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The domestic and foreign policies – including the attempted coup five years ago to latest incursions and warnings – weaken not only national and global jurisprudence. The implications are broader.

They threaten the very concept of a civilized world.

A guiding principle of any advanced culture is to stop the dominant from attacking and exploiting the vulnerable. Otherwise, we risk being trapped in a brutish war where might makes right prevails.

This concept is embedded of the nation's founding texts. It’s also the core of the modern framework of international relations championed by the America, built on collective action, democracy, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.

However, it is a delicate construct, often broken by those who choose to misuse their authority. Preserving it demands that the those in charge have the moral fortitude to avoid seeking short-term wins, and that the public demand responsibility if they don't.

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

Whenever individuals, companies, or nations that are advantaged target and use those that are not, the fabric of our shared norms weakens. Should such behavior are allowed to continue, the system fails. Without intervention, the world can descend into disorder and conflict. We have seen this pattern previously.

Our current reality is a global community grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated than in recent memory. This invites the powerful to take advantage of the weaker because they perceive themselves as above the law.

The resources of a handful of tycoons is difficult to fathom. The power of major corporations in technology, energy, and aerospace covers much of the globe. Artificial intelligence is could consolidate wealth and power even more. The offensive capability of the leading countries is without parallel in the annals of time.

Enabled by political allies and a sympathetic judicial body, the presidency has been turned into the supreme and answerable-to-none entity of state power in the modern era.

Combine these factors and you see the threat.

An unbroken thread links previous transgressions to present-day menaces. These were based on the overconfidence of omnipotence.

One observes a similar pattern in the actions of other powers: in military conflicts, in expansive ambitions, and in the worldwide exploitation by industrial titans.

However, raw power does not make right. It makes for uncertainty, revolution, and armed conflict.

The lessons of the past reveal that frameworks designed to limit the powerful also shield them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for greater influence and riches eventually bring them down – along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk global conflict.

This blatant lawlessness will haunt America and the global community – and indeed civilized conduct – for a long time.