Lines of Power

Mapping the forces that shape our world. Geopolitics, international affairs & global power.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

Every major world event has a story beneath the story.

Who actually has power. How they got it. What they’re doing with it.

The post-Cold War order is cracking. New alliances are forming. Old ones are fracturing.

The headlines tell you what happened. We tell you why — and what comes next.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

Israel is tearing itself apart over who fights its wars.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men brought the country to a standstill — blocking highways, shutting down public transport, setting cars on fire. Not in response to a foreign attack. In response to the possibility that they might have to serve in the military like everyone else.

To understand why this is happening, you need to understand the deal that built modern Israel.
When the state was founded in 1948, ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students were granted exemptions from military service to allow them to rebuild Jewish religious life after the Holocaust. It was a pragmatic arrangement for a small, insular community. Decades later, that community numbers in the hundreds of thousands — and the exemption has never been revoked.

A crisis began in July 2025 when ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism pulled their support from Netanyahu's coalition unless a bill was passed enshrining those exemptions in law. The problem: Israel's Supreme Court ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Israelis — meaning any bill cementing exemptions would be immediately unconstitutional.

Netanyahu is trapped. He appears to stand little chance of remaining prime minister after elections without ultra-Orthodox support. But they are probably his only hope for a bill that would avoid mandatory enlistment — and sticking with them risks harming his standing with the broader public.

Meanwhile, the military is bleeding. After conflicts in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, and occupying parts of Syria, the Israeli army is exhausted and in need of new recruits. Each year, roughly 13,000 ultra-Orthodox men reach conscription age — but fewer than 10% enlist.

This isn't just a religious dispute. It's a question of who bears the cost of war — and who gets to opt out. That question is fracturing Israeli society along lines that go far deeper than any single election.

The protests yesterday were loud. The political reckoning coming this fall will be louder.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

Something subtle is happening between Washington and Beijing. The United States may be quietly accepting the reality of Chinese power. If true, that changes everything.

For 30 years, US policy toward China operated on the assumption that economic integration would produce political liberalisation. That a richer China would become a more Western China. Engagement would gradually bring Beijing into the liberal international order.

That assumption, we can now say, is dead.
What’s replaced it is messier and harder to name. Washington still wants to “de-risk” from Chinese supply chains — especially in semiconductors and rare earths. But the two economies are so deeply intertwined that clean decoupling is practically impossible without inflicting serious damage on both sides.

The emerging framework looks something like this: compete fiercely on technology, military capability, and strategic influence; maintain just enough economic interdependence to avoid catastrophic rupture; manage tension without triggering direct conflict. It’s not a Cold War — the original Cold War involved two largely separate economic systems. This is something more unstable and more complex.

What makes this moment particularly consequential is that both sides are making structural bets on the future. The US is betting that technological supremacy — in AI, semiconductors, and quantum computing — will preserve its strategic edge. China is betting that infrastructure dominance, resource relationships, and sheer economic scale will eventually tip the balance.

The question for the next decade isn’t whether China rises. It’s whether the international system can accommodate two superpowers with fundamentally different visions of world order — and what happens when it can’t.

That negotiation is already underway. Most people just haven’t noticed.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

Defense alliances are being quietly restructured.

NATO’s collective model is under pressure. What’s emerging: smaller regional coalitions built around specific threats.

Less “all for one.” More “these five countries, this specific problem.”

The architecture of Western security is changing in real time.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

Russia is losing Central Asia. Not with a bang — with a slow, structural unravelling. And the Kremlin knows it.

For decades, Moscow held the region through five levers: security guarantees, absorption of migrant labour, control of trade routes, pipeline dominance, and financial dependency. Central Asian leaders may not have loved Moscow, but they needed it. That calculus has fundamentally shifted.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the accelerant. Western sanctions exposed the fragility of routing trade, energy, and finance through Moscow. Countries that once saw Russia as a guarantor of stability now see it as a source of risk — economic, reputational, and increasingly physical.

The clearest signal came earlier this year when Russian state TV host Vladimir Solovyov suggested Moscow could launch a military operation in Central Asia, just as it did in Ukraine. The response from the region was fury. That kind of pushback would have been unthinkable five years ago.

China has stepped in to fill the vacuum. Not with troops, but with pipelines, fibre-optic cables, fintech systems, and infrastructure. Beijing isn’t conquering Central Asia — it’s rewiring it. The Trans-Caspian Fiber-Optic Cable, set to connect China through Kazakhstan to Europe by late 2026, is a perfect example. It’s not a military move. It’s a structural one. And structural moves last longer.

The West has noticed — late. The US held a C5+1 summit with all five Central Asian presidents in Washington in late 2025. France’s Macron personally called Kazakhstan in March 2026 to push for rare earth supply agreements. But Washington and Brussels are playing catch-up against a decade of Chinese investment and relationship-building.

Here’s the bottom line: Central Asia is no longer anyone’s backyard. It’s a genuinely contested multipolar arena. Russia is loud about what it’s losing. China is quiet about what it’s winning. That asymmetry tells you a lot about who actually holds the lines of power right now.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

The global economy is slowing — and geopolitics is the reason.
The UN projects global growth will drop to 2.6% in 2026. Not because of bad monetary policy. Because conflict in the Middle East is disrupting energy markets, shipping routes, and investor confidence.
War has a price tag. And right now, everyone is paying it.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

Russia is losing central Asia.

The Ukraine war accelerated everything.
Western sanctions exposed the fragility of routing trade, energy, and finance through Moscow. Central Asian leaders — who once saw Russia as a guarantor of stability — now see it as a source of risk.

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Europe’s biggest geopolitical challenge isn’t Russia—it’s itself. Energy transitions and defense gaps are exposing long-term structural weakness beneath NATO unity.

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China’s real win in the Gulf isn’t peace—it’s relevance. As long as tensions simmer, Beijing strengthens its role as the only major power talking to everyone.

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Even as Hormuz stabilizes, the real pressure point has shifted: Red Sea routes.Houthis have increased attacks using drones, ballistic missiles and small boats to target ships connected to Israel, the UK and UK. Manor shipping firms are diverting vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, resulting in + 12 days voyage and added costs. Iran’s strategy is disruption.

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Strait of Hormuz isn’t ‘reopening’—it never fully closed. What we’re seeing is classic Iran brinkmanship: escalate, test Western response, then de-escalate while preserving leverage over global oil flows. Markets signal one thing: risk down, not gone.

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🇱🇧🇮🇱 Lebanon and Israel have agreed to a 10 day ceasefire. Trump has offered Netanyahu and Aoun to continue negotiations at the White House.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

🇮🇷🇺🇸 AP reports Iran and US may head into a second round of negotiations. The ceasefire is still in effect for another week, leaving room for more talks to happen!

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Strait of Hormuz - NATO allies do not support the US blockade of Iranian ports. France and UK are looking to convince other nations to join a defensive mission at the Strait instead of joining the blockade!

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Strait of Hormuz- France and UK to meet in the coming days with the purpose of establishing a defensive mission to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. President Macron was clear in his words that this a separate mission from what the US and Israel are currently doing!

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🇨🇳🇹🇼China met with Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), led by chairwoman Cheng Li-wun, in a high-profile visit and meeting with President Xi Jinping on April 10, 2026, in Beijing. This was the first such engagement between a sitting KMT leader and Xi in nearly a decade.

Background on Cross-Strait Relations
Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), under President Lai Ching-te, strongly emphasizes Taiwan's distinct identity and de facto independence. Beijing views DPP leaders as "separatists" and has refused official government-to-government dialogue with them since the DPP took power. China insists on the "1992 Consensus" (or "one China" framework) as a precondition for talks, which the KMT traditionally accepts in a way that allows for closer economic and people-to-people ties without fully endorsing immediate unification.

The KMT, historically favoring warmer relations with the mainland (rooted in its Chinese Nationalist origins), positions itself as more open to dialogue and "peaceful development" across the strait. Cheng framed her six-day trip (starting April 7, 2026) as a "journey for peace" or "peace mission" to reduce tensions amid ongoing Chinese military drills, warplane incursions, and economic pressures on Taiwan.

[Lines of Power @TheLinesofPower]

🇮🇷 Blockade of Iranian ports set to begin on Monday, as per US military sources. After the failed negotiations tensions are set to resume. This time Trump has set his sights on on blockading the Straight of Hormuz altogether!