The Trump administration's toolbox is not empty. What has been deployed so far - Venezuela, Iran, Hormuz, Panama - are the fast tools. The heavy ones are still waiting: Cuba, Kharg Island, Taiwan. Those who understand the selection logic of Trump and Hegseth know the sequence - and why the real driving force is not geopolitics, but a currency that does not yet exist.
What happens when the world does not collapse through one great war, but through many smaller fires that no one can extinguish?
In the final part of the series “Europe Prepares for War”, Michael Hollister examines a scenario built not on fantasy, but on existing fault lines: Korea, Taiwan, India and Pakistan, Iran and Israel, Turkey and Greece, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Myanmar, the South China Sea, and Africa.
Until now, many of these conflicts have been contained by great powers - through pressure, mediation, deterrence, or military presence. But what happens when the United States, China, and Russia are all tied down by their own major conflicts? A global power vacuum emerges. And in power vacuums, states rarely act according to morality. They act according to opportunity.
Since February 28, 2026 - the day the first U.S.-Israeli bombs fell on Iran - China has not sent a single military aircraft into Taiwan's air defense zone. Six days of silence in a strait where escalation had become the baseline. This is not de-escalation. It is calculation: while the United States burns through munitions in the Persian Gulf, delays arms deliveries to Taiwan, and China quietly builds the options it needs for 2027, Beijing is holding the quiet - because right now, it doesn't need anything else.