When violence becomes policy, the United States risks becoming a threat to the international order.

A government that uses murder, kidnapping, and intimidation as instruments of policy crosses a dangerous threshold. History gives such systems a name: terrorist states, or authoritarian regimes. From Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the twentieth century showed how state violence—once justified and normalized—can expand to a scale previously unimaginable.

These regimes did not begin with mass terror. They began with patterns: targeted violence framed as necessary, extraordinary powers justified as security, and the gradual removal of legal and moral restraints. Once coercion became routine, terror was no longer an exception—it became a method of governance.

The United States today bears no resemblance to those regimes in scale or structure. Yet a series of developments suggests a troubling shift toward the normalization of force as an instrument of policy.

Reports of extrajudicial maritime killings during anti-drug operations, aggressive covert actions against foreign leaders, the seizure of Venezuela’s president, and targeted assassinations of senior Iranian officials point to an expanding reliance on lethal force outside traditional diplomatic and legal frameworks. At home, fatal shootings of U.S. citizens during federal immigration enforcement, the rapid expansion of detention and removal campaigns, and the growing militarization of domestic operations reflect a parallel trend. Taken together, these developments suggest a broader pattern: the increasing acceptance of extraordinary powers and lethal force as routine tools of governance.

The significance of this shift lies not only in individual actions, but in the precedent it establishes. When targeted killings, cross-border seizures, and expansive executive authorities become normalized, coercion begins to displace law. Practices justified abroad in the name of national security often migrate inward, reshaping the relationship between the state and its own citizens. The boundary between emergency authority and ordinary governance begins to blur.

This trend carries consequences beyond American borders. Following World War II, the United States helped construct a rules-based international order designed to prevent the return of unchecked power. The United Nations Charter emphasized sovereignty and the peaceful resolution of disputes. NATO emerged as a defensive alliance grounded in collective security rather than unilateral force. At the heart of this system was a simple principle: power should be constrained by law and legitimacy.

That framework is now under strain. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine openly violated the norm that borders cannot be changed by force. But instability does not arise only from the actions of adversaries. When the United States appears willing to bypass international law, disregard diplomatic norms, or act without clear accountability, it weakens the very system it helped create. If the world’s most powerful democracy treats rules as optional, other states are more likely to do the same.

The erosion of external restraint is closely tied to internal risk. A government that becomes accustomed to operating through secrecy, coercion, and exceptional authority abroad may come to rely on those same tools at home. Expanded detention powers, heavily armed enforcement operations, and the framing of social or political groups as security threats reflect the inward migration of emergency governance.

Democratic decline and the emergence of a terrorist state will not come all at once. They advance through the steady accumulation of exceptions and the normalization of what was once unthinkable. America’s standing as a beacon of freedom and a defender of international order will survive only if citizens insist that power remain bound by law. If they do not, the nation risks becoming not a guardian of stability, but a source of instability in the world.

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