The Unraveling: How Three Dictators Are Rewriting the Rules While the West Scrambles

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The 11-year-old never saw the missile coming.

Reports and witnesses say Iran is now using children in security roles during the war, with one child killed while manning a checkpoint in Tehran. It’s the kind of detail that makes you pause mid-sip of your morning coffee, wondering how we got to a place where a fifth-grader becomes military infrastructure.

But here’s what really keeps me up at night: this isn’t an aberration. It’s part of a pattern that’s accelerating across three continents, where authoritarian leaders are making moves that would have been unthinkable just five years ago. Putin is building a digital Iron Curtain around Russia. Iran is militarizing children. And the West? The West is discovering it might not be able to afford the luxury of both generous social programs and actual defense.

The math isn’t working anymore. The assumptions that held the world together since 1991 are breaking down in real time.

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When Children Become Checkpoints

Let’s start with that dead 11-year-old in Tehran, because it tells us something important about how Iran views this war. When you put children at checkpoints, you’re not just desperate for manpower. You’re making a statement about total societal mobilization that goes beyond anything we saw even during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

I’ve reported from enough conflict zones to know that using child soldiers usually signals one of two things: either you’re losing badly, or you’ve decided that conventional rules no longer apply. In Iran’s case, I think it’s the latter.

The Pentagon says B-52s are now flying missions over Iran with “free rein” for the first time in the war, even though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledges Iran still retains missile capabilities after a month of U.S.-Israeli attacks. That tells you everything about how this conflict has escalated beyond anyone’s initial calculations.

Here’s my read: Iran’s leadership has concluded this is an existential fight, and they’re willing to sacrifice a generation to prove it. The use of children isn’t tactical desperation — it’s strategic messaging. They’re telling their own population that everyone, including kids, has skin in this game. And they’re telling the West that they won’t fight by Western rules.

This is psychological warfare disguised as military necessity.

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Putin’s Great Disconnection

Meanwhile, 2,000 miles north, Vladimir Putin is taking his boldest steps yet to control Russians’ communications, implementing new outages and blockages that amount to cutting his people off from the world. It’s not just internet censorship anymore — it’s digital isolation on a scale that makes China’s Great Firewall look quaint.

Think about what this means. Putin is essentially betting that he can win a modern war while voluntarily lobotomizing his own information infrastructure. It’s like performing surgery while blindfolded, except the patient is an entire nuclear-armed nation.

I’ve watched authoritarian leaders try to control information flows before, but this is different. Putin isn’t just blocking specific websites or arresting dissidents. He’s creating what amounts to a parallel internet reality for 144 million people. The technical challenges alone are staggering — but he’s doing it anyway.

Why now? Because Putin has apparently concluded that the war in Iran represents an inflection point that requires total information control at home. He can’t risk his population seeing unfiltered reports of B-52s operating freely over Iranian airspace, or understanding the true economic cost of supporting Iran while Europe simultaneously ramps up defense spending.

The irony is devastating. A leader who rose to power partly by exploiting the information advantages of the internet age is now dismantling those same advantages to stay in power.

Europe’s Guns vs. Butter Nightmare

Which brings us to Europe’s suddenly urgent math problem. After decades of prioritizing domestic spending over military expenditure, European leaders are discovering that the war in Iran has made their “guns vs. butter” dilemma acute. National budgets are straining, and voters are getting angry.

Here’s the brutal arithmetic: European nations have spent the past 30 years building elaborate social safety nets on the assumption that the United States would handle the world’s security problems. That assumption is now evaporating in real time.

Germany, which has prided itself on generous unemployment benefits and free university education, is suddenly facing the reality that it might need to choose between social programs and actual defense capability. France, with its 35-hour work week and extensive public healthcare, is discovering that maintaining global influence requires more than soft power and good intentions.

The timing couldn’t be worse. European populations have grown accustomed to a level of social spending that was only possible because defense spending was treated as optional. Now, with Iran demonstrating its willingness to use children as military assets and Putin cutting Russia off from the world to pursue his own strategic goals, European leaders are telling their voters that some of those social programs might have to go.

My prediction: this is going to cause massive political upheaval across Europe by the end of 2025. Populations that have never had to choose between healthcare and defense are about to get a crash course in great power competition.

The Diplomatic Theater

Against this backdrop of genuine crisis, we’re getting a masterclass in how traditional diplomacy struggles to adapt to new realities. King Charles is planning to visit the United States as tensions rise between Trump and Britain over the war in Iran, apparently in hopes that royal pageantry can shore up relations.

It’s almost quaint. A constitutional monarch is flying across the Atlantic to smooth over differences about a war where one side uses child soldiers and the other side deploys strategic bombers with “free rein.” The mismatch between the diplomatic tools and the actual stakes is jarring.

Don’t get me wrong — personal relationships between leaders matter, and symbolic gestures can have real impact. But when you’re dealing with adversaries who are willing to arm 11-year-olds and cut entire populations off from global communications, tea with the King feels inadequate.

Even more telling: Canada will send its first astronaut to the moon on a joint mission with the United States, but back on Earth, U.S.-Canada relations are fraying. Think about that for a moment. We can coordinate sending humans to another celestial body, but we can’t maintain basic diplomatic cooperation on the same planet.

It’s like watching two neighbors plan a elaborate joint vacation while their property line dispute escalates into a legal war.

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The New Rules of the Game

Here’s what I think is really happening: we’re witnessing the emergence of a new international system where the old constraints simply don’t apply anymore. The post-1991 liberal international order assumed that economic integration would make large-scale conflict too costly, that information flows would naturally promote democracy, and that military spending could be treated as a luxury rather than a necessity.

All three assumptions are collapsing simultaneously.

Iran is demonstrating that economic costs don’t matter if you’re willing to sacrifice everything, including children, for strategic objectives. Putin is proving that information flows can be severed unilaterally, even at enormous economic and technological cost. And Europe is discovering that military spending isn’t optional when your adversaries are playing for keeps.

The brutal reality is that the West got comfortable with a set of rules that only worked as long as everyone agreed to play by them. Now we’re facing opponents who’ve decided the rules themselves are the problem.

This isn’t just about policy disputes or diplomatic tensions. It’s about fundamental disagreement over what kind of world we’re going to live in. One side believes in integrated economies, free information flows, and international law. The other side believes in total state control, information warfare, and the willingness to sacrifice anything — including children — for strategic advantage.

Those worldviews aren’t compatible. And increasingly, it’s becoming clear that only one of them is going to survive intact.

The Speed of Unraveling

What strikes me most is how quickly this is all happening. Five years ago, the idea that Iran would use children in military roles seemed unthinkable. Three years ago, Putin cutting Russia off from the global internet was science fiction. Two years ago, European leaders could still pretend that defense spending was someone else’s problem.

Now all three are happening simultaneously, and the pace of change is accelerating.

I keep thinking about that first wolf attack on a human in Germany since wolves began reestablishing themselves decades ago. It happened on a shopping street in Hamburg — a wolf biting a woman in the heart of modern European civilization. It’s a perfect metaphor for what’s happening globally: systems we thought were stable and predictable are suddenly producing outcomes nobody anticipated.

The woman probably went shopping thinking about normal things — groceries, errands, maybe dinner plans. She didn’t expect to encounter a predator that wasn’t supposed to exist in that environment anymore. That’s exactly how Western policymakers are feeling right now about international relations.

We built our entire post-Cold War system on the assumption that certain kinds of behavior — using child soldiers, cutting populations off from global communications, forcing allies to choose between social programs and defense — were relics of the past. Turns out the predators never really went away. They were just waiting for the right moment to reappear.

What This Means for America

The United States is finding itself in the peculiar position of being simultaneously indispensable and increasingly isolated from its traditional allies. B-52s flying with “free rein” over Iran demonstrates American military capability, but fraying relations with both Britain and Canada suggest that capability isn’t translating into effective coalition building.

Here’s the problem: America spent decades encouraging its allies to focus on economic development rather than military capability, essentially creating a security dependency that worked fine during peaceful times but becomes a liability during actual conflicts.

Now European nations are angry because they have to choose between social programs and defense spending. Britain is pushing back against American war strategy. Even Canada — Canada! — is experiencing diplomatic tensions with Washington despite joint space missions.

The cruel irony is that America’s own success in providing security for its allies created the conditions that make those allies less useful when security challenges actually emerge. It’s like teaching your kids to depend on you for everything, then getting frustrated when they can’t help you move furniture.

My assessment: the United States is about to discover that alliance management in an era of genuine great power competition requires completely different skills than alliance management during the “end of history” period.

The Coming Choices

We’re approaching a series of decision points that are going to define international relations for the next generation. Iran has shown it’s willing to sacrifice children for strategic objectives. Putin has demonstrated he’ll cut his own people off from global communications to maintain control. Europe is learning that it can’t afford both generous social programs and actual defense capabilities.

These aren’t temporary policy adjustments. They’re fundamental choices about what kind of societies these nations want to be.

The question for the West is whether it’s prepared to make similarly fundamental choices. Are European populations willing to give up some social benefits for military capability? Is the United States prepared to manage alliances with partners who are genuinely angry about having to make those tradeoffs? Are democratic societies capable of the kind of long-term strategic thinking that authoritarian leaders can impose unilaterally?

I’m genuinely uncertain about the answers, and that uncertainty should scare all of us.

The authoritarian side has already made their choices. They’ve decided that traditional constraints — economic integration, information flows, international law, even the protection of children — are obstacles to be overcome rather than systems to be preserved.

The democratic side is still debating whether those constraints are worth preserving at all.

That asymmetry in decision-making speed and commitment is going to determine who wins this contest. And right now, the side that’s willing to use 11-year-olds at checkpoints is moving faster than the side that thinks royal visits can solve strategic problems.

What I’m Watching

• Iran’s recruitment patterns through March 2025: If reports continue showing systematic use of minors in military roles, it signals complete abandonment of international norms and suggests Iran views this as a multi-generational conflict

• European defense budget announcements in Q1 2025: Watch for which countries actually cut social programs versus which ones just promise to increase military spending without specifying funding sources — that gap will predict political stability

• Russia’s internet infrastructure by summer 2025: Putin’s digital isolation experiment will either succeed in creating a parallel information ecosystem or fail catastrophically, taking the Russian economy with it

• U.S. alliance dynamics during King Charles’s visit: Whether this diplomatic theater produces concrete policy coordination or remains purely symbolic will indicate if traditional diplomacy can adapt to the current crisis