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Today’s military interventions are best understood as a form of counter-insurgency politics. Counter-insurgency politics constructs a distinctive type of rule and governance through military intervention. It normalises the use of military force in the management and suppression of instability instead of resolving conflict. Its practices are not predisposed to the usual International Relations binaries, however, as counter-insurgency politics involves a multitude of global governance structures and networks countering or preventing terrorism and violent extremism. The typical binary categories used in analyses of intervention are of little use because counter-insurgency politics signals a capacity to authorise discriminations in ways that elude them. So the basis of our political and analytical judgement is shaken, as the stateinternational line still informs legal, moral and political judgements about intervention while also being challenged by the international politics of counter-insurgency. Mali and the Sahel are a rich and evolving case for theorising counter-insurgency politics.