The new “America First” arms‑transfer strategy is not a bureaucratic tweak. It is a fundamental reordering of how Washington decides who gets weapons, when, and why. By ranking partners based on defense spending, geographic utility, and economic benefit to the U.S., the administration has replaced alliance‑building with transactional filtering.
The Democratic Party’s post‑2024 identity crisis is not a messaging problem. It’s an infrastructure problem. The party cannot pivot to the center because the mechanisms that shape political careers — endorsements, funding pipelines, activist networks, and primary gatekeepers — are controlled by ideological actors who punish deviation long before a candidate reaches national office.
The newest research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York confirms what every serious economist already knew: tariffs function as a domestic tax, and American households and businesses pay almost all of it. Between early 2024 and late 2025, roughly 90% of tariff costs stayed inside the United States, mirroring the pattern from the 2018–2019 trade war.
The global economy is now fully multipolar in production and consumption, yet its financial backbone still runs through a single national currency. That mismatch — a 21st‑century world running on 1944 plumbing — is what BRICS is trying to correct. Not by dethroning the dollar with the renminbi, but by building a neutral clearing system that avoids the trap of replacing one hegemon with another.
BRICS has evolved from a clever acronym into a geopolitical project large enough to unsettle Washington. Trump’s 2025 tariff threats — and the panic triggered by his Spain “BRICS” gaffe — reveal how seriously the U.S. now treats the bloc. With 20 members and partners, BRICS+ represents a demographic and economic mass that rivals the G7, even if its internal cohesion remains uneven.
In early 2026, the Global South is pioneering a “Digital Public Infrastructure” (DPI) approach to energy that shifts the focus from building solar panels to building the “intelligence” required to manage them. As global electricity demand is projected to grow by 3.7% in 2026, primarily outside advanced economies, the traditional linear grid is being replaced by Digital Energy Architecture.
The liberal trade order that defined the post‑1945 world is no longer collapsing suddenly — it is dissolving structurally. The rise of protectionism, especially in the United States, is forcing every major economy to redesign its trade strategy in real time. What emerges is not a new system, but a fragmented landscape of overlapping blocs, bilateral deals, and improvised coalitions.
Iraq’s political paralysis is not simply the result of domestic factionalism. It is the predictable outcome of a system where external veto power routinely overrides internal legitimacy. The current standoff over Nouri al‑Maliki’s nomination exposes the structural contradiction at the heart of Iraqi governance: sovereignty exists on paper, but government formation depends on which foreign actor is willing to impose the highest cost.
As federal climate leadership becomes inconsistent, subnational governments are stepping into the vacuum, building their own diplomatic networks, regulatory frameworks, and climate alliances. This is not a symbolic gesture — it is the construction of a parallel climate governance system that increasingly shapes global policy.
Europe is trying to compete in a world defined by U.S. and Chinese state capacity, but it is doing so with institutions designed for consensus, caution, and inclusivity. The result is a structural contradiction:
Washington’s pricing mandate is pushing drugmakers to raise European benchmarks and even pull treatments like Roche’s Lunsumio from Switzerland, destabilizing a pharma‑dependent economy and shrinking patient access as companies protect U.S. margins at the expense of smaller markets.
In early 2026, the Red Sea corridor is undergoing a profound structural shift following Israel’s formal recognition of Somaliland on December 26, 2025. This move shattered a 34-year diplomatic stalemate and has effectively birthed a new “Middle Power Axis” in the Horn of Africa.
