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The national and international policies – ranging from the effort to overturn the election previously to recent incursions and statements – weaken both domestic and international legal frameworks. However, the issue goes deeper.

They threaten the very concept of civilization itself.

A guiding principle of a functioning society is to stop the stronger from harming and taking advantage of the less powerful. Otherwise, we could find ourselves permanently immersed in a brutish war where survival of the strongest wins.

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

However, it is a delicate construct, often broken by those who seek to abuse their authority. Preserving it demands that the influential have the moral fortitude to refrain from seeking temporary advantages, and that society demand responsibility when they fail.

Absolute power does not make right. It makes for uncertainty, chaos, and war.

Every time entities that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are less so, the fabric of our shared norms unravels. Should such behavior are left unchecked, the structure collapses. Without intervention, the world can fall into chaos and war. History provides ample precedent.

Our current reality is a society and world with deepening divides. Political and economic power are more concentrated than in recent memory. This encourages the privileged to take advantage of the weaker because they perceive themselves as above the law.

The wealth of a small group of billionaires is staggering. The reach of global industrial giants spans much of the globe. AI is could further concentrate wealth and power further. The offensive capability of the leading countries is unmatched in recorded history.

Enabled by complicit legislators and an accommodating supreme court, the highest office has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none instrument of state power in history.

Combine these factors and you perceive the danger.

An unbroken thread connects earlier transgressions to current provocations. These were based on the overconfidence of absolute power.

You see much the same in other global contexts: in territorial invasions, in expansive ambitions, and in the rampant monopolization by massive conglomerates.

But, unfettered might does not make right. It makes for fragility, revolution, and armed conflict.

Historical evidence demonstrates that laws and norms to constrain the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their relentless pursuit for increased control and resources in time bring them down – along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk global conflict.

This blatant contempt for legal order will plague America and the global community – and indeed a rules-based order – for the foreseeable future.