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.
In: Other
There are many layers of protection around any heads of state, especially the ones you might want to assassinate. So the assassination attempt is likely going to fail and they are probably going to find out who is behind it. If you for example look at the assassination attempts going after people like Fidel Castro and Tito you see how hard it is. Even the attempts at Hitlers life were numerous and all backfired. And these are just the assassination attempts which have been made public as there may have been many stopped ones that are never even made public.
The other issue is that an assassination only removes the head of the regime. There are still hundreds of high level officials like ministers, generals, governors, etc. who share the same ideas and are part of the same regime. If you remove the head of state you are not going to remove the rest and they will just find some other leader. The Soviet Union did not fall when Lenin or Stalin died. The PRC did not fall when Mao died. Even the Ba’ath party still survives after Saddam Hussein was executed along with all their high level officials and the part banned in the occupied Iraq. So you can not just assassinate the head of state without a plan for how to deal with the rest of the regime.
Latest Answers