I thought about this when a coworker mentioned in casual conversation that they wondered why a certain head of state (no reason to get into specifics) is not simply done away with to resolve a currently ongoing international conflict. To my knowledge that’s almost never done in the real world because it rarely works as intended. I was wondering if any politics/international relationship experts or avid Hitman/Assassin’s Creed players knows the real reason why this is, and if there’s even a official term for why this is not done in real politics? Thanks.
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The short answer is that real life bad guy states and terrorists are not like video games where the minions all disappear when the boss dies. It’s not effective at ending the organization/state. You still need military action to kill all the regular joes, so you might as well leave the leader alive to organize a withdrawal or surrender.
When it comes to actual countries: Killing government, even evil government, results in destabilization. Even the bad guys have to get good at running supplies and food and utilities, not to mention keep all the even crazier monsters in line. So when you destabilize a country you end up with 1) Warlords 2) Massive humanitarian crises and 3) LOADS of refugees who will show up and cause your domestic conservative population to go nuts.
When you consider that assassination kinda sucks for the above reasons, add the fact that the Heads of State (or Government) of democratic countries are the most vulnerable to assassination, since they have to appear in public to campaign and win elections, so they don’t want to set the precedent that makes the practice acceptable. Meanwhile, authoritarians who don’t have to win elections tend to be selfish bastards who value their own heads more than killing their enemies, so they don’t want to open that can of worms either.
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