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Executive Summary 

This week's report underscores a global security environment shaped by three dynamics. First, conflict is increasingly extending beyond conventional military targets toward the economic system and critical infrastructure, most visibly in the Russia-Ukraine war, where Russia sustained intense strikes on Ukraine urban areas while Ukraine expanded long-range attacks on Russian refining and logistics infrastructure. Second, strategic access and economic pressure are becoming more linked in the US-Iran confrontation, where the Strait Of Hormuz remains severely constrained despite reduced direct hostilities, and Washington is preparing what officials describe as its toughest sanctions yet against Tehran. Third, the Indo-Pacific presented simultaneous signals of military competition and selective de-escalation: the US and South Korea scaled back the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise to reopen diplomatic space with Pyongyang, yet North Korea responded with further missile launches, while China continued reinforcing its military footprint through infrastructure development and expanding regional defense partnerships, including with Indonesia.

Beyond these three core trends, instability compounded across other regions. In the Americas, US-Canada trade relations fracture sharply amid new tariffs, while President Trump enters the midterm season with declining approval ratings and no major breakthroughs on Iran, Gaza or Ukraine. The Middle East saw escalating risk on multiple fronts, including a near-collapse of the Yemen truce, Israeli strikes in Syria that deepened tensions with Turkey even as Damascus and Israel opened a separate US-mediated dialogue track, an accelerating pace of settler violence in the West Bank, and Pakistan stepping in to mediate as Washington prepared its toughest sanctions yet against Iran. Sub-Saharan Africa faced compounding public-health and security crises, led by the DRC's Ebola outbreak, now the largest on record with confirmed cases exceeding 5,200, worsened by conflict-driven access restrictions, alongside a mass abduction in Nigeria that video evidence suggests was far larger than initially reported. In Asia-Pacific, Kazakhstan's ruling party swept parliamentary elections while a coordinated insurgent arson campaign struck southern Thailand and South Korea confirmed continuing North Korean preparations for further troop deployments to Russia. Natural disasters and climate-linked disruptions added further pressure to an already strained global system.