In this special New Year edition of the Frontlines & Backrooms Brief, we step back from the headlines to examine what 2025 really revealed — and what 2026 is likely to bring.

From a hard turn toward transactional power politics in the Americas, to Europe rearming in survival mode, a frozen war in Ukraine, Gaza metastasizing into a permanent exception, grey-zone warfare in the Pacific, and Africa becoming the frontline of a new multipolar scramble — this is not a news roundup, but a forensic diagnosis of a collapsing order.

We are not entering World War III.
We are entering an era of permanent, managed conflict — the forever brushfire.

Before the interviews, before the debates — this is the context.