For centuries, trade protectionism has been the protagonist of our trans-civilizational turmoil. It left unparalleled marks in the Mercantilist era and was deeply intertwined with exploitative colonial practice. In the postmodern trading system, hallmarked by the institutionalization of trade rules under the GATT 1947 later subsumed by the WTO, protectionism is ‘legalized’ by way of justifiable exceptions in defense. Such apologetic gesture, I argue, is much less noticeable in the security quarter. By contrast, the reach of trade protectionism in the expression of exceptionalism to recalibrate international peace and security has been widespread and unspoken. Insomuch as a discriminatory trade measure purports to interfere by coercion with what falls under the remit of another State’s domaine reserve, there is an apparent disengagement between the security exceptions of the GATT 1994 vis-à-vis the prohibition on sovereign interference under general international law. It engenders the peculiar phenomenon of ‘conditional lawfulness’ or ‘internal lawfulness’, whereby what is legally acceptable to one legal system may not be to another. In this article, I ask whether the WTO regime is too forgiving, and how this indulgence transpires in the letters of the relevant treaties. In this sense, protectionism has transformed, yet once again, to become more than a politico-economic policy, rather a philosophical belief—almost a self-preservation reflex—in response to national insecurity in today’s global ‘zero-sum game’.