Your example is kinda ironic, given that this
Australian citizen is in an
Ecuadorian embassy in
England, and the politician who wanted to drone him is an
American, and the reason he's still alive isn't actually any guns or tanks protecting him, it's the PR outcry that would happen if an assassination took place. His own nation state isn't doing a very good job of protecting him, considering he is taking shelter in
another nation-state's property, and that the resources that would attack him are owned by yet another nation-state, and for a significant portion of the world's population, this latter nation-state has conducted quasi-military operations against them with no interference by their own governments. He might as well be holed up in a private citizen's condo in California, if he could find a private citizen who was willing to take him.
I see your point, and I get that there's a common-defense argument for the existence of nations. But realistically, if anyone not an American finds themself opposed to the U.S's interests, their national government isn't going to be of much help to them. Realistically, the invisible hand that prevents the U.S. from bullying the whole rest of the world (even moreso than they do) is that the U.S. as a nation has fairly little interest in being the boss of 7 million people, and oftentimes struggles with being the boss of 300 million people, and the popular outcry over wars abroad tends to stop them within 8 years or so after they get started. It has nothing to do with other nations being an effective check on U.S. power.
I see your point, and I get that there's a common-defense argument for the existence of nations. But realistically, if anyone not an American finds themself opposed to the U.S's interests, their national government isn't going to be of much help to them. Realistically, the invisible hand that prevents the U.S. from bullying the whole rest of the world (even moreso than they do) is that the U.S. as a nation has fairly little interest in being the boss of 7 million people, and oftentimes struggles with being the boss of 300 million people, and the popular outcry over wars abroad tends to stop them within 8 years or so after they get started. It has nothing to do with other nations being an effective check on U.S. power.