The challenge, however, is not resolved by rejecting extraterritorial self-defense outright. Contemporary security threats posed by organized non-state armed groups are real, and international law must remain capable of addressing them. What is required instead is discipline: a restrained understanding of “unwilling or unable” as a contextual argument within necessity, clear acknowledgment of when armed conflict exists, and consistent application of legal constraints regardless of the actor invoking them.

Imagine trying to understand politics under the illusion everything can be cleanly divided up into discrete buckets, each countries’ politics contained within itself… It fails at the level of understanding most politics isn’t done by traditional political actors before you even get to the topic of the inherent interconnectedness of international politics.