🔗 Share this article

His internal and external strategies – ranging from the attempted coup previously to current incursions and threats – weaken both national and global legal frameworks. But that’s not all.

These actions endanger the core idea of a civilized world.

A moral purpose of any advanced culture is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the less powerful. Otherwise, we could find ourselves trapped in a brutish war where survival of the strongest wins.

This concept is embedded of America’s founding documents. It’s also the heart of the postwar international order supported by the America, emphasizing international cooperation, democratic governance, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law.

Yet, it is a vulnerable principle, often broken by those who would exploit their influence. Maintaining it requires that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking immediate gains, and that society demand responsibility if they don't.

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

Every time entities that are richer and more powerful target and use those that are not, the structure of our shared norms frays. Should such behavior are left unchecked, the fabric unravels. Without intervention, the world can descend into chaos and war. It has happened before.

We now inhabit a society and world with deepening divides. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than ever before. This invites the elite to leverage their position against the weaker because they perceive themselves as omnipotent.

The wealth of certain ultra-wealthy individuals is almost beyond comprehension. The power of global industrial giants extends over numerous countries. Advanced technology is could centralize economic and political clout even more. The military might of the major powers is without parallel in human history.

Enabled by complicit legislators and a sympathetic judicial body, the executive office has been turned into the most dominant and unchecked agent of state power in recent memory.

Combine these factors and you grasp the threat.

A clear connection connects past transgressions to current menaces. These were based on the hubris of invincibility.

There is parallel dynamics in the actions of other powers: in wars of aggression, in expansive ambitions, and in the rampant monopolization by powerful corporate entities.

But, raw power does not establish right. It makes for fragility, revolution, and war.

History shows that frameworks designed to limit the influential also safeguard them. Without such constraints, their relentless pursuit for greater influence and riches eventually bring them down – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk global conflict.

This blatant disregard for rules will haunt America and the global community – and the very idea of a rules-based order – for a long time.