Several unrelated crises this week revealed the same problem: governments moving too slowly for fast-changing threats.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards say the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway ships use to move oil out of the Gulf, stays closed until US sanctions are lifted and war damages are paid.
For a week, ships came under attack near the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that much of the world's oil passes through.
Across shipping lanes, sanctions votes, Schengen borders and the war in Ukraine, the seven days to 2 August showed the same pattern: coalitions fraying into unilateral action, while China compounds its advantages in the gaps.
Nightly US airstrikes on Iran entered their second week, and the fighting spread to the sea.
From the Strait of Hormuz to a Bulgarian veto in Brussels to leadership vacuums in Kyiv, Washington and Westminster, this week's events rhyme. Security has become the precondition for every supply chain, and states — not markets — are now writing the terms.
THE WEEK: NATO's Ankara summit repriced protection as a series of bilateral deals, the US–Iran truce failed in stages that ended with six American deaths in Kuwait, the IMF cut global growth to 3%, and the EU walked toward a self-set 15 July deadline on the Russian oil cap.