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The internal and external policies – including the attempted coup five years ago to recent incursions and threats – undermine not only national and global legal frameworks. However, the issue goes deeper.

These actions endanger the fundamental meaning of what we mean by.

A moral purpose of a functioning society is to prevent the dominant from harming and taking advantage of the vulnerable. Failing that, we would be trapped in a brutish war where survival of the strongest prevails.

This ideal is central of America’s founding documents. This is also the core of the postwar international order championed by the United States, emphasizing multilateralism, popular sovereignty, individual liberties, and the rule of law.

However, it is a fragile principle, easily violated by those who seek to abuse their authority. Maintaining it necessitates that the influential have the moral fortitude to avoid seeking short-term wins, and that society demand responsibility if they don't.

Unfettered might does not equal right. It results in uncertainty, disruption, and hostilities.

Whenever entities that are advantaged attack and exploit those that are less so, the structure of our shared norms weakens. If these actions are not contained, the fabric unravels. Without intervention, the world can fall into instability and violence. It has happened before.

Today, we live in a international landscape grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are held by fewer hands than in modern history. This encourages the elite to exploit the less fortunate because they feel untouchable.

The resources of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals is staggering. The reach of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors spans numerous countries. AI is could consolidate economic and political clout further. The military might of the leading countries is unmatched in human history.

Supported by political allies and a pliant high court, the highest office has been transformed into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of state power in history.

Consider this confluence and you perceive the looming crisis.

A direct line connects past transgressions to present-day provocations. Both were premised on the hubris of omnipotence.

One observes parallel dynamics in international affairs: in wars of aggression, in strategic threats, and in the rampant monopolization by powerful corporate entities.

But, raw power does not establish right. It makes for instability, revolution, and bloodshed.

History shows that frameworks designed to limit the influential also protect them. Without such constraints, their endless appetite for greater influence and riches in time cause their collapse – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And pave the way for global conflict.

This kind of disregard for rules will plague the nation and the world – and the very idea of civilized conduct – for the foreseeable future.