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The internal and external strategies – including the attempted coup five years ago to latest actions and threats – undermine not only domestic and international jurisprudence. But that’s not all.

These actions threaten the fundamental meaning of a civilized world.

A moral purpose of any advanced culture is to forestall the more powerful from attacking and exploiting the vulnerable. Failing that, we could find ourselves locked in a brutish war where only the fittest prevails.

This concept is embedded of the Declaration and Constitution. This is also the foundation of the postwar international order championed by the US, emphasizing collective action, democracy, human rights, and the legal authority.

Yet, it is a vulnerable principle, often broken by those who seek to abuse their authority. Upholding it demands that the influential have the moral fortitude to avoid seeking short-term wins, and that the rest of us demand responsibility should they falter.

Absolute power does not make right. It makes for instability, disruption, and hostilities.

Each instance entities that are advantaged target and use those that are less so, the framework of civilization frays. If these actions are not contained, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can plunge into instability and violence. It has happened before.

Today, we live in a international landscape with deepening divides. Influence and wealth are held by fewer hands than ever before. This encourages the powerful to take advantage of the weaker because they feel omnipotent.

The wealth of certain tycoons is difficult to fathom. The influence of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors extends over numerous countries. Advanced technology is poised to consolidate economic and political clout further. The offensive capability of the world's largest nations is unmatched in the annals of time.

Empowered by complicit legislators and a pliant judicial body, the highest office has been made into the most dominant and unchecked entity of state power in recent memory.

Consider this confluence and you grasp the danger.

A direct line links previous breaches of norms to present-day menaces. Each were premised on the overconfidence of omnipotence.

There is parallel dynamics in the actions of other powers: in territorial invasions, in strategic threats, and in the rampant monopolization by massive conglomerates.

However, unfettered might does not make right. It fosters instability, upheaval, and armed conflict.

Historical evidence demonstrates that frameworks designed to limit the influential also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for more power and wealth eventually cause their collapse – and with them their enterprises, countries, or domains. And threaten world war.

This kind of contempt for legal order will plague America and the global community – and indeed civilized conduct – for the foreseeable future.