I agree entirely with the first point that Professor Paust makes in his previous post , about the impossibility of imputing the non-state actor attacks to Pakistan due to incapacity. Certainly imputation doesn’t make sense on these facts as he outlines them. However, the second point he makes goes to the heart of my question.

Professor Paust asks, rhetorically, how attacking Al Qaeda in Yemen could be an attack on Yemen as such. But saying that selective targetings of non-state actors on the territory of another state is not an attack on that state ‘as such’ makes those last two words do an awful lot of work, work not everyone thinks they can do. (more…)