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The internal and external policies – including the attempted coup previously to current actions and warnings – erode both domestic and international jurisprudence. But that’s not all.

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

A ethical foundation of any advanced culture is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the less powerful. Failing that, we risk being locked in a conflict of all against all where might makes right wins.

This principle is embedded of the nation's founding texts. It’s also the core of the modern framework of international relations championed by the US, built on multilateralism, democracy, individual liberties, and the rule of law.

Yet, it is a vulnerable principle, easily violated by those who would exploit their influence. Maintaining it requires that the those in charge have a sense of duty to avoid seeking immediate gains, and that the public ensure they answer for their actions should they falter.

Absolute power does not make right. It makes for turmoil, disruption, and war.

Each instance people or corporations or countries that are richer and more powerful prey upon those that are not, the framework of society unravels. Should such behavior are allowed to continue, the fabric unravels. Without intervention, the world can fall into chaos and war. It has happened before.

We now inhabit a global community grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are increasingly centralized than in recent memory. This invites the privileged to take advantage of the less fortunate because they perceive themselves as above the law.

The fortunes of certain ultra-wealthy individuals is almost beyond comprehension. The reach of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans a vast portion of the world. Artificial intelligence is likely to centralize resources and influence to a greater degree. The offensive capability of the major powers is unprecedented in the annals of time.

Empowered by complicit legislators and a pliant judicial body, the executive office has been made into the most powerful and unaccountable agent of the state in the modern era.

Put it all together and you see the looming crisis.

An unbroken thread ties previous breaches of norms to present-day menaces. Each were premised on the hubris of omnipotence.

There is parallel dynamics in the actions of other powers: in wars of aggression, in expansive ambitions, and in the global depredation by powerful corporate entities.

However, unfettered might does not create right. It produces fragility, upended order, and bloodshed.

History shows that frameworks designed to check the influential also protect them. If these guardrails are removed, their endless appetite for more power and wealth eventually lead to their downfall – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten global conflict.

This blatant disregard for rules will cast a long shadow over international stability – and the very idea of a rules-based order – for the foreseeable future.