The World Is Splintering Into Smaller, Meaner Pieces

The international system is breaking down faster than most people realize, and it’s not because of some grand ideological clash. It’s messier than that.

In the span of a week, we’ve watched the US prepare military strikes on Iran while Iran’s Supreme Leader signals he’s locking down the Strait of Hormuz. We’ve seen Myanmar’s military move a Nobel Prize winner to house arrest, consolidating a coup that should’ve sparked global outcry three years ago. An Islamist group is orchestrating coordinated attacks on Jewish targets across Europe using what officials describe as “low-cost, unsophisticated methods.” Mali is choking under a militant blockade. Israel is intercepting aid flotillas in international waters. And through it all, governments are mostly just… managing the chaos rather than stopping it.

This isn’t the world falling apart. It’s the world disaggregating. Power is diffusing downward to regional actors, militant groups, and state militaries that answer to no one. The old guardrails are corroded.

Iran Is Playing for Keeps

Start here: oil just hit its highest price since 2022 because Axios reported that US Central Command has a plan ready for “short and powerful” strikes on Iran. That’s not a bluff in a press conference. That’s a functional military operation sitting on a desk waiting for a signature.

Iran’s response? Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei announced his country will establish “new legal frameworks” for the Strait of Hormuz and retain nuclear capabilities. Translation: we’re not backing down, and we’re signaling we can choke global oil supplies if you move against us.

This is escalation theater with real economic teeth. A 30% spike in oil prices doesn’t just hurt consumers at the pump. It cascades through inflation, interest rates, manufacturing costs. It makes recession more likely. And unlike nuclear weapons—which are rhetorically dramatic but tactically frozen—the Strait of Hormuz is a lever Iran can actually pull. Roughly 20% of global petroleum flows through that chokepoint.

My read: the Trump administration is testing whether Iran blinks first. But Iran’s leadership has spent 45 years proving they don’t blink when existentially threatened. If those strikes happen, Khamenei has both the motivation and the maritime geography to make the world pay. The oil market knows this. That’s why prices are already climbing before anything has actually happened.

From above of pile of broken glass and metal frame scattered on rough ground on sunny day Photo by Francesco Ungaro / Pexels

Myanmar’s Slow-Motion Collapse Into Tyranny

Meanwhile, in Myanmar, almost nobody’s paying attention.

Aung San Suu Kyi—a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, symbol of democratic resistance against military rule—has been moved from prison to house arrest. This sounds like a small mercy, maybe even progress. It’s not. It’s the military finalizing its grip and signaling that the woman who represented democratic hope in the country is now just a managed problem to be warehoused quietly.

The coup happened in 2021. It’s now 2025. The international community has largely moved on. China and Russia aren’t threatening sanctions. The US has imposed targeted penalties that matter mainly on paper. The military has consolidated enough that a change in Suu Kyi’s housing status barely registers on the news cycle.

This is what state collapse looks like when nobody cares enough to stop it. Myanmar’s military regime is now functionally a pariah state that doesn’t need to perform legitimacy anymore. House arrest is transparent control theater. The difference between prison and house arrest in an authoritarian system is aesthetic.

Hybrid Attacks, Real Fear

More disturbing than any of this is what’s happening in Europe right now.

A shadowy Islamist group is orchestrating attacks on Jewish targets across multiple European countries—low-cost, unsophisticated, but coordinated and consistent enough that officials are investigating them as a pattern. Not random attacks. Not lone wolves. A campaign.

The genius (if you can call it that) is the asymmetry. You don’t need to blow up buildings or shoot crowds to wage effective hybrid warfare. You create persistent, low-level fear. You demonstrate that you can reach into European capitals and touch Jewish communities repeatedly. You don’t need to kill many people. You just need to make them feel hunted.

This is the inversion of 20th-century terrorism. The IRA bombed department stores. Al-Qaeda flew planes into towers. This is something quieter and more durable: sustained psychological pressure using methods so cheap and simple that attribution becomes nearly impossible and prevention becomes a game of defending infinite targets.

And it’s working. Communities in Europe are now living with ambient anxiety about being targeted. That’s the goal. That’s the success condition.

From below of various flags on flagpoles located in green park in front of entrance to the UN headquarters in Geneva Photo by Mathias Reding / Pexels

The Activist-Industrial Complex Meets Geopolitics

Then there’s the Gaza flotilla. Israel intercepted 22 boats carrying aid near Crete and detained 175 activists. The activists say it was illegal interception in international waters. Israel says it was security enforcement.

Here’s what’s actually interesting: this isn’t about the aid. It’s about the symbolism. Every Gaza-bound ship that gets intercepted becomes a story. Every detained activist becomes a martyr narrative. The whole apparatus—the boats, the activists, the legal fights—is now weaponized as information warfare.

Pro-Palestinian organizations know Israel will stop them. That’s the point. The interception is the story. It proves Israel’s control. It proves the blockade exists. It generates outrage, footage, and Twitter arguments that ripple globally.

Israel’s security argument isn’t wrong, exactly. But the strategic effect of enforcement is that it keeps the confrontation visible and raw. There’s no resolution where this ends well for anyone. The activists keep sailing. Israel keeps intercepting. Both sides win their respective information campaigns while Gaza’s actual situation—which is genuinely dire—stays frozen in amber.

What Actually Changed

So what’s the connective tissue here?

In each of these situations—Iran, Myanmar, Mali’s blockade, European hybrid attacks, Gaza—you’re watching actors who’ve decided that the old international order won’t help them, so they’re operating outside it. Iran doesn’t think sanctions will stop it, so it’s building nuclear weapons and threatening chokepoints. Myanmar’s military doesn’t fear democratic pressure, so it’s just consolidating autocracy. Islamist groups don’t think conventional deterrence works, so they’re waging campaigns of persistent low-level violence.

The common thread is defection from the rules-based order. And once enough major actors defect simultaneously, the system starts to fail in ways that are hard to reverse.

I think we’re going to see more fragmentation, not less. Regional powers will keep pushing boundaries because the consequences are diffuse and the rewards are concentrated. The US will manage crises reactively while preparing contingencies it won’t use until forced. Europe will worry about Jewish safety while doing little about the underlying drivers of the hybrid attacks. And Myanmar will just… keep being Myanmar, abandoned by the world.