🔗 Share this article

His internal and external strategies – including the attempted coup previously to recent actions and threats – weaken not only national and global legal frameworks. The implications are broader.

These actions endanger the very concept of what we mean by.

A ethical foundation of a functioning society is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Failing that, we risk being trapped in a conflict of all against all where survival of the strongest could survive.

This concept is embedded of the Declaration and Constitution. It’s also the foundation of the global system established after WWII supported by the United States, which stresses international cooperation, democracy, individual liberties, and the rule of law.

But, it is a fragile principle, often broken by those who choose to misuse their influence. Upholding it demands that the influential have enough integrity to avoid seeking short-term wins, and that the public demand responsibility when they fail.

Unfettered might is not right. It results in uncertainty, upheaval, and hostilities.

Each instance entities that are advantaged target and use those that are less so, the fabric of society unravels. If such aggression are not contained, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can plunge into disorder and conflict. It has happened before.

We now inhabit a society and world marked by extreme inequality. Influence and wealth are more concentrated than in recent memory. This encourages the powerful to take advantage of the weaker because they act with a sense of untouchable.

The wealth of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals is difficult to fathom. The reach of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace covers much of the globe. Artificial intelligence is could consolidate resources and influence further. The military might of the leading countries is without parallel in human history.

Enabled by political allies and a pliant high court, the presidency has been made into the most powerful and unaccountable instrument of the state in the modern era.

Consider this confluence and you see the threat.

A direct line links past lawless actions to present-day menaces. Both were based on the hubris of omnipotence.

You see parallel dynamics in other global contexts: in military conflicts, in strategic threats, and in the worldwide exploitation by industrial titans.

Yet, raw power does not establish right. It fosters instability, upheaval, and war.

Historical evidence demonstrates that frameworks designed to constrain the powerful also shield them. If these guardrails are removed, their relentless pursuit for greater influence and riches ultimately lead to their downfall – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk world war.

This blatant contempt for legal order will haunt the nation and the world – and the very idea of a rules-based order – for the foreseeable future.