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His national and international policies – ranging from the effort to overturn the election previously to latest incursions and threats – undermine both domestic and international law. However, the issue goes deeper.

They endanger the fundamental meaning of a civilized world.

A moral purpose of a functioning society is to stop the dominant from preying upon and using the vulnerable. Without this, we could find ourselves locked in a state of nature where might makes right could survive.

This concept is embedded of the nation's founding texts. It’s also the core of the modern framework of international relations championed by the America, which stresses international cooperation, democratic governance, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.

However, it is a fragile principle, often broken by those who seek to abuse their power. Upholding it necessitates that the influential have enough integrity to refrain from seeking temporary advantages, and that the rest of us ensure they answer for their actions if they don't.

Unfettered might does not make right. It makes for instability, disruption, and conflict.

Every time entities that are wealthier and stronger prey upon those that are weaker, the structure of civilization weakens. If such aggression are left unchecked, the fabric unravels. Allowing it to persist, the world can fall into instability and violence. We have seen this pattern previously.

We now inhabit a society and world marked by extreme inequality. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than in recent memory. This creates conditions for the elite to exploit the disadvantaged because they perceive themselves as above the law.

The resources of a small group of tycoons is staggering. The reach of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors covers a vast portion of the world. AI is likely to consolidate resources and influence even more. The military might of the leading countries is without parallel in human history.

Enabled by complicit legislators and a sympathetic high court, the presidency has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none entity of government in history.

Combine these factors and you see the threat.

A direct line links earlier breaches of norms to ongoing provocations. These were founded upon the arrogance of omnipotence.

You see parallel dynamics in other global contexts: in military conflicts, in coercive diplomacy, and in the global depredation by industrial titans.

However, unfettered might does not create right. It makes for uncertainty, upended order, and war.

The lessons of the past reveal that laws and norms to check the influential also safeguard them. Without such constraints, their relentless pursuit for increased control and resources in time cause their collapse – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten international catastrophe.

This kind of contempt for legal order will cast a long shadow over America and the global community – and indeed civilization – for the foreseeable future.