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The internal and external strategies – including the challenge to the democratic process five years ago to current moves and threats – erode both national and global legal frameworks. However, the issue goes deeper.

These actions jeopardize the fundamental meaning of civilization itself.

A guiding principle of a functioning society is to prevent the dominant from attacking and exploiting the less powerful. Otherwise, we would be permanently immersed in a state of nature where survival of the strongest prevails.

This ideal is embedded of the nation's founding texts. This is also the foundation of the modern framework of international relations supported by the US, emphasizing international cooperation, popular sovereignty, individual liberties, and the legal authority.

However, it is a fragile construct, often broken by those who would exploit their authority. Preserving it demands that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that the public hold them accountable should they falter.

Unchecked strength does not make right. It makes for uncertainty, disruption, and conflict.

Each instance individuals, companies, or nations that are wealthier and stronger attack and exploit those that are weaker, the fabric of our shared norms unravels. If these actions are left unchecked, the fabric unravels. Without intervention, the world can fall into instability and violence. History provides ample precedent.

We now inhabit a international landscape marked by extreme inequality. Authority and resources are more concentrated than in modern history. This invites the powerful to exploit the weaker because they perceive themselves as above the law.

The wealth of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals is difficult to fathom. The reach of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace extends over numerous countries. AI is poised to further concentrate economic and political clout even more. The offensive capability of the major powers is unmatched in the annals of time.

Empowered by complicit legislators and a sympathetic supreme court, the executive office has been transformed into the most powerful and unaccountable entity of state power in recent memory.

Put it all together and you perceive the threat.

A direct line ties previous transgressions to ongoing menaces. Both were based on the overconfidence of invincibility.

You see a similar pattern in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in strategic threats, and in the global depredation by powerful corporate entities.

But, raw power does not make right. It produces fragility, revolution, and bloodshed.

The lessons of the past reveal that frameworks designed to limit the influential also protect them. Absent these limits, their relentless pursuit for more power and wealth ultimately cause their collapse – and with them their enterprises, countries, or domains. And risk world war.

This kind of lawlessness will cast a long shadow over America and the global community – and the very idea of civilization – for the foreseeable future.