10 Things Weekly Roundup - 12th December 2025
Plans, Promises, and the Limits of Power
A week in which governments, institutions, and leaders confronted the gap between ambition and capacity - militarily, diplomatically, economically, and politically. What emerged was not crisis, but a clearer picture of constraint.
The past week did not deliver a decisive turning point. Instead, it offered a series of reminders about how power is now exercised - and limited - across defence, diplomacy, economics, and domestic governance. Ambitious strategies were announced or reaffirmed, but their execution repeatedly ran into financial, legal, or political boundaries. Peace initiatives proved harder to stabilise than to proclaim. Economic leverage was applied more openly, but with uneven effect. At home, courts and governments moved to reassert authority, even as public consent remained fragile.
Taken together, the week illustrated continuity rather than escalation. States continue to pursue influence through deterrence, deals, and pressure, but with diminishing room for manoeuvre. The result is a global landscape shaped less by bold shifts than by incremental adjustments under constraint.
Security warnings grew sharper, but the financial foundations beneath them remained uncertain. Nato officials reiterated concerns about the alliance’s preparedness over the next five years, reinforcing the scale of the challenge facing European defence planning. Yet behind the rhetoric, governments continued to struggle with how those commitments would be funded.
In the UK, defence ambitions increasingly collided with fiscal reality. Long-term spending targets remained politically sensitive, and the gap between stated strategic goals and available resources became harder to ignore. Elsewhere in Europe, proposals to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine reflected similar pressures - an attempt to reconcile strategic necessity with limited public budgets.
The pattern was consistent: deterrence is no longer constrained by intent, but by balance sheets. The credibility of defence planning now rests as much on fiscal sustainability as on military posture.
Diplomacy this week highlighted how difficult it has become to translate negotiated frameworks into durable outcomes. The US-led effort to outline a peace pathway for Ukraine was presented as a step toward resolution, but its assumptions quickly met political and military limits. Expectations ran ahead of enforceable mechanisms.
Similar fragility appeared elsewhere. In Gaza, discussion of a second phase of ceasefire arrangements remained tightly conditional, with unresolved questions over sequencing and guarantees. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a US-brokered agreement struggled to stabilise conditions on the ground. In Southeast Asia, tensions between Thailand and Cambodia escalated despite diplomatic engagement.
The shared feature was not failure, but exposure. Agreements existed, but their resilience depended on actors and conditions beyond the negotiating table. Peace frameworks proved easier to announce than to sustain.
Governments continued to deploy economic tools with increasing directness. Trade policy, technology access, and critical inputs were treated not as background conditions, but as instruments of influence.
The US signalled shifts around advanced chip exports to China, highlighting how export controls remain closely tied to broader strategic calculations. At the same time, debates over rare earths, supply chains, and industrial policy underscored how economic security has become inseparable from national security. Tariff-linked measures - including threats tied to treaty compliance - reinforced the transactional nature of current policy approaches.
What stood out was not novelty, but normalisation. Economic leverage is now a primary policy channel, used across domains where military or diplomatic tools face limits.
Within states, authority was being actively redefined. Courts in the United States intervened to constrain executive action, whether over control of security forces or the approval of infrastructure projects. These rulings did not resolve underlying disputes, but they clarified institutional boundaries.
Governments also tested new regulatory terrain. Proposals to expand screening of visitors through social media history reflected security-driven oversight, while Australia’s decision to restrict social media access for under-16s marked a direct assertion of state authority over digital platforms.
Across these cases, the trend was toward reassertion rather than retreat. The state pushed back - not expansively, but selectively - against areas where power had drifted beyond clear rules.
Finally, several countries illustrated how policy strain translates into political instability. In Bulgaria, a resignation ahead of eurozone entry highlighted the pressures surrounding reform and credibility. Portugal saw a general strike challenge labour reforms, exposing limits to social consent. Elsewhere, disputed elections and arrests of former leaders reflected contested legitimacy rather than outright breakdown.
These episodes were local in nature, but shared a common dynamic. Institutions functioned, but under visible stress. Implementation, rather than design, proved the weakest point.
This was a week of constraint made visible. Defence commitments outpaced funding, peace plans outpaced enforcement, and economic pressure outpaced certainty of outcome. On the home front, states asserted authority, but within narrowing margins of trust and consent.
Nothing shifted decisively. Yet the accumulation of limits matters. Power today is exercised through narrower channels, with less room for error and fewer reserves to absorb failure. The direction of travel remains incremental, but the underlying pressures are becoming clearer.