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The domestic and foreign strategies – ranging from the challenge to the democratic process previously to recent moves and threats – undermine both domestic and international jurisprudence. However, the issue goes deeper.

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

A guiding principle of any advanced culture is to forestall the more powerful from preying upon and using the vulnerable. Failing that, we risk being locked in a conflict of all against all where survival of the strongest wins.

This ideal is embedded of the Declaration and Constitution. This is also the core of the modern framework of international relations championed by the United States, emphasizing international cooperation, democratic governance, human rights, and the legal authority.

However, it is a delicate ideal, often broken by those who would exploit their influence. Maintaining it requires that the influential have a sense of duty to abstain from seeking short-term wins, and that the public demand responsibility should they falter.

Absolute power does not equal right. It leads to instability, chaos, and war.

Every time people or corporations or countries that are wealthier and stronger target and use those that are less so, the fabric of civilization unravels. Should such behavior are left unchecked, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can plunge into disorder and conflict. History provides ample precedent.

Our current reality is a international landscape marked by extreme inequality. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than ever before. This invites the powerful to leverage their position against the less fortunate because they perceive themselves as omnipotent.

The resources of a small group of billionaires is almost beyond comprehension. The reach of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace covers much of the globe. Advanced technology is could centralize wealth and power even more. The offensive capability of the major powers is unprecedented in human history.

Enabled by a compliant faction and a pliant supreme court, the executive office has been made into the most powerful and unaccountable instrument of state power in history.

Combine these factors and you perceive the threat.

A clear connection links earlier breaches of norms to present-day threats. Both were based on the arrogance of absolute power.

One observes a similar pattern in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in expansive ambitions, and in the worldwide exploitation by industrial titans.

Yet, unfettered might does not create right. It fosters instability, upended order, and war.

The lessons of the past reveal that laws and norms to constrain the influential also safeguard them. Without such constraints, their endless appetite for greater influence and riches in time lead to their downfall – along with their enterprises, countries, or domains. And pave the way for global conflict.

This blatant contempt for legal order will plague the nation and the world – and indeed a rules-based order – for years to come.