🔗 Share this article

The internal and external initiatives – from the challenge to the democratic process five years ago to recent moves and warnings – undermine both domestic and international legal frameworks. But that’s not all.

They threaten the fundamental meaning of what we mean by.

A moral purpose of a functioning society is to stop the more powerful from harming and taking advantage of the vulnerable. Without this, we could find ourselves permanently immersed in a conflict of all against all where only the fittest wins.

This principle lies at the center of the nation's founding texts. This is also the foundation of the postwar international order championed by the United States, emphasizing multilateralism, popular sovereignty, fundamental freedoms, and the legal authority.

But, it is a delicate ideal, often broken by those who seek to abuse their influence. Maintaining it demands that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking immediate gains, and that the public hold them accountable when they fail.

Unchecked strength does not equal right. It results in instability, disruption, and conflict.

Every time entities that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are not, the structure of civilization frays. If these actions are not contained, the structure collapses. If not stopped, the world can plunge into instability and violence. We have seen this pattern previously.

Today, we live in a global community with deepening divides. Influence and wealth are more concentrated than in modern history. This invites the elite to exploit the less fortunate because they act with a sense of omnipotent.

The wealth of certain tycoons is almost beyond comprehension. The reach of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors spans much of the globe. Artificial intelligence is poised to further concentrate wealth and power to a greater degree. The destructive power of the world's largest nations is without parallel in human history.

Empowered by political allies and a sympathetic judicial body, the presidency has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none instrument of state power in the modern era.

Combine these factors and you see the threat.

An unbroken thread links previous transgressions to current threats. These were based on the arrogance of invincibility.

You see much the same in the actions of other powers: in military conflicts, in strategic threats, and in the global depredation by massive conglomerates.

But, raw power does not create right. It produces fragility, upended order, and bloodshed.

The lessons of the past reveal that rules and conventions to limit the influential also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their relentless pursuit for increased control and resources in time cause their collapse – along with their enterprises, countries, or domains. And threaten world war.

Such lawlessness will haunt international stability – and the very idea of civilization – for years to come.