The regular quarterly outlook was not published at the start of the year. The pace and density of developments in Q1 made a standard forward-looking brief inadequate. This Special Edition addresses the structural shifts already underway across five key theatres.

I. Latin America: The Dollar Cage

The rightward shift across Latin America is often described as ideological rejection of the left. The reality is more structural.

Venezuela and Cuba attempted to sustain political autonomy while operating inside a global financial architecture they do not control. Dollar clearing, commodity pricing, sovereign credit access and sanctions enforcement remain anchored in Western institutions. Under those conditions, economic sovereignty without systemic insulation becomes fragile.

Caracas sought balancing through Moscow and Beijing. Russia provided weapons, intelligence cooperation and diplomatic cover, but it lacked the economic depth and strategic bandwidth to shield Venezuela from financial isolation. Since 2014, sanctions exposure and, later, the war in Ukraine constrained Moscow’s capacity to project sustained support into the Western Hemisphere.

China had the economic capacity but made a different calculation. Beijing treated Venezuela primarily as a secured energy investment and geopolitical irritant to Washington, not as a strategic asset worth confrontation. It extended loans backed by oil production and infrastructure, but it did not provide security guarantees or financial system alternatives sufficient to neutralise US leverage. When instability intensified, China reduced exposure rather than escalated commitment.

The contrast with US alliance structures is instructive. States such as Israel and South Korea receive explicit security guarantees backed by credible military commitment and structural financial integration. Venezuela and Cuba never received that level of backing.

The result is structural exhaustion. Revolutionary posture cannot endure indefinitely inside a dollar-denominated commodity system when access to capital and trade can be restricted externally. Latin America’s recalibration reflects the limits of transactional patronage. Washington did not need to expand aggressively. It needed only to remain present while alternative patrons proved unreliable.

II. Europe: Permission To Rearm

European rearmament is accelerating. Poland is expanding its land forces rapidly. The Baltic states have deepened integration with NATO command structures. Finland and Sweden have aligned firmly within the Atlantic framework. France has increased procurement. Germany has reopened industrial production lines and scaled defence spending.

This does not amount to consolidated European sovereignty. It reflects fragmented militarisation.

The northern and eastern flank views Russia as an immediate and existential threat. For these states, the United States is not a temporary guarantor but the central pillar of deterrence. Their strategic culture is Atlanticist and unlikely to shift.

France continues to advocate strategic autonomy and European industrial primacy. Friction over procurement and defence projects underscores that national interest remains decisive even under shared threat perception.

Germany sits between these poles. It is expanding military capability decisively but remains embedded within US command structures and dependent on American intelligence and nuclear deterrence. Berlin prioritises stability within the American security architecture rather than rupture in pursuit of autonomy.

The European Union faces a structural contradiction. Some member states are strategically closer to Washington than to Brussels. That alignment shapes doctrine, procurement and long-term orientation. As long as that divide persists, the idea of consolidated European sovereignty remains constrained.

Europe is arming, but not as one. It is moving toward layered defence structures aligned around threat perception and national interest rather than unified strategic command.

III. Iran: Reckoning For Overreach

The confrontation long building between Israel, the United States and Iran has now moved from pressure to action. Israeli and American strikes on Iranian military and nuclear-linked infrastructure mark the end of the deterrence ambiguity phase. Iran has responded. The exchange has begun.

This development does not represent a sudden rupture. It reflects a structural trajectory that has been visible for months.

Iran pursued regional expansion for over a decade through Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen under a doctrine of forward defence. The intent was to create depth and deterrence through asymmetric leverage. Instead, it produced exposure. Iranian personnel, supply networks and infrastructure became increasingly penetrable by Israeli intelligence. High-value targets proved reachable. Retaliation remained limited and calibrated.

Each episode narrowed perceived deterrence. Each non-response reshaped adversary expectations.

There is also a domestic variable that alters the strategic equation. The Islamic Republic no longer commands the unified revolutionary legitimacy it possessed in 1979. The regime emerged by overthrowing a corrupt and insulated monarchy and initially benefited from broad societal mobilisation. That cohesion has eroded over decades. Generational change, economic stagnation and repeated internal unrest have fractured the social compact. In external conflicts, states often benefit from rally effects that consolidate public support. In Iran’s case, that effect is uncertain. A divided society reduces strategic elasticity. Internal fragmentation increases vulnerability to intelligence penetration, elite defection and information warfare. A regime that has not adapted politically to social transformation carries structural weaknesses into external confrontation.

Russia, constrained by its own confrontation with the West and the war in Ukraine, could not provide comprehensive strategic cover. China prioritised economic access over security guarantees. The axis of resistance was ideological, not institutional.

There is an additional constraint. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has an interest in Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Both support civilian nuclear development, but neither benefits from a fully nuclear-armed Tehran. A nuclear Iran would destabilise regional energy markets, accelerate proliferation pressures and complicate their own strategic positioning. This limited the ceiling of support Iran could realistically expect. Diplomatic backing and economic engagement were available. A binding security guarantee under a nuclear umbrella was not.

By late 2025, military deployments in the region, hardened political rhetoric and narrowing diplomatic space pointed toward confrontation. Azimopolis PRISM modelling assessed the probability of major US–Israeli strikes against Iran at 92 percent under prevailing strategic and regional conditions. The outcome was not treated as dramatic escalation, but as execution of accumulated structural pressure.

Iran now faces the consequences of delayed decision-making. If confrontation was inevitable, pre-emption would have maximised initiative. Instead, Tehran waited - likely calculating that deterrence might still hold or that mediation might delay action. That calculation has been overtaken by events.

The regime’s dilemma is acute. Escalate decisively and risk overwhelming retaliation. Respond symbolically and reinforce deterrence erosion. The space between survival and escalation has narrowed considerably.

What began as strategic overreach without dependable great-power insulation has entered its most dangerous phase.

IV. Ukraine: No Exit War

The war in Ukraine continues because its termination carries destabilising political costs for all major participants.

For Kyiv, territorial compromise would likely trigger electoral defeat and potential political exposure for the leadership. Years of mobilisation and sacrifice have raised expectations that cannot easily be reversed without domestic fracture.

For Moscow, the scale of casualties, sanctions-induced restructuring and political commitment binds regime legitimacy to battlefield outcome. Limited settlement risks being framed as failure.

For European governments, the conflict provides organising coherence. German rearmament, Polish mobilisation and Baltic defence posture all rest on Russian threat perception. A rapid settlement would reopen internal divisions over defence spending, industrial priorities and strategic orientation.

For Washington, Ukraine imposes sustained military and economic costs on Russia without American combat casualties. The strategic calculus remains favourable relative to alternatives.

Negotiation signals surface periodically, but none of the principal actors face incentives strong enough to override domestic survival logic. Peace would require at least one side to accept significant political damage as the price of de-escalation.

That threshold has not been reached. The war persists because the internal structures sustaining it remain intact.

V. The West: Epstein Sunset

Roughly 300 gigabytes of material have been released from what is said to be an archive measured in tens of terabytes. That scale alone tells us something important. What the public has seen so far is a fraction of the total record.

Some prominent individuals have faced renewed scrutiny. Others may yet. But what has emerged does not look like a systemic reckoning. It looks like partial exposure.

In advanced societies where wealth and influence are heavily concentrated, elites tend to become socially closed. They move in the same circles across finance, politics, philanthropy and media. Informal trust replaces formal accountability. Over time, that insulation produces moral drift. This is not unique to one country or ideology. It is a recurring pattern in late-stage power systems.

Historically, when societies reach this point, exposure alone rarely changes the structure. A few individuals are sacrificed but the wider network survives. Meaningful elite turnover occurs only when a rival power bloc exists that is capable of replacing the old guard. That bloc is not currently visible.

At present, the disclosures resemble containment rather than transformation. The scale of what remains unreleased suggests this episode is unlikely to be the final chapter.

For now, the system absorbs the shock.

These theatres differ in scale and intensity, but the pattern is consistent. Where structural insulation is weak, pressure converts into exposure. Where external backing is transactional, it proves conditional. Where deterrence erodes gradually, confrontation eventually follows.

In the meantime, the Durand Line continues to burn.