A new flood of terrorism has breached the collapsing old Arab order. No longer confined to the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, this tide of violence is now capable of reaching the heart of Europe.

The latest disaster, the atrocious Nov. 13 attack in Paris, is unlikely to be the last. At least 129 deaths were already reported in Paris at the time of this writing. In the same week, an attack on Dahiyeh, a southern Shiite suburb of Beirut, resulted in more than 40 deaths. Just before that, a Russian civilian plane was brought down over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. The Islamic State (IS) and its affiliates claimed responsibility for all the attacks.

Western governments long considered Arab dictators a solid shield against the proliferation of terrorist groups beyond their borders. The West worked with the dictators in the context of the war on terror after 9/11, but selectively removed Saddam Hussein of Iraq in 2003 and Moammar Gadhafi of Libya in 2011. The remaining Arab presidents and kings are now struggling with terrorism in peripheral regions of their countries.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi does not seem to be in control of what goes on in Sinai. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has not stopped the wave of terrorism that specifically targeted the Shiites of the eastern province or the Ismailis of Najran. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has faced a five-year insurgency, while the Iraqi government has truly lost control over vast territories. If a state is a central agency with a monopoly on the means of coercion, most Arab states would not meet this criterion.