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His internal and external strategies – including the challenge to the democratic process in the past to current actions and threats – weaken both domestic and international jurisprudence. But that’s not all.

These actions jeopardize the core idea of civilization itself.

The guiding principle of any advanced culture is to forestall the more powerful from harming and taking advantage of the weaker. Otherwise, we could find ourselves trapped in a brutish war where only the fittest wins.

This concept lies at the center of the nation's founding texts. It’s also the core of the modern framework of international relations supported by the America, emphasizing multilateralism, popular sovereignty, human rights, and the supremacy of law.

But, it is a fragile construct, frequently ignored by those who choose to misuse their authority. Preserving it requires that the influential have a sense of duty to refrain from seeking short-term wins, and that the public hold them accountable when they fail.

Absolute power is not right. It makes for uncertainty, chaos, and hostilities.

Whenever people or corporations or countries that are wealthier and stronger prey upon those that are less so, the framework of society 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.

Today, we live in a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Authority and resources are held by fewer hands than in modern history. This invites the privileged to exploit the weaker because they feel above the law.

The resources of certain billionaires is difficult to fathom. The reach of global industrial giants spans a vast portion of the world. Artificial intelligence is likely to consolidate economic and political clout further. The destructive power of the world's largest nations is unprecedented in the annals of time.

Supported by a compliant faction and an accommodating supreme court, the presidency has been turned into the supreme and answerable-to-none entity of state power in recent memory.

Consider this confluence and you see the threat.

A clear connection links previous breaches of norms to ongoing provocations. Both were premised on the overconfidence of invincibility.

There is much the same in international affairs: in wars of aggression, in coercive diplomacy, and in the worldwide exploitation by industrial titans.

But, strength without restraint does not create right. It fosters instability, upended order, and bloodshed.

The lessons of the past reveal that laws and norms to check the influential also protect them. Absent these limits, their endless appetite for increased control and resources ultimately bring them down – taking down their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten global conflict.

This kind of disregard for rules will plague America and the global community – and indeed a rules-based order – for the foreseeable future.