Sabotage, border clashes and airstrikes happen all the time without constituting acts of war that give casus belli to their target. A basic legal condition of a just war is that it is proportionate and embarked upon as a last resort: launching a war because a dolphin you trained was killed is neither of those, as sad as it might be.
I didn't talk about casus belli, you're just making stuff up.
Sure, things happen all the time without a war breaking out. But it's not like you can "just kill" or "just attack" without repercussions. That's ridiculous thought. It's similar to saying "what's the reason to have a security guard in the shop, when you can just take a pistol and kill him". Security isn't about having an impenetrable defense; such a thing isn't possible. Anything can be destroyed in the end.
There's always a repercussion for attacking the military, be it diplomatic, economic or a military retaliation.
Well, war has changed. Russia annexed part of Ukraine without ever declaring war. It's not as black and white today. War is a spectrum, especially at the borders of superpowers. Whether you want to call it an act of war or an escalation or whatever, I don't care. If you want to play definition semantics, I'm not interested as it completely misses the point I was making.
Sabotage, border clashes and airstrikes happen all the time without constituting acts of war that give casus belli to their target. A basic legal condition of a just war is that it is proportionate and embarked upon as a last resort: launching a war because a dolphin you trained was killed is neither of those, as sad as it might be.