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The national and international initiatives – including the effort to overturn the election five years ago to current actions and warnings – erode both national and global law. The implications are broader.

These actions threaten the fundamental meaning of what we mean by.

A guiding principle of a functioning society is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the less powerful. Otherwise, we risk being locked in a brutish war where only the fittest prevails.

This concept lies at the center of America’s founding documents. This is also the heart of the global system established after WWII championed by the United States, which stresses multilateralism, democracy, fundamental freedoms, and the legal authority.

But, it is a vulnerable principle, easily violated by those who would exploit their influence. Upholding it necessitates that the powerful have a sense of duty to refrain from seeking short-term wins, and that society ensure they answer for their actions if they don't.

Unchecked strength does not equal right. It makes for instability, upheaval, and conflict.

Whenever individuals, companies, or nations that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are not, the fabric of civilization weakens. If these actions are allowed to continue, the system fails. If not stopped, the world can fall into instability and violence. It has happened before.

Today, we live in a global community grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are increasingly centralized than ever before. This invites the powerful to take advantage of the less fortunate because they act with a sense of omnipotent.

The wealth of certain ultra-wealthy individuals is almost beyond comprehension. The power of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors covers numerous countries. AI is poised to further concentrate economic and political clout even more. The offensive capability of the leading countries is unprecedented in the annals of time.

Empowered by complicit legislators and a pliant supreme court, the highest office has been transformed into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of the state in recent memory.

Combine these factors and you see the danger.

An unbroken thread links past breaches of norms to present-day menaces. These were based on the arrogance of omnipotence.

One observes a similar pattern in international affairs: in territorial invasions, in coercive diplomacy, and in the rampant monopolization by massive conglomerates.

However, raw power does not establish right. It makes for uncertainty, revolution, and bloodshed.

History shows that frameworks designed to limit the powerful also shield them. If these guardrails are removed, their endless appetite for more power and wealth eventually bring them down – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten international catastrophe.

This blatant contempt for legal order will plague international stability – and the very idea of civilized conduct – for years to come.