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The internal and external initiatives – from the attempted coup five years ago to recent incursions and warnings – weaken not only domestic and international law. The implications are broader.

These actions jeopardize the very concept of a civilized world.

The ethical foundation of civilized society is to stop the more powerful from preying upon and using the weaker. Without this, we risk being trapped in a brutish war where survival of the strongest prevails.

This ideal is central of America’s founding documents. This is also the heart of the postwar international order supported by the United States, emphasizing international cooperation, democracy, human rights, and the legal authority.

Yet, it is a vulnerable ideal, frequently ignored by those who seek to abuse their influence. Maintaining it requires that the powerful have the moral fortitude to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that the public demand responsibility when they fail.

Unfettered might is not right. It results in instability, disruption, and war.

Every time people or corporations or countries that are wealthier and stronger prey upon those that are weaker, the structure of our shared norms weakens. Should such behavior are left unchecked, the fabric unravels. If not stopped, the world can descend into chaos and war. We have seen this pattern previously.

Today, we live in a international landscape grown vastly more unequal. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than in recent memory. This creates conditions for the elite to leverage their position against the disadvantaged because they act with a sense of untouchable.

The fortunes of a handful of tycoons is difficult to fathom. The power of global industrial giants covers a vast portion of the world. AI is likely to further concentrate wealth and power further. The destructive power of the world's largest nations is unmatched in the annals of time.

Enabled by political allies and a pliant judicial body, the presidency has been turned into the most dominant and unchecked instrument of government in the modern era.

Put it all together and you see the threat.

A direct line connects previous transgressions to ongoing menaces. Both were founded upon the overconfidence of invincibility.

One observes a similar pattern in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in coercive diplomacy, and in the worldwide exploitation by powerful corporate entities.

However, strength without restraint does not establish right. It makes for instability, upheaval, and bloodshed.

The lessons of the past reveal that frameworks designed to constrain the influential also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for increased control and resources eventually lead to their downfall – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk world war.

Such disregard for rules will cast a long shadow over America and the global community – and indeed a rules-based order – for the foreseeable future.