Assassinating Foreign Leaders: The Moral Case

Those responsible for waging wars are the most morally justifiable targets.

Many people believe there should be a rule against assassinating the leaders of foreign countries – even countries we’re at war with. International Law prohibits the assassination of national leaders in most cases, in line with customary International Law, and several UN resolutions¹. I’ve always thought that the UN’s prohibition on assassinating leaders is cartoonishly self-serving moral dishonesty. Of course the national leaders in the UN don’t want there to be a norm of assassinating national leaders! They want thousands of their foot soldiers to die instead. They want to send thousands of men to die, but they don’t want any risk at all to their own lives.

As a libertarian, I don’t care what the positive law says. I think that theft would be morally wrong even if it were legal and I think that occasional marijuana use is morally unproblematic, even though it is illegal. So I don’t care whether assassinating a foreign leader like Vladimir Putin is against the law. We should instead ask ‘Is it moral’?

As a libertarian, I also don’t care about democracy. I would much rather live in a monarchy with good policy than a democracy with bad policy. Many critics of US foreign policy make a big fuss about the fact that some leaders which the US has deposed were democratically elected. Since I don’t care about democracy, I don’t care whether a leader was democratically elected. We should instead ask whether the leader was carrying out good policy or bad policy.

Suppose you have two options:

Option A: Kill one thousand 18-year-old conscripts.

Option B: Kill the dictator who started the war and conscripted the 18 year olds.

To me, option B not only sounds like the morally right choice, it’s the obviously morally right choice. Killing thousands of conscripts when you had the opportunity to kill the dictator instead is reprehensible.

Killing the president/dictator of the enemy nation is more effective than killing a foot soldier. And the president/dictator is more morally culpable than the average foot soldier!

There are a few special circumstances in which I would not support assassination. We should not assassinate people at diplomatic talks. Killing someone when they agreed to a diplomatic meeting violates the deep norm of good faith that makes diplomacy possible. However, national leaders spend nearly all their time outside of diplomatic meetings. It would be completely permissible for the Ukrainian military to assassinate Vladimir Putin inside his house in Russia.

In a response to me on this subject, Jon Miltimore argued that if the US government starts assassinating enemy leaders, America’s enemies might start trying to assassinate US leaders. But Iran and al-Qaeda have already tried to assassinate US presidents.

One of the best things about a policy of assassination is that it would change the incentives of national leaders. If national leaders took a personal risk in wars, they would be less likely to start wars. If the assassination norm escalated so that top generals were also subject to assassination, so much the better.

1. The UN’s resolutions do not clearly prohibit assassinating a national leader during a war. Ronald Reagan signed an executive order which bans assassinations, but attorneys for the US army have argued that the definition of “assassination” does not apply to leaders who have a military role. This is a contested area in International Law. Regardless of what the law says, many people think that all assassinations of national leaders should be banned, and some people are under the impression that they are already illegal under International Law. In this essay I’m addressing the moral arguments against assassination.