The escalating showdown between Europe and Russia was by far the most important global development of the past week.

We are living through a period of extreme geopolitical instability. It has become increasingly clear that the past few years were not just a tense interlude but either the opening phase or the immediate prelude to a much larger conflict, potentially the early stages of World War III. The post-1945 world order is clearly crumbling, and nowhere is that collapse more obvious than in the rapidly worsening confrontation between Russia and a European continent that has grown simultaneously incompetent and audacious.

Rather than adapt to reality, Europe is accelerating the world into a dangerous death spiral by demanding that the rest of the world continue to submit to a level of influence it has not legitimately possessed since the height of the colonial era. Europeans grew complacent in the belief that they could always borrow American military and economic power to enforce their preferences. With the United States abruptly retreating behind a populist “America First” posture, the tide has gone out, and Europe has been caught swimming naked. And as it turns out, the emperor has no clothes.

If those of us living in the fragmented remnants of the old Western empire cannot be honest about this new reality, we are heading for a very rude awakening.

The escalating crisis with Venezuela, and especially the looming legal questions surrounding the recent U.S. “boat strikes,” is the most consequential national story of the week and also has international ramifications.

Our government appears to be conducting extrajudicial killings and pursuing regime change by force. That should terrify every citizen, because the capacity for lawless violence abroad is never permanently confined to foreigners. It always eventually turns inward.

The rule of law must constrain the state. When the state places itself above the law, the mechanisms that normally keep power in check evaporate, and things get spooky very quickly. Recent examples in Tanzania and Israel illustrate the same principle: once a government recognizes no law except raw power, repression at home soon follows repression abroad.

The core issue here is not whether Nicolás Maduro is a legitimate president or an international criminal. The real revelation is the monster hiding beneath the federal government’s carefully curated costume. This scandal is especially revealing about the true nature of American power in its own hemisphere: the United States does not appear to recognize the sovereignty of smaller nations in its regional sphere of influence. If that is correct, then the government we actually have radically differs from the one described on paper.

St. Louis County openly acknowledging that it lacks the funds to remain financially stable over time is the most important local-government story of the week.

Fiscal crises in government often feel abstract until schools start closing and buses stop running. Only then do people grasp the real-world pain caused by years of fiscal irresponsibility. National policymakers like to talk about engineering a “soft landing” during economic downturns; the same principle applies at the county level. An orderly, controlled retrenchment is far preferable to a chaotic and disordered collapse.

What is happening in St. Louis County also exposes how deeply public-finance neglect has taken root at every level of American government. When a major metropolitan county in the United States teeters on the edge of effective bankruptcy, it is a profound disservice to its residents and a warning that cuts through the usual noise.

Hawaii is not the first state to sue the company, but each new case adds momentum to an avalanche that is ultimately aimed at the entire social-media complex and, by extension, the unregulated internet itself.

These lawsuits carry enormous long-term implications not just for TikTok but for every major platform and for the basic architecture of online life. The internet was essentially unleashed on society with almost no guardrails, despite mounting evidence of its deleterious (sometimes catastrophic) effects, especially on children. We would never allow minors to gamble or use addictive substances at their own discretion, yet that is precisely what we have done with algorithmic social-media feeds.

If courts force companies like TikTok to admit they knowingly engineered addiction, particularly in children, it will reset societal expectations for all platforms. More importantly, it will almost certainly open the door to serious regulation of internet access itself. That is where things get profoundly sticky: effective enforcement of any new safety rules will inevitably collide with personal liberty, because there is no way to police age or identity online without robust user identification. The era of anonymous or pseudonymous internet use will end, and online behavior will become permanently linked to real-world identities. We are on the cusp of an entirely new chapter in the history of the internet.