voters are quietly starting to bail. Trump's shock value wears off over time. The wars + gas prices + cost of living pain have people pissed enough for a blue wave. Barring some insane October surprise, a few seats will almost certainly be flipped - 90% odds. Independents are at 34% approval, which is already below the 36% threshold that preceded the 2018 wave that cost Republicans 41 seats. Senate remains a coinflip - slight Dem edge needing a few flips in Michigan/Ohio/Texas.
Middle powers like Turkey are filling voids as past alliances fray. Gulf monarchies/China/Turkey/Pakistan/India/Brazil - these countries have all multi-aligned hard, forming their own defense pacts and workaround coalitions. They've linked arms with pretty much anyone who sells cheap oil/weapons without giving them a lecture.
India/Pakistan shot at each other for 4 days in May, then both claimed victory. India hit first, Pakistan clapped back, then both spent 4 glorious days flinging cheap drones at each other. India ate some early plane losses one day one but then dominated the exchange - Pakistan's Turkish drone swarms were either shredded by India grandpa guns or made pretty fireworks over empty fields. Both ended up begging for the US-brokered ceasefire and then threw a parade telling their respective country 'I won.'
US/Japan/South Korean foreign ministers issued a joint statement backing Taiwan's 'place in global orgs,' basically saying 'yeah, we already assigned your part to someone else.'
The most recent intel-report: no Taiwan invasion anytime soon. Walked back years of 'Davidson window' panic. Chinese officials know an amphibious invasion would be logistically suicidal. Taiwan's terrain is a defender's dream, and they’ve spent decades fortifying it for exactly this. Intel still gave 2049 the real deadline. Everything between now and then is just China playing a long, slow, ugly distraction game. China's Coast Guard is a regular, established presence in Taiwan's east waters. It will wait and see if Taiwan's 2028 election delivers a softer government, and in the meantime, tighten the noose without pulling the trigger - via war drills, rare-earth threats, coast-guard incursions, election interference. Xi also literally just showed up to a summit to lobby Trump directly, since he plans to ask Trump to halt arms sales to Taiwan on the basis of the 1982 joint communiqué.
Gulf states accelerate East-West pipelines and Red Sea alternatives. Everyone in Asia is also scrambling for energy bypasses.