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The domestic and foreign policies – including the effort to overturn the election previously to recent actions and threats – undermine not only domestic and international law. But that’s not all.

They threaten the core idea of civilization itself.

The ethical foundation of civilized society is to forestall the dominant from preying upon and using the vulnerable. Without this, we risk being locked in a state of nature where only the fittest wins.

This concept is embedded of the Declaration and Constitution. This is also the heart of the modern framework of international relations championed by the America, emphasizing international cooperation, popular sovereignty, human rights, and the legal authority.

However, it is a vulnerable principle, easily violated by those who choose to misuse their power. Maintaining it demands that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that the rest of us hold them accountable when they fail.

Absolute power is not right. It makes for turmoil, upheaval, and conflict.

Whenever people or corporations or countries that are wealthier and stronger prey upon those that are not, the structure of our shared norms weakens. Should such behavior are allowed to continue, the fabric unravels. Allowing it to persist, the world can plunge into chaos and war. History provides ample precedent.

We now inhabit a international landscape marked by extreme inequality. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than ever before. This encourages the elite to take advantage of the disadvantaged because they perceive themselves as above the law.

The resources of a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals is difficult to fathom. The influence of global industrial giants extends over numerous countries. Advanced technology is could consolidate wealth and power to a greater degree. The military might of the major powers is without parallel in recorded history.

Enabled by complicit legislators and a pliant high court, the executive office has been made into the most dominant and unchecked entity of government in the modern era.

Combine these factors and you see the threat.

A direct line ties past breaches of norms to ongoing threats. These were based on the arrogance of absolute power.

You see parallel dynamics in international affairs: in military conflicts, in coercive diplomacy, and in the rampant monopolization by industrial titans.

But, unfettered might does not establish right. It makes for fragility, upended order, and war.

History shows that frameworks designed to check the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for increased control and resources eventually lead to their downfall – along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And pave the way for world war.

This blatant lawlessness will haunt international stability – and the very idea of civilized conduct – for the foreseeable future.