Trajectory Daily Brief: 26 January 2026

East Asia | Defence | Japan-South Korea intelligence sharing faces breakdown as Tokyo deploys hypersonic strike weapons

Situation

Japan will deploy Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile hypersonic missiles by 2026, giving Tokyo “counterstrike capabilities” against targets in China and North Korea within minutes. The weapons travel at Mach 5+ speeds, rendering most air defences obsolete.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government frames these as defensive deterrent capabilities under Japan’s 2022 National Security Strategy. The deployment represents the most significant expansion of Japanese offensive capability since WWII, straining constitutional prohibitions on warfare while maintaining official pacifist doctrine.

Context

The critical vulnerability lies not in Chinese military responses but in fracturing Japan-South Korea alliance coordination. Seoul’s constitution claims the entire Korean peninsula as ROK territory, meaning Japanese strikes on North Korean targets would legally constitute attacks on claimed South Korean soil.

This contradiction paralyses crisis coordination despite the 2016 GSOMIA intelligence-sharing agreement and trilateral exercises with US forces. Historical grievances over wartime forced labour and comfort women already poison South Korean public opinion toward Japanese military capabilities.

China has been preparing for this development through counter-intervention capabilities and mobile launcher proliferation. Beijing’s response will be doctrinally rigid but strategically manageable—accelerated precision munitions production and alliance-splitting information operations rather than fundamental strategic shifts.

Trajectory

Intelligence sharing will erode through operational mistrust rather than formal withdrawal. South Korean officers will share less critical information while Japanese planners assume exclusion from coordination loops.

American officials will spend increasing resources managing allied friction rather than deterring adversaries. The hypersonic missiles will remain technically ready but operationally isolated from regional alliance structures.

This represents the first major test of whether historical grievances can override strategic necessity in East Asian security architecture.

Middle East | Defence | US strike on Iran nuclear sites would accelerate regional realignment rather than strengthen Israeli position

Situation

A potential U.S. military strike targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure represents an unprecedented escalation scenario in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Such action would likely trigger coordinated responses across multiple theaters simultaneously.

Current analysis suggests this would not produce a binary outcome of Israeli strategic gain or loss. Instead, military action would catalyze existing regional power shifts already in motion across the Middle East.

Context

Historical precedent shows that major military strikes in the region typically accelerate underlying political transformations rather than freezing existing power structures. The 2003 Iraq invasion and 2011 Libya intervention both demonstrated how kinetic action can unleash unpredictable cascading effects.

Iran’s proxy network architecture—spanning Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen—has been built specifically to respond to such scenarios. However, these networks also represent vulnerabilities, as activation would expose previously hidden assets to counteraction.

The broader regional realignment involving Saudi-Israeli normalization talks, shifting U.S. commitments, and evolving Turkey-Iran competition creates a fundamentally different strategic environment than existed during previous crisis cycles.

Trajectory

Israel would face the strategic paradox of achieving a primary objective—degrading Iran’s nuclear capability—while potentially triggering the exact multi-front conflict scenario it seeks to avoid.

The strike’s aftermath would likely determine Middle Eastern alliance structures for the next decade. Regional powers would be forced to choose sides more definitively than current hedging strategies allow.

Success would depend less on immediate military outcomes and more on Israel’s ability to manage the subsequent political and diplomatic realignment across multiple theaters simultaneously.

Read the full analysis →

Arctic | Security | Climate change creates simultaneous pressure on NATO Greenland relations, Russian infrastructure, and Chinese shipping ambitions

Situation

Three Arctic security challenges are accelerating simultaneously as ice retreat transforms regional dynamics. The US has announced discussions with NATO’s secretary-general about Greenland security arrangements while Denmark insists sovereignty is non-negotiable, creating alliance tensions over the strategically vital territory.

Russian Arctic infrastructure faces mounting permafrost instability. The Yamal Peninsula’s LNG facilities generated $9.5 billion in 2024 despite Western sanctions, but ground temperatures are rising faster than air temperatures, threatening pipeline and facility foundations.

Chinese Northern Sea Route shipping increased to fourteen container voyages in 2025, up from eleven in 2024, but remains negligible compared to traditional routes handling fifty ships daily through Suez.

Context

These are not parallel developments but interconnected pressure points. Ice-free summers projected with 60% probability in the 2030s transform Greenland from peripheral territory into the northern hemisphere’s strategic pivot, controlling both the GIUK gap and emerging shipping lanes.

NATO’s consensus requirement becomes a vulnerability when territorial status is contested. Greenland’s quantum superposition—simultaneously Danish territory, autonomous nation, and potential independent state—cannot survive indefinitely as strategic value increases.

Russia’s Arctic empire sits on literally unstable foundations. The 2020 Norilsk diesel spill previewed infrastructure failure when frozen ground becomes flowing substrate. Chinese investment offers capital but creates new dependencies, trading Western technological reliance for Chinese financial control.

Trajectory

Each system’s adaptation capacity is being tested simultaneously, with failure modes feeding each other. NATO fractures over Greenland embolden Russian resource nationalism while Russian infrastructure collapse raises Chinese shipping costs.

The Arctic is becoming a pressure vessel where every crack weakens the whole structure rather than isolated components. Climate acceleration compresses decision timelines, forcing strategic choices before adaptation strategies mature.

The question shifts from which system fails first to whether any can adapt fast enough. Current strategies assume stable conditions that no longer exist, requiring fundamental recalibration rather than incremental adjustment.

Global | Defence | Trump’s alliance withdrawal doctrine creates nuclear proliferation window faster than diplomatic frameworks can respond

Situation

Trump’s 2025 National Defense Strategy instructs allies to “handle their own security,” with European partners assuming “primary conventional defense roles” and South Korea deterring North Korea with “limited U.S. support.” The Pentagon’s strategic reorientation prioritizes the Western Hemisphere over traditional alliance commitments.

Three nuclear-capable allies face immediate recalculation. Japan holds 46 tons of separated plutonium with 6-12 month breakout capacity. South Korea shows 70% public support for indigenous nuclear weapons. Both countries possess advanced technical infrastructure that diplomatic frameworks cannot meaningfully constrain once political decisions shift.

Context

Extended deterrence requires continuous credibility reinforcement through exercises, deployments, and presidential commitments. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and IAEA monitoring operate on institutional time—years of negotiation and norm-building. Proliferation decisions operate on crisis time, collapsing from theoretical to operational in months when survival calculations change.

Historical precedent confirms the pattern. South Korea pursued nuclear weapons in the 1970s precisely because Nixon Doctrine signaled American retrenchment from Asia. Japan’s Prime Minister Takaichi calls the postwar pacifist framework “strategically obsolete” and advocates explicit nuclear discussion.

Vendor lock-in mechanisms like 123 Agreements require American consent for enrichment but only function when the vendor remains engaged. NPT Article X permits withdrawal with three months’ notice if “extraordinary events” jeopardize supreme national interests.

Trajectory

The gap between American withdrawal signals and diplomatic response creates an exploitable window. Japan’s technical capacity and South Korea’s public support represent latent capabilities that political shifts could activate rapidly.

Credibility erosion accelerates once allies perceive abandonment as likely rather than possible. The question shifts from whether these states want nuclear weapons to whether they conclude survival depends on them. Diplomatic frameworks designed for gradual proliferation scenarios may prove inadequate for cascade dynamics triggered by patron abandonment.

Yesterday’s Assessments

• What breaks first when japan deploys hypersonic strike weapons: The constitutional fiction anchoring east Asian order
• Japan’s hypersonic missiles will work—the system that commands them will not

Until tomorrow.