The other responsibility to protect

The Pakistan problem is one of the thorniest in international politics. It is almost impossible to see how you deal with a nuclear armed failing state whose government claims, with some justification, that it can’t control its military, intelligence service and all of its territory. But as Bob Kagan writes in the Washington Post today:

“…nations should not be able to claim sovereign rights when they cannot control territory from which terrorist attacks are launched. If there is such a thing as a ‘responsibility to protect,’ which justifies international intervention to prevent humanitarian catastrophe either caused or allowed by a nation’s government, there must also be a responsibility to protect one’s neighbors from attacks from one’s own territory, even when the attacks are carried out by ‘non-state actors.'”