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What happened?

Operation Epic Fury is one month old and the United States is running into the limits of what airpower and willpower can accomplish without allies. On March 15, Trump called on countries that use the Strait of Hormuz to help reopen it militarily. The next day, Germany, Spain, Italy, Estonia, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Korea, and Japan all said no. The EU as a bloc said no.

Trump called it a "very foolish mistake" and declared the US "[does] not need the help of anyone." It's gotten worse since: Spain, France, and Italy have now restricted US military operations, closing airspace, denying base access, and limiting logistical support.

The Strait remains effectively closed. UNCTAD reported that ship transits dropped from 130 per day in February to just six in March, a 95% decline. Iran is selectively allowing vessels through for China, India, Turkey, and Pakistan while everyone else's oil sits stranded. Brent crude has been hovering between $100 and $119 a barrel. US gas prices hit $4 a gallon, the highest since 2022. The IEA has called this the "greatest global energy security challenge in history."

Then came the missile math. The US and Gulf states burned through approximately 1,500 PAC-3 interceptors in the first 16 days, partly because Gulf forces were using high-end interceptors against cheap Iranian Shahed drones. Lockheed Martin produced roughly 600 PAC-3 rounds in all of 2025. Replacing two weeks of combat would take over two years. So the US went looking for more.

Poland's Defense Minister publicly rejected a US request to redeploy Polish Patriot batteries to the Middle East. "Nothing changes in this matter," he posted. The US already moved THAAD systems out of South Korea earlier this month, and the Pentagon is now considering diverting weapons intended for Ukraine to the Middle East.

Today, Trump told reporters the war could end in two to three weeks and that Iran doesn't need to make a deal. But Iran's Foreign Minister told Al Jazeera there are no negotiations and Tehran has "zero" trust in Washington. The Quincy Institute's Trita Parsi put it bluntly: "The timeline just keeps on being extended because, at the end of the day, the United States is no longer in control of this war."

Why does it matter?

This is what happens when you start a 'war of choice.’ The US can control the skies over Iran. It cannot unilaterally reopen a 21-mile-wide strait mined and defended by a country fighting for survival. The Strait of Hormuz handles 20% of global seaborne oil trade and nearly 50% of global urea and sulfur exports. Europe's gas storage is at 30% capacity after a brutal winter.

The EU estimates it's paying an extra 13 billion euros on fossil fuel imports. And allies who were never consulted before the first bomb dropped are now being asked to contribute their own missile defense systems and declining.

The interceptor shortage is the biggest concern here. If the US burns through high-end munitions at this rate in the Middle East, it has less to deter China in the Pacific and less to supply Ukraine. Poland understands this. South Korea understands this. The question is whether Washington does.

What we're watching for:

What happened?

At the Bucha Summit on March 31, President Zelensky revealed that Russia has issued what amounts to a two-month ultimatum: withdraw from Donbas or face harsher peace terms. According to Zelensky, Moscow told the American side it expects to capture eastern Ukraine in that window. If Kyiv doesn't pull out voluntarily, "there will be other conditions." He dismissed it flatly. "I'm surprised how anyone could believe this."

The battlefield doesn't support Russia's bluff. Over the past four weeks, Russian forces actually lost 4 square miles of Ukrainian territory, according to ISW data. Ukraine's counteroffensive on the southern Oleksandrivka axis has recovered 480 square kilometers. Russia's strategy for 2026 is yielding diminishing returns: roughly 1,957 square miles captured over the past year at a cost of an estimated 1 million casualties.

But Russia still has weapons of a different kind. Last week it launched 948 drones in a single 24-hour period, its largest aerial barrage of the war, damaging a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Lviv and killing civilians across western Ukraine.

Zelensky warned that Kyiv faces a missile deficit because American stockpiles are being redirected to Iran. In one of the stranger developments of the week, Ukraine reported that Russia deliberately redirected incoming Ukrainian drones toward Finland and the Baltic states, apparently trying to provoke tensions between Kyiv and its European allies. Finland is now developing a civilian drone alert app modeled on Ukraine's system.

Why does it matter?

Russia is not winning this war on the ground or at the negotiating table. However its very likely they will walk away the 20 percent of Ukranian territory. All they have to do is wait for US supplies and attention to dwindle.

Every interceptor the US sends to the Gulf is one fewer for Ukraine. Every hour the National Security Council spends on Hormuz is an hour not spent on Donbas. Russia's ultimatum is a bet that American bandwidth has a limit, and that limit has been reached.

Zelensky asked the most important question of the week: if Russia's goal is only Donbas, why does it threaten to go further and impose "other conditions" afterward? The answer is obvious. Donbas was never the endgame. It's the opening bid in a negotiation Moscow wants to have with Washington, not Kyiv.`

What we're watching for:

What happened?

On March 26, the Philippines and France signed a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement in Paris, the first such military pact Manila has ever signed with a European country. The deal allows troops from both nations to train on each other's soil and provides legal protection for joint operations.

The timing was precise: it came one day after the Philippine military accused a Chinese missile frigate of executing an "unsafe and unprofessional maneuver" against a Philippine Navy vessel near Thitu Island, one of Manila's key outposts in the disputed South China Sea.

Manila now has visiting forces agreements with the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and France. That's a five-nation security web, and for the first time, it extends to a European power with its own Indo-Pacific military presence. The deal also comes as Philippine Defense Secretary Teodoro attended the Paris Defense and Strategy Forum, seeking to expand cooperation with NATO and European partners more broadly.

Meanwhile in Seoul, President Lee Jae Myung is hosting Indonesian President Prabowo and French President Macron for state visits centered on defense, supply chains, energy security, and the Middle East. South Korea is weighing nationwide driving restrictions if crude hits $120 to $130 a barrel, its first civilian fuel curbs since the 1991 Gulf War. Indonesia and Japan jointly declared their readiness to mediate global conflicts.

Why does it matter?

There's a security architecture forming in the Indo-Pacific right now, and it's not waiting for the United States. France got kicked out of the Sahel by military juntas who turned to Russia. Now it's signing military pacts in the South China Sea. The Philippines, facing an increasingly aggressive China and an increasingly distracted America, is building redundancy into its alliance network. South Korea, which just watched the US pull THAAD systems off the peninsula and ship them to the Gulf, is hosting defense summits with half of Asia.

None of this means the US is irrelevant. It means its allies are hedging. When Trump declared on March 17 that the US "[does] not need the help of anyone" and today told allies to "get your own oil", he made the case for diversification more eloquently than any Chinese diplomat ever could. More than $3 trillion in trade passes through the South China Sea every year. The nations that depend on that waterway are looking at the Strait of Hormuz and doing the math. The math isn't looking great.

What we're watching for: