22 Jul The Unwilling or Unable Doctrine and the Doha Strike: Sovereignty, Mediation, and Competing Narratives of Self-Defense
[Alireza Dadkhah Aseman is an Independent Researcher in International Law at the University of Tehran.
Rezvan Bagherzadeh is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Bu-Ali Sina University.]
Introduction
International law has long sought to preserve an equilibrium between sovereign equality and collective security. Yet that balance becomes increasingly fragile when doctrines developed in response to contemporary security threats begin operating beyond clearly defined legal limits. The “Unwilling or Unable” doctrine reflects this tension. Although several states have invoked the doctrine to justify extraterritorial force against non-state actors, its legal status and operational scope remain deeply contested within contemporary international law.
In her seminal article, Ashley Deeks’ influential formulation of the doctrine argues that state practice increasingly supports the use of limited defensive force against non-state actors operating from territories whose governments are unwilling or unable to suppress them. Yet critics continue to question whether sufficient state consensus exists to recognize the doctrine as customary international law under the restrictive framework of Articles 2(4) and 51 of the UN Charter. Olivier Corten’s analysis of the doctrine’s uncertain legal status reflects the depth of that disagreement in his essay.
The recent strike in Doha, Qatar, targeting Hamas officials, illustrates these tensions with particular clarity. On 9 September 2025, Israeli airstrikes reportedly targeted senior Hamas officials residing in temporary diplomatic quarters near Doha’s West Bay district. Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the operation as a “flagrant violation of sovereignty and international law,” emphasizing that the strike occurred while Qatar was actively engaged in mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel. Israeli officials, by contrast, framed the operation within the broader context of counterterrorism and self-defense against non-state actors.
The Doha incident, therefore, raises questions extending beyond the legality of a single military operation. More fundamentally, it highlights continuing disagreements regarding the extent to which doctrines of self-defense may be expanded to address transnational threats posed by non-state actors, particularly where the territorial state is not directly participating in hostilities. It also raises a more specific concern regarding whether mediation, political engagement, or diplomatic accommodation may increasingly be interpreted as forms of “harboring” capable of justifying unilateral force.
Methodologically, this essay adopts a primarily doctrinal and positivist analysis grounded in lex lata, focusing on the existing framework of the UN Charter, state practice, and debates concerning customary international law. Because the controversy surrounding the Unwilling or Unable Doctrine extends beyond questions of formal legality, the analysis is supplemented by a restrained critical perspective informed by Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). Accordingly, positivism provides the descriptive legal foundation of the discussion, while the critical framework assists in examining how contested interpretations of self-defence operate in practice, particularly when applied to politically weaker or mediating states. Ntina Tzouvala’s discussion of TWAIL and the “Unwilling or Unable” doctrine is especially relevant because it raises an important question: can security-oriented legal doctrines maintain universal legal standards while operating consistently across different geopolitical settings? This perspective informs the present analysis not as an alternative source of legality, but as a framework for assessing how competing legal interpretations may operate across different geopolitical contexts while remaining formally grounded in existing legal doctrine.
To this end, the Doha strike raises an important question: can the Unwilling or Unable doctrine operate as a balanced legal framework across different geopolitical contexts, or do its practical applications generate distinct consequences for different categories of states?
Doha and Competing Narratives of the Unwilling or Unable Doctrine
The development of the “Unwilling or Unable” doctrine has generated competing understandings of legality, state practice, and the evolution of self-defense in international law. The jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice continues to place significant emphasis on restrictive interpretations of exceptions to the prohibition on the use of force, particularly regarding attribution and substantial involvement. Christine Gray’s analysis of post-Nicaragua jurisprudence remains central to understanding these doctrinal constraints.
Practice-oriented approaches associated with scholars such as Monica Hakimi place greater emphasis on the evolving interaction of states and the gradual formation of legality through institutional engagement and operational practice. Hakimi’s work on Customary Interactional Law illustrates how legal authority may emerge through patterns of practice even where formal doctrinal consensus remains incomplete.
TWAIL scholarship introduces a different, though complementary, concern. Rather than focusing exclusively on doctrinal validity, TWAIL scholars examine how legal doctrines may operate within structurally unequal international conditions and whether formally universal legal standards may produce asymmetrical practical consequences. Antony Anghie’s foundational work, “Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law”, remains particularly important in this regard.
Contemporary scholarship increasingly suggests that expansive interpretations of self-defense may operate unevenly across the international system, exposing certain states and regions to recurring forms of unilateral force while others remain comparatively insulated from similar legal treatment. Chloe Goldthorpe’s discussion of the “imbalanced geography” of self-defense law and Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg’s analysis of “bombable geographies” both illustrate concerns regarding differentiated legal exposure within international law.
Such concerns are particularly significant where the territorial state is neither directly participating in hostilities nor demonstrably incapable of exercising due diligence, yet remains exposed to expansive interpretations of self-defence. The Doha incident provides useful context for considering these competing understandings of legality and their practical implications.
Applied to the Doha strike, these perspectives may generate different expectations regarding the legality of the operation. A restrictive doctrinal approach would place particular emphasis on attribution, substantial involvement, and the evidentiary threshold required to justify force against a non-state actor operating from another state’s territory. More expansive approaches may place greater weight on evolving security threats and the practical effectiveness of defensive measures. Critical perspectives, meanwhile, draw attention to the broader consequences of extending concepts such as “harboring” and “unwillingness,” particularly where the territorial state is engaged in mediation rather than participation in hostilities.
These competing doctrinal, practice-oriented, and critical perspectives demonstrate that debates surrounding the Unwilling or Unable Doctrine extend beyond questions of technical legality. They reflect broader disagreements concerning the evolution of international law, the relationship between sovereignty and security, and the extent to which contemporary interpretations of self-defence can accommodate both effectiveness and legal restraint. The Doha strike serves as the practical case study through which these competing legal perspectives can be assessed, offering an opportunity to examine how different understandings of legality shape the evaluation of a concrete and highly contested use of force.
Was Qatar “Unwilling or Unable”?
The Doha incident illustrates these tensions with unusual clarity. Public statements accompanying the strike suggested that states providing permissive environments for Hamas officials could face similar consequences. Such rhetoric reflects one of the doctrine’s most controversial implications: the gradual expansion of the concept of “harboring” beyond direct operational assistance toward broader forms of political tolerance, diplomatic engagement, or mediation.
Under the restrictive framework traditionally associated with Article 51 of the UN Charter and the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, lawful self-defense generally requires a sufficiently attributable armed attack or substantial involvement linking the territorial state to hostile conduct. The Court’s judgments in Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua and Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo remain central to contemporary debates concerning attribution and the use of force against non-state actors.
From this perspective, characterizing Qatar as an “unable” state appears difficult to sustain. Qatar was neither territorially fragmented nor institutionally incapable of exercising governmental authority. Nor does publicly available information demonstrate direct Qatari participation in hostile operations against Israel. Rather, Qatar was actively engaged in mediation efforts intended to facilitate negotiations and ceasefire arrangements.
The more difficult argument concerns alleged “unwillingness.” Proponents of the doctrine have argued that a territorial state’s refusal to meaningfully suppress non-state threats may justify limited defensive force where an ongoing threat persists. Yet extending “unwillingness” to encompass mediation or diplomatic facilitation significantly broadens the doctrine beyond its more traditional security-oriented rationale. Viewed through the competing perspectives outlined earlier, the Doha incident illustrates why the doctrine remains contested. A restrictive doctrinal approach would question whether mediation and diplomatic engagement satisfy the threshold traditionally associated with attribution or substantial involvement. Practice-oriented approaches may regard the case as part of a broader evolution in responses to transnational security threats. By contrast, TWAIL-informed critiques draw attention to the possibility that expanding concepts such as “harboring” and “unwillingness” may expose certain states to forms of legal vulnerability not experienced uniformly across the international system. The Doha case, therefore, serves as a concrete example of how competing understandings of legality and legitimacy can produce different evaluations of the same use of force. In other words, if mediation itself can be treated as evidence of “unwillingness,” the distinction between operational support and diplomatic engagement becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
Some recent scholarship has attempted to develop alternative frameworks for situations in which a territorial state is unable, but not unwilling, to suppress non-state threats despite exercising due diligence. Rather than treating institutional weakness as a basis for diminished sovereignty, these approaches argue that the law of self-defense should incorporate remedial and capacity-oriented obligations designed to protect weaker states from structurally unequal applications of force. Emre Senbabaoglu’s doctoral thesis proposes a more development-oriented approach under which defensive measures should remain linked to cooperation, institutional restoration, and proportional legal safeguards for territorial states acting in good faith. Similar concerns appear in Dawood Ahmed’s article, which argues that expansive interpretations of self-defense risk disproportionately burdening weaker states that lack full territorial control despite genuine efforts at compliance and due diligence.
Doha, Mediation, Sovereignty, and Structural Inequality
The concern is particularly acute because mediation has historically occupied a stabilizing role within international relations. Recharacterizing diplomatic facilitation as evidence of “harboring” risks undermining the already fragile spaces available for negotiation and de-escalation in conflicts involving non-state actors. Alexander Wentker’s work on neutrality and international legal thought is especially relevant here because it demonstrates how increasingly security-oriented interpretations of international law may blur the distinction between mediation and participation/Substantial involvement in hostilities.
The Doha strike ultimately raises broader questions regarding the relationship between security, sovereignty, and the evolving structure of international legality itself. In this respect, the Doha incident serves as a practical illustration of the competing narratives outlined earlier. While more expansive approaches emphasize adaptation to contemporary security threats and evolving forms of transnational violence, the critical perspectives discussed above caution against interpretations that may gradually expand legal exposure for states engaged in mediation rather than participation in hostilities. The case also highlights concerns that increasingly expansive security frameworks may blur the distinction between diplomatic engagement and operational involvement, thereby producing broader consequences for sovereign equality and the practical operation of international legality. If mediation, political hosting, or diplomatic engagement become increasingly susceptible to reinterpretation through expansive security frameworks, states may become less willing to assume mediatory functions in armed conflicts involving non-state actors. Such developments risk weakening not only sovereign equality but also the stabilizing role that mediation performs within the international legal order.
At the same time, acknowledging these concerns does not require denying the existence of contemporary security threats posed by non-state actors. Practice-oriented approaches to international law recognize that legal frameworks governing self-defense may continue evolving in response to transnational violence. Yet even these more flexible approaches generally emphasize the importance of procedural safeguards, evidentiary transparency, proportionality, and meaningful engagement with the territorial state before force is employed. Carsten Stahn’s recent discussion of hegemonic legality in the law of self-defense underscores the continuing importance of legal restraint within evolving counterterrorism frameworks; In this context, “hegemonic legality” does not refer to the dominance of any particular state. Rather, it describes a condition in which certain legal interpretations acquire disproportionate authority through prevailing institutional, political, or strategic practices, thereby shaping how legal rules are understood and applied across the international system. The concern is therefore not legal evolution itself, but whether emerging interpretations remain sufficiently constrained by sovereign equality and legal accountability.
Concluding Remarks
Ultimately, the Doha strike demonstrates why contested doctrines of self-defense require careful scrutiny when their practical operation risks expanding zones of legal vulnerability within international relations. Preserving the normative credibility of international law requires not only responsiveness to contemporary security threats but also continued vigilance regarding the unequal consequences that increasingly expansive interpretations of force may produce in practice.
This concern is not limited to the Doha incident itself. Rather, it reflects a broader challenge addressed throughout this article: ensuring that evolving doctrines of self-defence respond to contemporary security threats while preserving sovereign equality across different categories of states. From a TWAIL-informed perspective, this challenge is particularly significant because formally universal legal doctrines may generate differentiated practical consequences when applied within structurally unequal international conditions.
The Post does not argue that the law governing self-defense must remain static or incapable of responding to threats posed by non-state actors. Rather, it argues that any evolution of the “Unwilling or Unable” doctrine must remain constrained by clear evidentiary standards, meaningful procedural safeguards, and continued respect for sovereign equality under the UN Charter framework. Otherwise, concepts such as “harboring” risk expanding beyond operational participation in hostilities toward increasingly indeterminate forms of political or diplomatic association.
The Doha incident illustrates why that distinction matters. Treating mediation itself as evidence of unwillingness risks weakening not only the restrictive structure of the jus ad bellum regime, but also the broader diplomatic mechanisms through which contemporary conflicts are managed and de-escalated. Preserving the legitimacy of any evolving framework of self-defence, therefore, requires continued attention to evidentiary rigor, procedural restraint, and the principle of sovereign equality that remains central to the contemporary international legal order.
The Doha case has served throughout this Post as a practical point of reference through which competing understandings of self-defence can be examined in operation rather than in the abstract. Viewed through a restrictive doctrinal lens, the incident raises questions concerning attribution, substantial involvement, and the evidentiary threshold required to justify force against non-state actors operating from the territory of another state. More expansive approaches may place greater weight on evolving security threats and the practical effectiveness of defensive measures against transnational actors. Perspectives attentive to structural inequality and differentiated legal exposure, meanwhile, highlight the risk that increasingly broad interpretations of concepts such as “harboring” or “unwillingness” may extend the reach of unilateral force to states engaged in mediation rather than participation in hostilities. The continuing debate surrounding the Unwilling or Unable Doctrine, therefore, extends beyond questions of legal technique and reflects a broader disagreement about how international law should reconcile security, sovereignty, and legal equality in contemporary practice.
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