Great powers override international law to arm insurgents against foreign governments

Evidence

Legal analysts argued that military action against another nation without authorization by the UN Security Council is a violation of international law (Sengupta, 2014b). The legality of the justification became even more problematic when the United States decided to train and arm the Syrian rebels. A foreign country arming insurgents to overthrow their governmental system, however welcome it may be in despotic regimes, is also going against international law. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2469

Categorization

• QUESTION: How does a nation frame law-breaking as lawful when the offending state is itself a ‘despotic regime’ being armed against — does the target’s badness neutralize the legal violation?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2469