🔗 Share this article

His national and international strategies – including the attempted coup previously to recent incursions and threats – weaken not only national and global legal frameworks. However, the issue goes deeper.

These actions jeopardize the core idea of a civilized world.

A moral purpose of any advanced culture is to forestall the stronger from harming and taking advantage of the less powerful. Without this, we would be permanently immersed in a conflict of all against all where might makes right prevails.

This concept lies at the center of the nation's founding texts. It’s also the foundation of the postwar international order championed by the United States, which stresses international cooperation, democracy, human rights, and the legal authority.

Yet, it is a fragile construct, frequently ignored by those who choose to misuse their power. Upholding it requires that the powerful have enough integrity to avoid seeking short-term wins, and that the rest of us ensure they answer for their actions when they fail.

Unchecked strength does not equal right. It results in turmoil, upheaval, and conflict.

Each instance people or corporations or countries that are wealthier and stronger prey upon those that are weaker, the fabric of our shared norms frays. Should such behavior are allowed to continue, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can descend into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.

Today, we live in a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated than in modern history. This encourages the powerful to leverage their position against the weaker because they perceive themselves as untouchable.

The wealth of a small group of tycoons is staggering. The influence of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors spans a vast portion of the world. AI is could further concentrate economic and political clout even more. The offensive capability of the major powers is unmatched in recorded history.

Empowered by political allies and a pliant supreme court, the executive office has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none instrument of government in history.

Combine these factors and you see the danger.

A direct line links past lawless actions to ongoing threats. Each were founded upon the hubris of omnipotence.

There is parallel dynamics in the actions of other powers: in territorial invasions, in strategic threats, and in the global depredation by powerful corporate entities.

However, strength without restraint does not create right. It fosters uncertainty, revolution, and bloodshed.

Historical evidence demonstrates that rules and conventions to limit the influential also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for increased control and resources in time cause their collapse – along with their enterprises, countries, or domains. And pave the way for global conflict.

This kind of lawlessness will plague the nation and the world – and indeed a rules-based order – for the foreseeable future.