The World's Stress Fractures Are Showing All at Once

The coordinated jihadist attacks across Mali this week weren’t just another security incident. They were a statement. When armed groups can synchronize strikes across a country’s center and north simultaneously—what witnesses are calling the largest jihadist assault in years—it signals something has fundamentally broken in the state’s ability to hold territory or even credibly claim it’s trying.

Mali matters less for its own sake than for what it says about the broader picture. And right now, the picture is bleak.

We’re watching the simultaneous unraveling of state capacity across multiple regions, and I don’t think that’s random. Ukraine’s still absorbing Russian strikes that kill civilians in apartment buildings. Mexico just revealed that two CIA operatives died in a car crash after a Mexican-led drug lab operation—which raises immediate questions about what “cooperation” even means when your allies can’t guarantee your officers survive the joint mission. Venezuela’s releasing political prisoners in dribs and drabs while human rights groups report over 500 are still caged. And the U.S. is deporting an 85-year-old French widow who was married to an American serviceman.

These aren’t separate stories. They’re symptoms.

Close-up of a cracked concrete wall, showcasing its unique texture and patterns. Photo by barış erkin / Pexels

When States Stop Pretending

Mali’s government has been in freefall since the 2020 coup. The junta promised to deliver stability and hand power back to civilians. Instead, it’s contracted out security to the Wagner Group and its successor outfits while jihadist groups exploit the vacuum. The largest attack “in years” isn’t hyperbole—it’s an indication that whatever security apparatus Mali claims to have is theater.

Here’s the thing nobody wants to say plainly: Mali is functionally failed. Not in the CNN sense of “conflict zone,” but in the technical sense that the state has lost the monopoly on violence that defines statehood itself. When armed groups can coordinate attacks across the country without meaningful resistance, the state doesn’t control the territory. It just controls the capital, some government buildings, and the narrative.

Russia’s pounding Ukrainian cities while the West sends weapons but not troops. That’s a grinding war of attrition where one side (the one with more manpower and less regard for civilian casualties) has structural advantages. Dnipro getting hit hard—again—just means Ukraine’s air defenses are stretched and Russia’s figured out which targets matter.

But here’s what connects these dots: both Mali and Ukraine are showing that military victory has become almost impossible to achieve against determined opponents, even when you have significant advantages. Mali’s jihadists can’t take the capital. Russia probably can’t fully subjugate Ukraine. Neither side can force surrender. So we get permanent conflict—expensive, exhausting, and corrosive to everything around it.

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 Sovereignty Pretense Is Crumbling Faster Than Expected

Mexico revealing that those two Americans weren’t officially permitted to operate on Mexican soil is fascinating, actually. It means either:

They were there covertly and got made, or
They were there with a wink-and-nod understanding that got deniable when things went wrong

Either way, it’s an admission that cross-border operations in the drug war don’t follow the rules anyone pretends to follow. When a Mexican-led operation results in American intelligence officers dying in a car crash, and Mexico has to publicly distance itself from the whole thing, you’re looking at the breakdown of coordinated security policy.

The U.S. can’t fight Mexican cartels without Mexican cooperation. Mexico can’t fight cartels without American resources. So they operate in this gray zone where sovereignty is a courtesy, not a fact. And when something goes catastrophically wrong, countries scramble to deny involvement rather than acknowledge the actual state of play.

Now pile on top of this that the U.S. is deporting an 85-year-old French widow whose only crime was marrying an American serviceman decades ago. Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé’s case isn’t about immigration law—it’s about the U.S. government enforcing its rules with such mechanical precision that it’s willing to deport allies’ citizens, people literally married into American families, if the paperwork isn’t perfect.

This is what happens when states double down on formal sovereignty precisely when informal relationships are doing all the actual work. You get tone-deaf bureaucracy that alienates your partners while you’re simultaneously asking them to let your intelligence officers conduct operations on their soil.

The Democratic Breakdown Is Quieter Than the Shooting

Palestinians voting in local elections while Hamas sits out. Australians booing Indigenous acknowledgments at Anzac Day services. Venezuelans with 500+ political prisoners still in cells despite an amnesty law. These aren’t about specific policies. They’re about the legitimacy crisis.

When populations lose faith in elections—either because major parties refuse to participate (Venezuela/Palestine) or because the ceremony of democracy feels hollow (Australia)—you don’t get instant revolution. You get slow erosion. People stop believing the system produces anything but theater.

The Palestinian local elections are a particularly grim tell. When Hamas doesn’t participate, it’s not because they’re afraid of losing. It’s because they’ve calculated that participating in elections the international community treats as illegitimate is worse for their brand than abstaining. The PA holds elections. Hamas doesn’t show up. And somehow this is supposed to represent Palestinian governance.

In Venezuela, the prisoner releases are real—people actually got freed. But with 500+ still inside, it looks less like reconciliation and more like a pressure valve being turned slightly before it gets tightened again.

My read is these moments of breakdown happen in sequence before they explode. Mali, then Syria, then Ukraine, then Mexico. By the time people are writing obituaries for state capacity, the obituaries are old news.

What I Actually Think Is Happening

I think we’re in a period where the old rules—the ones that governed the post-Cold War order—have stopped working, but nobody’s agreed on what replaces them. So you get this chaotic middle where everything is technically legal and actually meaningless.

Mali’s government is sovereign but has no power. The U.S. and Mexico are allies but can’t acknowledge the depth of their actual entanglement. Venezuela released prisoners but didn’t actually reconcile anything. Palestinians vote but Hamas doesn’t care. These are all ways of going through the motions while the substance has already left the room.

The scariest part? Nobody’s building anything new to replace what’s breaking. Trump’s pulling back on Pakistan peace talks. Europe’s still arguing about strategy in Ukraine. China’s consolidating control domestically while waiting for the West to fracture further.

States are still the main characters in this story, but they’re not in control of the plot anymore. They’re just trying to look like they are while non-state actors, informal networks, and sheer chaos rearrange the board.