It seems as though a major principle of international law is encapulation: The relevant entities are sovereign states responsible for the activities of the subjects in their physical domain, and to some extent those which travel as well. Nothing else has the firepower of the state, both to repel outsiders and control their own.
That latter is not universally true now, if it ever was. Bandits too powerful for kings to deal with crop up all through history. Sometimes they wind up setting up states of their own, or even overthrowing the king.
So how ought a nation deal with a hostile non-governmental power? Declare them terrorists/outlaw/enemies and kill them wherever you find them, just as you would with a traditional enemy state? -- no matter what state they are nominally subject to?
That sort of piggy-backs on the framework we use, though in the absence of a transparent hierarchy it's hard to know who to trust if you want to work out a peace deal. Is Jose or Abdul the one you should deal with, if either? What do you do if Hess drops in and offers a deal?
And turnabout is fair play--suppose Canada decided that the Gangster Disciples were a terrorist group and enemy of all mankind, and started to do something about it. The Chicago establishment would have a cow at the attacks on their people, and the Washington crowd would be deeply insulted and angry at the insinuation that they were incapable of dealing with crime and that they didn't properly appreciate its hazard to others.
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