If you felt the globe shift on its axis over the past few days, you’re in good company. As the Monitor’s international news editor, Peter Ford, put it to me: “You may have noticed that since we last talked the wheels fell off the postwar international security order.”

It’s not what President George H.W. Bush envisioned in 1991, when he visited Ukraine just weeks before it declared independence from a crumbling Soviet Union. “We support those who explore the frontiers of freedom,” he told Ukraine’s parliament. “We will join these reformers on the path to what we call – appropriately call – a new world order.”

I hope you’ll check out our reports from Russia, Europe, and the United States today. Together, they offer a global take on the issues that have upended assumptions about that order, including its alliances and the security assurances they provide.