Trajectory Daily Brief: 14 January 2026

China | Indo-Pacific | Southeast Asian elites prefer Beijing despite trusting Washington more

Situation

The US pledged $45 million to Thailand and Cambodia for regional stability, representing roughly four days of Chinese construction activity in Southeast Asia at current rates. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has deployed $1.3 trillion globally since 2013, with Southeast Asia receiving $11.3 billion in Chinese investment in the first half of 2025 alone.

The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s 2024 survey recorded a milestone: 50.5% of Southeast Asian elites would choose China over America if forced to pick sides, up from 38.9% in 2023. However, the same respondents still trust America more to “do the right thing” and view China as the greater threat to regional stability.

Context

The preference for China reflects calculation rather than affection—acknowledgment that a proximate creditor cannot be ignored. Chinese infrastructure creates visible monuments and employment during construction but generates debt dependencies lasting decades. Laos now pays China $1.3 billion annually in debt service, exceeding its health and education budgets combined.

American aid operates through governance programs and military training that build networks rather than dependencies, but produces no gleaming stations for ribbon-cutting ceremonies. This mirrors the pre-colonial mandala system where Southeast Asian rulers maintained simultaneous loyalties to multiple power centers, extracting maximum benefit while committing to neither.

Both approaches encounter the same absorption problem: limited institutional capacity to process external engagement effectively.

Trajectory

Southeast Asian states are successfully reviving ancient hedging strategies, treating great power competition as an extraction opportunity rather than a binary choice. The numerical aid comparison misses the strategic architecture entirely—both powers are playing different influence games.

China’s infrastructure billions purchase grudging accommodation through technical dependencies that outlast initial financing. American programs create governance networks but struggle with institutional absorption limits. Neither approach generates genuine loyalty, suggesting the influence competition may be fundamentally misconceived by both participants.

US | Defence | Military spending creates structural dependency requiring perpetual conflict to maintain economic stability

Situation

US defense spending has evolved into a metabolic requirement rather than discretionary policy. The $883.7 billion FY2024 defense authorization distributes production across 46 states, creating cancellation-proof programs like the F-35 that survive through economic dependency rather than strategic necessity.

Since 2001, presidents have conducted military operations across 22 countries under a single authorization, with each administration expanding rather than contracting operational footprint regardless of party or campaign promises. The system exhibits diminishing marginal returns requiring progressively larger fiscal inputs to maintain employment effects.

Context

This represents emergence rather than design—no individual actor created this outcome, but geographic fragmentation of defense production has generated system properties that serve institutional reproduction over strategic purpose. The state now requires military spending the way organisms require oxygen.

Three incompatible temporal regimes drive this pattern: executive crisis time (hours), congressional electoral time (2-6 years), and procurement time (15-20 years). Major weapons programs outlast democratic accountability cycles by an order of magnitude, creating institutional actors whose planning horizons exceed political memory.

Every president since 1973 has deemed core War Powers Resolution features unconstitutional, reflecting structural rather than partisan consensus about military action constraints.

Trajectory

The US has become a dissipative structure—a system maintaining organizational complexity only through constant energy throughput. Military action represents thermodynamic necessity rather than policy choice, with violence becoming the medium through which state coherence is maintained.

This trajectory resolves toward governance optimized for energy dissipation rather than traditional empire or authoritarianism. The pattern of strikes, deployments, and alliance management reflects behavioral expression of a system optimizing across incompatible timeframes, making perpetual conflict structurally inevitable.

Middle East | Policy | Iran’s 2025-26 protests reveal structural collapse as regime deploys military force against simultaneous nationwide uprising

Situation

The protests that began December 28, 2025, in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar have spread to over 100 cities across all 31 Iranian provinces within weeks. Unlike previous uprisings with specific grievances, these protests escalated from economic complaints to calls for Supreme Leader Khamenei’s death.

The regime has responded with unprecedented force: over 400 killed, 15,000 detained, and at least 60 facing death sentences under “enmity against God” charges. The IRGC deployed ground forces—a military response to civilian uprising—while courts issued 1,000 indictments within days.

The trigger was President Pezeshkian’s budget defense amid 52.6% inflation and 22% youth unemployment, signaling even reformist leadership cannot deliver change within the system.

Context

This uprising differs structurally from Iran’s previous protests (2009 Green Movement, 2019 fuel protests, 2022 Woman Life Freedom). The simultaneity across all provinces prevents security forces from concentrating repression, while smartphone footage spreads faster than force redeployment.

The Islamic Republic’s foundational bargain—subsidized living standards in exchange for political obedience—has collapsed comprehensively. The subsidy system is gutted, the revolutionary generation is dying, and ideological legitimacy has devolved into outward conformity masking inward dissent.

The regime’s response reveals it understands this is not reform-seeking but system-threatening. Internet shutdowns last days, hospitals report wounded protesters, and defense attorneys face arrest—transforming medical and legal institutions into surveillance apparatus.

Trajectory

The protests represent a phase transition where the costs of conformity suddenly exceed resistance costs across the population simultaneously. This is not coordination but thermodynamic collapse—the system has absorbed maximum pressure and small perturbations now trigger cascading failures.

The regime’s indiscriminate escalation suggests it cannot restore legitimacy and instead seeks to eliminate resistance capacity entirely. However, security forces face geometric constraints: they cannot deploy everywhere when everywhere is protesting.

The outcome depends on whether the population’s mental defection translates into sustained physical resistance faster than the state can process dissidents through its legal machinery of repression.

Africa | Security | Nigeria lacks capacity to execute military operations it formally authorizes

Situation

Nigeria has authorized military operations within its territory but cannot independently conduct these missions. The country’s operational limitations have created a gap between political authorization and military execution capability.

American forces have conducted first strikes on Nigerian soil, marking a significant development in West African security dynamics. These operations represent direct foreign military intervention in Nigeria’s domestic security challenges.

Context

Nigeria’s operational incapacity reflects broader degradation of state military effectiveness across the Sahel region. Despite being Africa’s most populous nation and largest economy, Nigeria’s security apparatus cannot match the scope of threats it faces, particularly from insurgent groups and transnational criminal networks.

The American intervention signals a fundamental shift in regional security architecture. Traditional notions of sovereignty are being redefined when states cannot protect their own territory or populations. This pattern mirrors developments across the Sahel, where French, UN, and other international forces have assumed roles previously reserved for national militaries.

The sovereignty trap emerges when states maintain legal authority over their territory but lack practical control, forcing dependence on foreign military capabilities.

Trajectory

Nigeria’s reliance on American military intervention establishes a precedent that may normalize foreign operations across West Africa. Other regional powers facing similar capacity constraints may find themselves in comparable sovereignty traps.

This dynamic accelerates the collapse of traditional security frameworks in the Sahel. As state capacity continues eroding, the gap between formal sovereignty and operational control will likely widen, creating more opportunities for foreign military involvement.

The model emerging in Nigeria may become the new normal for African security arrangements.

Read the full analysis →

Yesterday’s Assessments

• Why American missiles would save Iran’s dying regime
• China’s military AI integration
• North Korea’s hypersonic missiles: More theatre than threat
• Can India’s Southeast Asia partnerships actually constrain China?
• Why US military strikes during Iran’s 2026 protests would rescue the regime, not destroy it

Until tomorrow.