🔗 Share this article

The domestic and foreign initiatives – ranging from the challenge to the democratic process in the past to latest incursions and threats – weaken both domestic and international legal frameworks. But that’s not all.

They threaten the very concept of civilization itself.

The moral purpose of a functioning society is to forestall the more powerful from preying upon and using the weaker. Otherwise, we risk being trapped in a state of nature where survival of the strongest prevails.

This ideal is central of the Declaration and Constitution. It’s also the foundation of the global system established after WWII championed by the United States, built on international cooperation, democratic governance, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.

But, it is a vulnerable ideal, often broken by those who choose to misuse their authority. Preserving it requires that the those in charge have the moral fortitude to abstain from seeking immediate gains, and that the rest of us hold them accountable if they don't.

Absolute power does not make right. It makes for uncertainty, upheaval, and hostilities.

Every time individuals, companies, or nations that are wealthier and stronger target and use those that are not, the structure of society unravels. If such aggression are allowed to continue, the structure collapses. Allowing it to persist, the world can plunge into instability and violence. It has happened before.

We now inhabit a global community with deepening divides. Political and economic power are held by fewer hands than in recent memory. This invites the elite to leverage their position against the disadvantaged because they act with a sense of untouchable.

The resources of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals is difficult to fathom. The influence of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace spans much of the globe. Advanced technology is could consolidate economic and political clout further. The military might of the major powers is unprecedented in human history.

Empowered by complicit legislators and a pliant judicial body, the presidency has been turned into the supreme and answerable-to-none agent of the state in history.

Combine these factors and you see the threat.

A clear connection ties previous breaches of norms to ongoing threats. Both were premised on the hubris of invincibility.

There is parallel dynamics in other global contexts: in wars of aggression, in strategic threats, and in the global depredation by industrial titans.

However, strength without restraint does not establish right. It produces fragility, upheaval, and war.

Historical evidence demonstrates that rules and conventions to check the powerful also protect them. Absent these limits, their endless appetite for more power and wealth in time cause their collapse – along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And pave the way for world war.

This blatant disregard for rules will plague international stability – and the very idea of a rules-based order – for years to come.