The strawman I was referring to was the binary option of "threatening to the survival of all living species...or not". Perhaps "false dichotomy" would have been a better description.

The GGP point was that this level of control has been normal when dealing with other nations. The nuclear point was that it has also previously been applied internally, so the original framing of "other nations vs us" is not particularly good.

If your counterpoint is "yeah but that's ok when it's based on existential risk" that doesn't support your first point, it just reorients the framework from "external vs internal" to "risk based". If you change the goalposts to the latter, you are actively undermining your original point. That's a fine point to make, just not coherent with your original one.