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The national and international strategies – including the effort to overturn the election previously to recent incursions and statements – undermine not only domestic and international law. However, the issue goes deeper.

These actions threaten the core idea of a civilized world.

The moral purpose of any advanced culture is to prevent the dominant from attacking and exploiting the less powerful. Otherwise, we could find ourselves trapped in a brutish war where only the fittest wins.

This ideal is central of America’s founding documents. It’s also the heart of the global system established after WWII championed by the United States, which stresses multilateralism, popular sovereignty, human rights, and the legal authority.

Yet, it is a vulnerable construct, easily violated by those who would exploit their authority. Preserving it demands that the influential have the moral fortitude to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that the public demand responsibility should they falter.

Absolute power does not equal right. It leads to instability, disruption, and war.

Each instance people or corporations or countries that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are weaker, the framework of our shared norms frays. Should such behavior are not contained, the fabric unravels. Without intervention, the world can descend into disorder and conflict. It has happened before.

We now inhabit a international landscape with deepening divides. Political and economic power are more concentrated than ever before. This encourages the privileged to exploit the less fortunate because they feel above the law.

The wealth of a handful of tycoons is staggering. The reach of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors extends over numerous countries. Artificial intelligence is could centralize wealth and power to a greater degree. The offensive capability of the major powers is unmatched in recorded history.

Enabled by complicit legislators and an accommodating high court, the presidency has been transformed into the most dominant and unchecked instrument of government in history.

Combine these factors and you perceive the danger.

A direct line links previous transgressions to current menaces. These were based on the overconfidence of omnipotence.

One observes much the same in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in strategic threats, and in the rampant monopolization by industrial titans.

However, raw power does not create right. It makes for fragility, revolution, and armed conflict.

History shows that frameworks designed to limit the influential also shield them. Without such constraints, their insatiable demands for greater influence and riches ultimately bring them down – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten international catastrophe.

Such disregard for rules will haunt international stability – and the very idea of civilized conduct – for a long time.