Balancing competing interests and values: Drone strikes as national policy but international crime?

"The national interest" is of questionable utility either as an analytic concept or as a guide to policy. It is neither "national," with multiple entities that have their own sectoral or sectarian interests as well as many domestic and international nonstate actors who also have interests; nor "interest" in the singular but rather several interests in the plural, with some in competition and conflict; nor, as a result, "the." "A balance of interests" is a more accurate empirical descriptor and analytical construct that also incorporates human agency and fallibility. Its superiority is especially relevant to international criminal justice, where state and nonstate actors alike have to balance several competing interests at play, choose between competing values, and also choose between material interests and principles, and values.