One word. Empire. Since ww2 and the fall of the USSR, the US has built up a hegemony that allows it to do what is good for its empire, justified by the idea that what they do is for a good cause.
Simply put, if people like you and have financial ties to you, they're often willing to ignore some of your worse qualities. It's like the wife beating husband whose male friends all say he's a great guy cause he keeps picking up their bar tabs.
USA has through business and propaganda expounded the idea of themselves as protectors of free markets and democracy, where convenient, and revealed their true nature in many places by crushing democracy when it benefited markets.
This was always the MO, if democracies are pro US business, (to the detriment of their own people) , then good. If not, squash them and put in dictator in stead.
Enough of the world's elites have benefited from this, that they basically are beholden to the US elites and are unwilling to criticize when lines are over stepped. I've watched this happen my whole life, since Iraq 2003 this has expanded in every way, from mass surveillance of its own citizens and allies, to illegal attacks and drone strikes. No one with power has wanted to hold the US accountable, and as a result, they've been able to keep doing horrible things.
If the democracies of the world had kept to the laws they made after ww2, and treated the US as an aggressor in 2003, it could have hurt the American economy so much, that it may have caused a shift in the trend. But it would also have hurt those countries' economies. So, instead the political and business elites in places like UK, Norway, Germany, Japan, etc chose to support the US in violating international law, or at least just ignore them to keep business as usual going.
The result is, America learned it has impunity. It was tempered by the understanding that too much overstepping of the principles of international law would ruin the position as "good guy", which long term would weaken America's ability to do whatever it wants.
The current administration can't spell 'long term', let alone understand it. In a way they've kickstarted the fall of the empire, because no one believes in America as a force for good, aside from the aforementioned elites, who have tied themselves to the USA, and must stick with it till they all go down, like Labour in the UK, or Merz in Germany. They will blatantly support the US, and it's ally Israel, in any violation of law, as they know they are politically and economically so dependent on the US, that any other choice is impossible, even when it makes their own people hate them.