Mankind’s achievements over the millennia have been bountiful. Their evolutionary fruits – from the harnessing of fire, to vaccines, to the art of diplomacy – were never low hanging; they were imagined before they were ever grasped.

But once held, they became indispensable. Until now that is, as 100 days into his presidency US President Donald Trump seems determined to throw this painful learning to the wind, risking a world forced into reverse.

A torrent of tariffs, unleashed against the better judgement of experts, yet exalted by Trump’s acolytes as the work of a deal-making genius are a case in point. So too is his willingness to throw allies to the wind, by threatening to grab Greenland, Canada even Panama by force if necessary.

Whatever one’s view of the policies themselves, Trump’s total upending of the global status quo has sewn fear and uncertainty among America’s friends, exacerbated market volatility and normalized economic aggression. It’s a formula that over the centuries has rarely served the world well.

The president’s apparent over-arching ethos – might is right, and mine is greatest – is now demolishing geopolitical norms at speed. It is Ukraine that should give in to Russia, which “has all the cards,” Trump says. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “pretty big concession,” his US counterpart adds, is not “taking the whole country.”

Yet despite three years of “meat-grinding” war, Putin’s aim remains as contrary to international law as it was when he launched his unprovoked, full-scale invasion.

It is clear then why Trump struggles to do what all his allies find easy: to blame Putin for defying the rules-based world order in a brutal campaign to swallow his smaller neighbor. The US president often even blames Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for the war in which at least 42,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed or injured, according to the United Nations, saying “he should never have started it.”

The implication – that the weak should capitulate to the strong – is an upending of millennia of evolution, culminating in the post-World War II, US-inspired rules-based international order that led to an unprecedented eight decades of relative global peace, prosperity and unimaginable scientific innovation.

Trump, as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has commented, has broken the mold. “Old assumptions can no longer be taken for granted, the world as we knew it is gone,” he said.

The president’s world view was nurtured by his property-developing, landlord father Fred Trump. Poor tenants unable to pay their rent claimed they were evicted; not an uncommon practice at the time, or since, but one that advantages the powerful over the weak.

The parallels are not hard to spot: the world’s most powerful man still relies on bravado and bullying to get what he wants. Today everyone is in his firing line. America has been “taken advantage of by virtually every country in the world,” Trump inaccurately claims, “we’re no longer going to be the country that’s ripped off by every country in the world.”

But here’s the rub. Such is Trump’s braggadocio, no one he trusts appears brave enough to challenge him. Only when global markets soured, and his Petri dish economic experiment turned putrid, did he backslide on the threat to impose immediate tariffs on both friends and foes of the US, and even then, it may not be enough to avoid economic pain.

China seems ready to wait out his trade-defying tariffs, having been preparing for this moment since Trump’s first term.

Now, it seems, he must learn a costly lesson for himself that economic evolution had already taught the experts.

And while Trump’s defiant pose after the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, was enough to convince Putin that he was “a courageous man,” the US president is already backing down on some of his tariff bravado, chastened by his loyalists who found their voices as bond markets tanked.

In the view of both Putin and Trump, it is the tough who set the rules, and the man in both their crosshairs, Ukraine’s President Zelensky, got this message Wednesday, “the man with ‘no cards to play’ should now, finally, GET IT DONE,” as Trump wrote on his social media platform.  Trump has since criticized Putin, questioning whether the Russian leader is interested in peace and suggesting “he’s just tapping me along.”

The world Trump and Putin seem to crave is one of spheres of influence run from islands of power, where diplomacy is a time-consuming irrelevance replaced by imperial decrees.

It would be a reset harking back to a darker time, essentially overturning the rules-based order. In the aftermath of great empires, regional warlords allied, feuded and fought each other for centuries before nations emerged, and largely did the same.

By the 19^th century diplomats like Klemens von Metternich, the Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, spent entire careers attempting to balance Europe’s feuding powers. He famously said, “when France sneezes, the rest of Europe catches cold.”

Today it is Trump spreading a chill. The Manhattan real estate developer has said he is going to “get” Greenland “for national security reasons.” Greenland and its Danish patron, a NATO ally that is no match militarily for the USA, say no.

Canada’s prime minister says the same about Trump’s plans to make his northern neighbor the USA’s 51st state, insisting “it will never happen.” Mark Carney, a former central banker already battling Trump’s aggressive trade tariffs, knows the threat is real, telling voters ahead of Monday’s election in which his Liberal Party won a stunning fourth consecutive victory “the Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country.”

Trump’s world view is clear: he speaks as though he can reach out and take these things, and clearly believes he is working from an island of power, isolated from the negative consequences of his assumed conquests.

But no man, nor nation, is an Island.

Trump’s weakness is not just that he might buy Putin’s lie that he can conquer all Ukraine, or be outfoxed by Xi on tariffs, but that the rest of the world increasingly sees through his mantle of self-belief.

The costs of this muscle-power politics will be revealed more slowly than the near-instantaneous economic market pain to his trade tariffs. But it still marks a return to an era of dog eat dog. History has shown how that turns out.

The resurrection of Canada’s Liberal Party was as close to miraculous as you can get in modern politics. Its savior: Prime Minister Mark Carney, a political rookie but also an experienced tactician and one of the world’s most highly regarded economists.

But in a farmer’s field on the eve of the election, Canada’s Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre continued to nurture a robust political movement that won the Conservative Party its largest share of the popular vote in decades.

Both leaders promised to vigorously stand up to the threat to annex Canada that came early, loudly and often from US President Donald Trump.

To meet the moment and the menace, Canadians rallied around the flag, expressing an uncommon patriotism. But they also coalesced along the country’s traditional left-right dividing lines, deepening fractures between east and west, young and old, male and female.

Many Canadians voiced a need for strong leadership in the face of the American threat, but they are almost equally divided on who is best to deliver on that.

“We have a guy down south talking smack about Canada, I think it’s important we have a strong leader to stand up to him, he needs to show us some respect,” one voter, Elaine Forbes, said as she walked to her Ottawa polling station Monday prepared to back Carney.

It was a similar sentiment that motivated many of Poilievre’s supporters.

“You need a strong leader and you need a lot more than what’s been going on,” said Nolan Travis just before he cast his ballot in Ottawa, adding, “someone who is going to actually mean what he says.”

The buzz word of “leadership” has left Canada’s three other national parties in the cold, all of them losing ground in the popular vote. The country’s next parliament will reflect more of a two-party system, united against Trump but divided about nearly everything else.

Both Carney and Poilievre extended a hand to each other on election night, promising to cooperate, especially when it comes to defending Canada against American expansionism.

“You know, humility underscores the importance of governing as a team in cabinet and in caucus and working constructively with all parties across Parliament, of working in partnership with the provinces and the territories and with Indigenous peoples,” said Carney during his election victory speech, adding that he will be guided by such humility as he governs Canada.

In his election night speech, Poilievre pivoted to conciliatory language Canadians have not heard from him in months.

“While we will do our constitutional duty of holding government to account and proposing better alternatives, we will always put Canada first as we stare down tariffs and other irresponsible threats from President Trump. Conservatives will work with the prime minister and all parties with the common goal of defending Canada’s interests and getting a new trade deal that puts these tariffs behind us while protecting our sovereignty and the Canadian people,” he said.

As reasonable as both leaders sounded in the aftermath of the vote, key party lieutenants were already sounding more combative.

Conservative MP Jamil Jivani, who was reelected Monday, seemed in a fighting mood as he touted an alternative vision for Canada. “I don’t know what tomorrow holds – my focus though is on all the young people, all the parents, the moms, the dads who came to us and trusted us to offer an alternative a brighter future. We’re going to see that too, we’re going to keep fighting and when the next federal election comes around, conservatives will earn the trust of more voters and we will bring home a victory nationally,” he said Monday night in an interview with CBC News.

Jivani has been a close friend of US Vice President JD Vance since their years at Yale University.

Sean Fraser, a key Carney ally and a once and likely future Liberal cabinet minister, shot back at Poilievre, accusing him of adopting a Trumpian style of politics.

But Fraser did concede that Canadians are looking for his government to get beyond the political divide.

“Canadians do not want us to continually talk about what’s wrong with the other party we may be competing against, they want us to put our ideas on the table and work together to get things done,” said Fraser in an interview with CBC News after his victory Monday.

A two-party system is not the traditional makeup of Canada’s parliament, and it will be tough to navigate for Canadian leaders, especially Carney.

“When we seek unity, unity grows,” proclaimed Carney on election night, but fostering that unity could prove an unprecedented challenge.

Swedish police said on Tuesday that several people in the city of Uppsala in eastern Sweden were found with injuries that indicated gunfire after loud bangs were heard in the city.

The police said in a statement that they had received calls from members of the public who said they had heard noise that sounded like gunfire in the center of the city.

“Several people have been found with injuries that indicate gunfire,” the police said.

A large area was cordoned off and several investigative measures were underway at the scene, they added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife Sara has been overheard on a microphone saying that “fewer” than 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza, outraging hostages’ families who demanded to know what the government knows about the fate of their loved ones

“We have of course an important task, not only to win but also to bring home (the hostages),” Netanyahu said at a meeting with Israeli holiday torchbearers on Monday. “Until today we have returned 196 of our hostages, 147 of whom were alive. There are… up to 24 living. Up to 24 living.”

“Fewer,” Sara Netanyahu interrupted quietly, seated to her husband’s right.

“I say up to,” Netanyahu quickly responded. “And the rest are, I’m sorry to say, not alive. And we will return them.”

There are currently 59 hostages remaining in Gaza. Israel has publicly said in recent weeks that it believes up to 24 of those are still alive. The short exchange appears to be an indication that the Israeli government may have information that some of the 24 hostages have died.

The group representing the hostages’ families slammed Netanyahu and his wife.

“On the eve of Memorial Day, you sowed indescribable panic in the hearts of the families of the hostages – families already living in agonizing uncertainty,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement. “If there is intelligence or new information regarding the condition of our loved ones, we demand full disclosure.” asking why the wife of the prime minister has sensitive information about their loved ones that they do not.

“If the wife of the prime minister has new information about the kidnapped who were killed, I demand from her to know if my Matan is still alive, or if he was murdered in captivity because your husband refuses to finish the war,” Einav Zangauker, the mother of one of the hostages, said on social media.

Electricity is pulsing through Spain and Portugal again after a massive outage knocked out power in both countries on Monday. So too are questions.

It remains unclear what caused the sudden and staggering blackout, which plunged tens of millions of people into darkness and paralyzed life on the Iberian peninsula.

Authorities are investigating whether a freak event, a cyberattack or some other cause is to blame, while airports and train stations are catching up with a huge backlog.

Here’s what you need to know.

What happened?

Spain’s electrical grid was running as normal until 12:33 p.m. (6:33 a.m. ET) when, suddenly, it suffered a disturbance.

Eduardo Prieto, the director of services for the grid operator Red Eléctrica, said the grid recovered after that first shock. But a second disconnection, one and a half seconds later, caused “a degradation of operating variables” of the system, leading to a “massive generation disconnection” and “disconnection of the connection lines with France.”

“A second and a half may not seem like much. Indeed, it is nothing for any human action. In the electrical world it is a very long time,” Prieto said on Tuesday.

What caused the power outage?

This is the crucial question that tens of millions of people in Spain and Portugal have been asking. And the answer is: We don’t know.

Past blackouts in Europe have often had obvious causes, like a fire or extreme weather. But this event occurred on a warm and sunny day in Spain, and more than 24 hours after the outage, it remains unclear why the entire country lost power.

The problem appears to have originated in Spain: Portugal’s Prime Minister Luís Montenegro was quick to point the finger at his neighboring nation on Monday.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said at a Tuesday press conference that his government has created an “investigation commission.”

Sanchez said an excess in renewable energy production was not the cause, Reuters reported, ruling out one possibility.

He confirmed that Spain’s cybersecurity authorities are also looking into whether a cyberattack was the cause. Spain’s top criminal court also said on Tuesday it was exploring whether “an act of computer sabotage on critical infrastructure” was to blame.

How extensive was the disruption?

Electricity was completely knocked out in most of Spain and Portugal for several hours, finally returning to most places on Monday evening.

Traffic lights, street lamps, payment terminals and screens were all cut off unless they were battery powered; many shops shut and others were forced to accept only cash payments.

Travel was badly hit: Flights were canceled in airports across Spain and Portugal. Dozens of Iberian cities, like Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, Seville and Valencia, are major hubs for transport, finance and tourism. Two of the five busiest airports in the European Union in 2023 were Madrid’s and Barcelona’s, according to EU data.

Police officers were forced to direct traffic with hand signals; roads quickly clogged and subway systems were closed down.

But the worst-case scenarios were averted: Spain’s nuclear sites were declared operational and safe, and hospitals in both countries ran on back-up generators.