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His domestic and foreign policies – including the attempted coup five years ago to recent incursions and threats – undermine not only national and global legal frameworks. But that’s not all.

These actions jeopardize the core idea of civilization itself.

The ethical foundation of any advanced culture is to stop the dominant from harming and taking advantage of the less powerful. Without this, we would be trapped in a conflict of all against all where might makes right could survive.

This principle lies at the center of the nation's founding texts. This is also the core of the modern framework of international relations advocated by the United States, built on international cooperation, popular sovereignty, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law.

Yet, it is a delicate construct, often broken by those who would exploit their power. Preserving it necessitates that the powerful have enough integrity to refrain from seeking short-term wins, and that the rest of us demand responsibility should they falter.

Unchecked strength does not equal right. It makes for turmoil, chaos, and hostilities.

Every time people or corporations or countries that are advantaged prey upon those that are weaker, the framework of civilization weakens. Should such behavior are left unchecked, the structure collapses. Without intervention, the world can fall into chaos and war. It has happened before.

We now inhabit a global community grown vastly more unequal. Influence and wealth are more concentrated than ever before. This creates conditions for the powerful to take advantage of the disadvantaged because they act with a sense of omnipotent.

The resources of certain ultra-wealthy individuals is difficult to fathom. The influence of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans a vast portion of the world. AI is likely to further concentrate resources and influence to a greater degree. The destructive power of the world's largest nations is without parallel in recorded history.

Supported by complicit legislators and a pliant high court, the executive office has been transformed into the most powerful and unaccountable entity of state power in the modern era.

Consider this confluence and you grasp the looming crisis.

An unbroken thread links past lawless actions to present-day provocations. Both were founded upon the overconfidence of absolute power.

One observes parallel dynamics in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in expansive ambitions, and in the worldwide exploitation by industrial titans.

But, strength without restraint does not establish right. It makes for fragility, revolution, and war.

History shows that frameworks designed to limit the influential also shield them. Without such constraints, their endless appetite for increased control and resources in time lead to their downfall – and with them their corporations, nations, or empires. And pave the way for international catastrophe.

Such contempt for legal order will plague international stability – and indeed civilization – for the foreseeable future.