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His internal and external initiatives – from the attempted coup previously to current incursions and warnings – weaken not only national and global law. However, the issue goes deeper.

These actions threaten the core idea of what we mean by.

The ethical foundation of any advanced culture is to stop the dominant from attacking and exploiting the less powerful. Otherwise, we risk being locked in a brutish war where survival of the strongest could survive.

This concept is central of America’s founding documents. It’s also the core of the postwar international order championed by the America, built on international cooperation, democratic governance, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.

Yet, it is a delicate construct, easily violated by those who seek to abuse their power. Maintaining it necessitates that the powerful have a sense of duty to abstain from seeking short-term wins, and that society demand responsibility if they don't.

Absolute power is not right. It results in instability, disruption, and hostilities.

Every time people or corporations or countries that are richer and more powerful prey upon those that are not, the structure of our shared norms weakens. Should such behavior are allowed to continue, the fabric unravels. Without intervention, the world can plunge into chaos and war. We have seen this pattern previously.

Today, we live in a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Influence and wealth are more concentrated than in modern history. This creates conditions for the elite to take advantage of the disadvantaged because they act with a sense of above the law.

The resources of a small group of tycoons is difficult to fathom. The influence of global industrial giants spans a vast portion of the world. Artificial intelligence is poised to further concentrate wealth and power further. The offensive capability of the world's largest nations is unprecedented in human history.

Enabled by a compliant faction and an accommodating high court, the presidency has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none entity of state power in recent memory.

Consider this confluence and you grasp the looming crisis.

A clear connection connects past breaches of norms to ongoing threats. These were founded upon the arrogance of absolute power.

You see much the same in the actions of other powers: in territorial invasions, in strategic threats, and in the rampant monopolization by industrial titans.

However, strength without restraint does not make right. It fosters instability, revolution, and war.

History shows that frameworks designed to constrain the influential also safeguard them. Without such constraints, their relentless pursuit for more power and wealth eventually cause their collapse – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk global conflict.

This kind of contempt for legal order will haunt the nation and the world – and indeed civilization – for years to come.