American Airlines announced it has canceled all flights to and from Brussels until 7 April. The carrier’s decision is in response to the 22 March suicide bombing attack at the Brussels airport. The explosion occurred near the American Airlines counter, and some of the thirty-two people killed in the blast were about to board an AA flight.

The 22 march Brussels bombings have called attention to the crisis of security across Europe in the face of terrorism and radicalization. But the incidents also add color to the image of Belgium as a failed nation-state, one that seems egregiously incapable of protecting its own people. As it is, Belgium is no longer a nation-state in any functional sense, but rather a “federation” of three different regions and of three different “linguistic communities.” As a result, it is host to an array of police and juridical districts that don’t map onto each other geographically, demographically, or politically. If Belgians don’t imagine a way to reinvent themselves as a functioning nation-state, despite their linguistic and other differences, the consequences could be dire indeed. Without a state strong enough to keep all its people safe, and cohesive enough to include all its divergent populations as citizens of a common polity, the forces behind what happened in Brussels on 22 March will only fester and grow.

King Abdullah of Jordan asserted that Turkey is exporting ISIS-linked terrorists to Europe. The king made the remarks in a meeting with members of Congress, in which he said that Islamist militants were being “manufactured in Turkey” and “unleashed” into Europe. He also used the briefing with lawmakers, which was held after the king’s meeting with President Barack Obama was cancelled, to remind the American politicians of Turkey’s complicity in buying ISIS oil.

ISIS second-in-command Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, aka Haji Imam, was killed by U.S. Special Forces operating inside Syria. This is the second time this month that a top leader of ISIS is killed by U.S. forces. ISIS “minister of war,” and the third most senior ISIS leader after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the now-dead al-Qaduliin, died in a hospital two weeks ago after being seriously injured in a U.S. airstrike.

U.S. security agencies had the names of the two suicide bombers who attacked Brussels airport in their databases as potential terror threats. The revelation would raise even more questions about the competence and preparedness of the Belgian security authorities, which described the men merely as petty criminals who were not on the radar od the Belgian security counterterrorism agencies. The revelations also raise questions about the scope and quality of intelligence information sharing among Western countries.

Rob Wainwright, the director of the EU’s police agency Europol, said that if Britain left the EU, it could lose access to important databases of terror and criminal suspects needed to fight ISIS. Wainwright said databases provided “daily” benefit to UK police in protecting borders. Leaving the EU would put intelligence cooperation in danger, he said.

It is tempting to see the current waves of terrorism as the result of the sudden invasion of militant Islam. But in many respects the origins of the current violence remain just as local as the previous manifestations of terrorism in Western Europe – for example, the IRA or ETA. The sources of the current terrorist violence lie in the willingness of young men of immigrant populations to turn the quasi-criminal expertise learned in their formerly marginal lives to more political and violent ends. The problems that we confront today are not going to go away soon. The current terrorism is so amorphous and so shallow in its political affiliations that it may fade away, as those drawn towards it today are attracted to the more immediate opportunities of tomorrow. But it is more likely that the breaking up, arrest, and imprisonment of particular networks of individuals will simply be replaced by other such groups, who will similarly find in particular languages of Islam the vehicle for their angers and their emotional rejection of wider society. Putting back together Europe’s social contract might take longer than any of us would like to think.

A massive U.S. airstrike on a terrorist training camp in Yemen has killed dozens of terrorists belonging to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This is the second such attack in as many weeks. Military analysts note that the two strikes, in which more than 200 terrorists have been killed, signal a different, if unstated, approach by the Pentagon. Until recently, U.S. strikes on terrorist facilities killed relatively few terrorists.

The terrible scenes in Brussels following a terrorist attack now claimed by Islamic State are a reminder of just how vulnerable airports can be. The most likely and realistic response is increasing security presence around airports with a greater number of random checks. There is no foolproof solution to this security issue, though, and that’s something governments are going to have to admit. Terrorists have the ability radically to disrupt transportation systems, potentially causing loss of life and economic damage in the process, and there is little that can be done to stop them. For some time, terrorists pursued the much more difficult task of attacking aircraft while largely ignoring easier targets. The attack in Brussels shows the reality of renewed efforts against “soft targets” with the potential to bring about chaos to transportation systems.