Renowned Commentator's Assassination Sparks Fears of Targeted Killings Across Global Political Spectrum

The Dangerous Erosion of Anti-Assassination Norms Threatens Global Stability

The assassination of American right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has sent shockwaves beyond U.S. borders, highlighting a troubling global trend: the gradual breakdown of centuries-old diplomatic norms that once protected political leaders from targeted killings. This erosion threatens to unleash a cycle of retaliatory political violence that could fundamentally destabilize international relations and domestic politics worldwide.

The Historical Shield Around Political Leaders

For centuries, an unwritten but powerful rule protected government leaders from assassination attempts by foreign powers. Australian scholar Ward Thomas, writing in International Security in 2000, documented how this norm emerged from a combination of strategic interests and evolving moral beliefs among major powers.

The logic was straightforward: great powers preferred to contain political violence to traditional battlefields where their superior resources would likely prevail. Weaker states sometimes resorted to assassination as an asymmetric weapon against stronger rivals, but the dominant powers had a shared interest in keeping political violence confined to conventional warfare.

A Gentleman's Agreement Among Elites

This anti-assassination norm reflected a peculiar form of political realism—ruling elites across different nations had a mutual interest in not trying to kill each other, regardless of their other conflicts. Even while sending thousands of their citizens to die in bloody battles, leaders maintained an implicit understanding that they themselves remained off-limits.

The principle distinguished between public and private actions, suggesting that national leaders operated under different moral principles than ordinary individuals. A common citizen who killed someone faced prosecution, but a king or prime minister who launched a war "for national interest" could escape personal accountability, even if thousands died as a result.

World Wars and the Persistence of Protection

This norm proved remarkably durable even during history's most devastating conflicts. After World War I, the deposed German Kaiser Wilhelm II was allowed to spend his remaining years in quiet exile in the Netherlands. A century earlier, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped direct punishment despite dragging Europe into multiple wars, eventually sent to Atlantic exile to age and die alone.

Most remarkably, the anti-assassination rule held even during World War II's horrors. The Allies never attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, nor did they directly target Japanese Emperor Hirohito or Italian leader Benito Mussolini, despite the unprecedented scale of destruction these regimes caused.

The Post-War Moral Revolution

According to Thomas, this protective norm began crumbling after World War II as new moral and material considerations took hold. The Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials marked a fundamental shift—the victorious Allies rejected the previous distinction between public and private actions, holding former German and Japanese officials personally responsible for their official acts.

This moral transformation inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a growing global commitment to punishing those responsible for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. The later establishment of the International Criminal Court represented the institutionalization of efforts to hold leaders accountable for major crimes.

Technology Enables Precision Violence

The normative shift coincided with technological advances that made targeted killings more feasible. If individual leaders became morally responsible for their decisions, direct action against those viewed as evil or dangerous became easier to justify. Targeting a single leader appeared more cost-effective than launching wars that would claim many more lives.

Advanced military technology made precise strikes and targeted killings increasingly possible, at least for militarily capable states. Assassination began to seem like a more efficient tool for addressing political problems than traditional warfare.

The New Age of State-Sponsored Assassinations

Instead of remaining extremely rare, state-sponsored assassinations of rival leaders became increasingly common over time. During the Cold War, the United States killed, helped kill, or attempted to kill numerous foreign leaders including Cuban President Fidel Castro, Congolese President Patrice Lumumba, and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The Bush administration deliberately targeted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at the beginning of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Israel has killed numerous political opponents over the years, including Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, as well as several Iranian civilian nuclear scientists.

North Korea attempted to assassinate two different South Korean presidents, once in 1968 and again in 1983. Ukraine has stated that Russia repeatedly attempted to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky. The previous norm against governments targeting their foreign counterparts now appears to be on life support.

Three Dangerous Consequences

Erosion of Diplomatic Trust

While established norms don't prevent powerful states from acting as they wish, violating them costs reputational damage and deters others from maintaining close or cooperative relationships. As these norms erode, the deterrent value of reputational consequences diminishes, and more states will view assassination as a legitimate form of political action.

Governments will trust each other less, making it more difficult to reach acceptable solutions to existing disputes. The international system becomes less predictable and more prone to escalation.

Diplomatic Paralysis

Abandoning anti-assassination norms will discourage adversaries from meeting, as such encounters become too risky. This makes diplomatic solutions to existing conflicts more difficult to achieve and will discourage third parties from attempting to facilitate such efforts.

All states must occasionally talk to their enemies, which usually requires neutral parties to facilitate the process. Violating sovereignty and anti-assassination norms in this manner adds more complexity to international diplomacy at a time when we need more of it, not less.

Domestic Violence Spillover

The belief that it's perfectly acceptable to target and kill foreign officials we disagree with makes it easier for some to justify violent actions against domestic political figures they oppose. In both cases, potential targets are first "demonized" as embodiments of evil and deadly threats to the nation.

Once this label is attached, extreme measures to deal with them appear acceptable, perhaps even necessary. This normalization of political violence abroad inevitably influences domestic political discourse and behavior.

A Call for Restraint

If America is concerned about escalating domestic political violence—which, contrary to claims by some officials, comes predominantly from the political right rather than the left—it should also worry about how the United States, some of its closest allies, and other major powers are undermining anti-assassination norms abroad.

The assassination of figures like Charlie Kirk may trigger retaliatory cycles that further destabilize both international relations and domestic political systems worldwide. Restoring respect for the principle that political leaders, however objectionable, should not be targeted for assassination may be crucial for maintaining both global stability and democratic governance.