State assassination, the targeted killing of named individuals by state actors or their proxies, has been frowned upon since at least the early 17th century. It’s still not quite the done thing, but there’s more of it about than you might think: So far in Pakistan, there have been about 50 strikes by armed American UAVs, according to reporting by Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal. Not all of these appear to have been at named individuals (rather than aimed at training camps, for example), but many were.
The question then: Is assassination becoming more acceptable and widespread, and if so, why?
In a fascinating article and book chapter, Ward Thomas traces the development of the norm against state assassinations. His epigraph comes from Voltaire:
Killing a man is murder unless you do it to the sound of trumpets.
That’s certainly been the view in international relations.
Norms usually have both a moral and practical dimension, and, while you could make a good moral case for certain types of assassination, it was chiefly the practical dimension that shaped the strong proscriptive norm against it. As states became more effective at organising and financing large conventional forces, so they privileged this sort of military activity over others.
That’s not to say that state assassinations went away – even in the hardest case, a state plotting to kill the leadership of a rival state – we have a few good examples from the 20th century: the US plots against Castro, and Patrice Lumumba, for example. There are a few more cases where state involvement is strongly suspected: for example, the Syrian government’s role in the assassination of Lebanon’s Phalangist President-elect Bashir Gemayal in 1982, or the killing of its former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005.
But the degree of secrecy (key memos about Castro and Lumumba were only released in 2007, for example), combined with the relative paucity of cases, suggests that state action is heavily influenced by the expectation that they will not indulge in such underhand activities.
Not all assassinations, however, are equally problematic for states. The assassination of non-state actors has been a relatively frequent occurrence in recent decades. Both Israel and the US have regularly and successfully engaged in activities of this type, against various Palestinian groups and AQ respectively. Moreover, it’s easier to assassinate during ongoing hostilities than it is in other circumstances, because outside of war, the assassination norm is strengthened by other norms against either preventive war or reprisals.
In the sort of protracted irregular wars that we see fought today, these factors often blur together. Was the assassination of Hezbollah’s Imad Mugniyah, or the botched assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Mishal, or the aborted US assassination attempts against bin Laden, conducted as reprisals, for pre-emptive reasons, or as part of ongoing hostilities? All three factors, clearly, were in the mix. A similar case could be made about the 1986 US raid on Tripoli, with the added twist of the involvement of a state leader on the receiving end.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to wage a covert preventive war against Iran’s nuclear programme by assassinating its nuclear scientists, your action would cut against the general proscription on preventive war, the proscription on assassination, and the legal (though not necessarily moral) distinction between military and civilian targets. Add in the element of state sovereignty, as opposed to an irregular adversary, and it clearly wouldn’t be sensible to advertise that sort of activity.
Among other factors, then, the norm against assassination is weakened when states are acting clearly in self-defence, or when they can make strong consequentialist arguments about avoiding widespread casualties. An example of the latter is the failed US effort to assassinate Saddam Hussein immediately before the ground invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is further weakened by the involvement of non-state targets, and by the location of the killing being in under-governed territory, like Somalia, the Occupied Territories, or the FATA. Finally, it’s weakened still further by the development of new technologies, chiefly persistent and precise air power, which together reduces the risk of detection, while allowing more discriminate force.
In his work, Ward Thomas concludes that the norm against assassination is weakening in recent times, the product of more prevalent and challenging terrorist and irregular adversaries; and (less convincingly, I think) an appreciation by states of the destructive nature of modern war. I suspect he’s right about the former, and would go further. The hold that the norm has had over states has rested chiefly on practical concerns, most notably the privileging of conventional military force at which states have a marked comparative advantage. The application of such conventional force, however, is of diminished utility against irregular, footlose opponents. Targeted killing, on the other hand, is effective, cheap, and comparatively low-risk.
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Fits nicely to my yesterday post:
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/04/assassination-in-warfare.html
I wrote a sort of conceptual paper on “high value targeting” last year which will be in a book I’m editing for the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. Email me if you’re interested in a draft of it.
Steve, I am editing a book on assassination and its impact. Would you consider writing the foreword?
Sven – thanks for that – great post and blog, added to my RSS.
Steve – thanks again.
Cheers,
KP
Yes, assassination can be an effective way to reach your goals, but it remains illegal. The proper thing to do is to capture and arrest the guy you want dead, put him on trial and then punish him. Sorry that the law is so inconvenient, but that is its purpose.
Have to agree with Menso on this, after writing a paper on assassination last year I kept finding myself drawn back to the letter of the law.
I guess it’s a case of having to act better than the opponent that you face. When arrayed against forces that practise murder or assassination through terrorist means or as an instrument of limited warfare, there may be a temptation to play the same game, but you give up the moral high ground and as a result begin to sap the support for the body politic.
Do the end justify the means, is the removal of a target more value that the damage done to a moral base.
Ultimately it comes done to the ‘what if’ argument – what if killing one man can save 1000.
Thanks for the comments both. I like the rule of law too. But I wonder how you both see the relationship between law, ethics and practice? Particularly when it comes to international law.
Which law is it that you are referring to, and which types of assassination does it prohibit?
Where does that law come from – international law is certainly not just ‘out there’ in a metaphysical sense – it reflects shared understandings of how states ‘ought’ to behave – that is, it has a normative element. And norms can and do change.
David’s ‘what if’ argument in his last sentence is an example of consequentialist reasoning: which because it relies on prediction is always an uncertain business.
Separately, in the previous sentence, you suggest that removal of a target may damage a moral base. that’s true, depending on the target, of course. If it is morally acceptable to target combatants under certain circumstances, we must seek to define those circumstances.
Thus – would assassinating Hitler have been immoral? If not, why not? What conditions apply to Hitler that do not apply to bin Laden, say? Or to a Hamas footsoldier. If we argue, as we reasonably might, that the three are not equivalent, we should be able to say why targeting one is more legitimate than the others.
Finally, on David’s second paragraph — I’m not persuaded that there is a moral equivalence between deliberately killing a militant adversary, irregular or otherwise, and indiscriminately killing non-militant civilians, which we would properly call murder. And I think the moral case for doing so becomes stronger if that militant is engaged in indiscriminate killing himself.
Kenneth – My mother tells a great story from pre WWII, brown shirts rolled through Stroud in an attempt to garner support for the British fascists, trade unionists lined the street and simply laughed at them. And once they had stopped laughing they pulled work hammers from their smocks and beat the living daylights out of them.
For me that neatly encapsulates the idea that there will be times when violence, and assassination may be its most concentrated form, is the most obvious step in deterring future bad actions.
Thomas Barnett in his TED talk discusses the inevitable mistakes that will come through the use of tier 1 kinetic operators being used as the very sharp end of issues resolution. Mistakes will happen but if those mistakes help in securing a major city from a serious attack then I for one have no objection.
I suppose that assassination can be a useful tool, and certainly there are times when it may be the most feasible action available. It is just very easy to throw the old slippery slope cliché at the discussion and leave it there.