The Fuse That Wouldn’t Snuff Out: How 2025 Became the Year of Unending War

The Fuse That Wouldn’t Snuff Out

John Simpson’s notebook, 18 Dec 2025 – I keep the matchbox on my desk in Jerusalem, scorched from a rocket that never quite found its mark. It’s my reminder that this year the world learned an old lesson anew: once a fuse is lit, the wind decides where it burns.

January: The Black-Sea Gambit

At 03:14 local time, a Russian drone swarm punched through Ukrainian air-defence software updated only hours earlier. Within 48 hours, grain prices leapt 22 % and five NATO members invoked Article 4. In Odessa, a baker told me, “We measure the war now in loaves we cannot afford to burn.”

May: The Strait That Closed the World

When Taiwan’s chip-fabrication plant in Hsinchu took a direct hit from a hypersonic fragment, the explosion was heard on trading floors in New York. Overnight, the global auto industry discovered it had four weeks of semiconductors left. A freight captain anchored outside Kaohsiung sighed, “My ship is full of toys that will never see Christmas.”

August: The Red-Sea Ripple

Houthi drones struck an Emirati tanker. Insurance underwriters at Lloyd’s reacted faster than any navy: rates for Red-Sea transit quadrupled, and 14 % of Europe’s diesel detoured round the Cape of Good Hope. In Nairobi, petrol queues curled like prayer beads.

October: The Cyber Siege

At 04:07 GMT, a ransomware worm—nicknamed “Famine”—locked the port operating systems of Antwerp, Los Angeles and Busan simultaneously. Shipping agents reverted to pencil, paper and fax machines last seen in the 1980s. A dockworker handed me a carbon-copy manifest: “Welcome back to the past; it still works when the future fails.”

What the Maps Won’t Show You

“The real battlefields are spreadsheets and stomachs.”
—Dr. Leila Namazi, IISS economist, Doha

• Global defence spending crossed $3 trillion for the first time—equal to the entire GDP of India.
• Food insecurity now affects 1.2 billion people, up from 828 million in 2021.
• Disinformation campaigns in 41 languages kept 63 % of polled citizens unsure who fired first.

Voices from the Fault-Lines

In a basement in Kharkiv, teenagers trade front-line memes while Bitcoin buys insulin. In the Strait of Hormuz, fishermen sell fresh catch to passing destroyers for cans of diesel. On the outskirts of Taipei, night-market vendors hawk “conflict noodles” dyed the blue-white-red of missile-trail smoke.

Looking Ahead: The Longest Winter

Forecasters predict a 63 % chance of simultaneous energy and food shocks by March 2026. Yet in every war-zone market I visited, someone offered me tea. Diplomats speak of “off-ramps”; civilians speak of tomorrow’s bread. History tells us conflicts end when the cost of continuation exceeds the price of compromise—but in 2025, the accountants keep different books.

Back in Jerusalem, the matchbox stays open. The wind, after all, is still blowing.