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His national and international strategies – including the effort to overturn the election in the past to latest moves and warnings – erode not only domestic and international legal frameworks. However, the issue goes deeper.

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

A guiding principle of any advanced culture is to stop the more powerful from harming and taking advantage of the vulnerable. Failing that, we would be locked in a conflict of all against all where might makes right prevails.

This principle lies at the center of America’s founding documents. It is equally the core of the postwar international order advocated by the United States, which stresses multilateralism, popular sovereignty, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law.

Yet, it is a delicate ideal, often broken by those who seek to abuse their influence. Upholding it requires that the powerful have the moral fortitude to avoid seeking temporary advantages, and that the rest of us ensure they answer for their actions if they don't.

Unchecked strength does not make right. It leads to instability, chaos, and hostilities.

Whenever entities that are richer and more powerful prey upon those that are not, the framework of our shared norms weakens. Should such behavior are not contained, the structure collapses. Allowing it to persist, the world can descend into chaos and war. It has happened before.

Our current reality is a international landscape grown vastly more unequal. Influence and wealth are increasingly centralized than in recent memory. This invites the privileged to take advantage of the less fortunate because they act with a sense of untouchable.

The fortunes of a small group of tycoons is staggering. The influence of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans numerous countries. AI is likely to centralize resources and influence even more. The military might of the major powers is unprecedented in human history.

Empowered by complicit legislators and a pliant high court, the presidency has been made into the supreme and answerable-to-none instrument of government in history.

Put it all together and you grasp the danger.

A direct line ties previous transgressions to present-day menaces. These were premised on the hubris of invincibility.

One observes parallel dynamics in international affairs: in military conflicts, in coercive diplomacy, and in the worldwide exploitation by industrial titans.

But, strength without restraint does not create right. It produces fragility, upheaval, and bloodshed.

The lessons of the past reveal that laws and norms to constrain the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their endless appetite for increased control and resources ultimately bring them down – and with them their enterprises, countries, or domains. And risk international catastrophe.

Such contempt for legal order will cast a long shadow over international stability – and the very idea of a rules-based order – for a long time.