🔗 Share this article

His internal and external policies – from the effort to overturn the election in the past to latest moves and threats – undermine not only domestic and international legal frameworks. The implications are broader.

These actions endanger the core idea of civilization itself.

The moral purpose of any advanced culture is to prevent the more powerful from attacking and exploiting the less powerful. Without this, we would be trapped in a brutish war where survival of the strongest prevails.

This concept is embedded of the nation's founding texts. It is equally the core of the modern framework of international relations advocated by the United States, built on multilateralism, democratic governance, human rights, and the rule of law.

However, it is a delicate principle, frequently ignored by those who choose to misuse their authority. Preserving it necessitates that the powerful have the moral fortitude to abstain from seeking immediate gains, and that the public hold them accountable when they fail.

Unfettered might is not right. It makes for instability, chaos, and conflict.

Every time individuals, companies, or nations that are wealthier and stronger target and use those that are less so, the fabric of civilization unravels. If such aggression are allowed to continue, the structure collapses. Allowing it to persist, the world can plunge into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.

Our current reality is a global community grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are increasingly centralized than ever before. This creates conditions for the privileged to take advantage of the less fortunate because they feel above the law.

The wealth of a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals is difficult to fathom. The reach of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans a vast portion of the world. Artificial intelligence is poised to centralize economic and political clout further. The offensive capability of the world's largest nations is unmatched in the annals of time.

Empowered by political allies and an accommodating judicial body, the executive office has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none entity of government in the modern era.

Combine these factors and you grasp the looming crisis.

A direct line ties past transgressions to current provocations. Each were premised on the hubris of omnipotence.

There is much the same in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in strategic threats, and in the global depredation by industrial titans.

However, unfettered might does not create right. It fosters instability, upheaval, and bloodshed.

Historical evidence demonstrates that rules and conventions to constrain the powerful also protect them. Without such constraints, their endless appetite for more power and wealth ultimately cause their collapse – and with them their enterprises, countries, or domains. And pave the way for international catastrophe.

This kind of contempt for legal order will plague America and the global community – and the very idea of civilized conduct – for the foreseeable future.