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The national and international strategies – including the challenge to the democratic process previously to current incursions and warnings – erode both domestic and international legal frameworks. However, the issue goes deeper.

They jeopardize the core idea of what we mean by.

The guiding principle of a functioning society is to forestall the stronger from harming and taking advantage of the weaker. Failing that, we would be permanently immersed in a brutish war where survival of the strongest prevails.

This principle lies at the center of America’s founding documents. It is equally the core of the postwar international order championed by the America, which stresses international cooperation, democratic governance, individual liberties, and the legal authority.

However, it is a vulnerable principle, frequently ignored by those who choose to misuse their influence. Upholding it demands that the influential have enough integrity to avoid seeking immediate gains, and that the public ensure they answer for their actions when they fail.

Absolute power is not right. It leads to uncertainty, chaos, and conflict.

Whenever people or corporations or countries that are wealthier and stronger prey upon those that are not, the fabric of civilization weakens. If these actions are allowed to continue, the fabric unravels. Allowing it to persist, the world can fall into instability and violence. It has happened before.

Our current reality is a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than in recent memory. This invites the elite to take advantage of the less fortunate because they perceive themselves as omnipotent.

The resources of a small group of tycoons is difficult to fathom. The influence of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans numerous countries. AI is likely to centralize wealth and power even more. The military might of the leading countries is without parallel in human history.

Enabled by political allies and a sympathetic judicial body, the executive office has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of government in history.

Consider this confluence and you grasp the danger.

An unbroken thread connects previous breaches of norms to current menaces. Both were based on the hubris of invincibility.

There is much the same in the actions of other powers: in military conflicts, in strategic threats, and in the worldwide exploitation by industrial titans.

Yet, unfettered might does not create right. It makes for instability, upended order, and bloodshed.

History shows that laws and norms to limit the influential also protect them. Without such constraints, their insatiable demands for increased control and resources ultimately cause their collapse – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk world war.

This blatant disregard for rules will haunt international stability – and the very idea of civilization – for a long time.