7 No Other Option

 7

No Other Option

I know that there are scores of people plotting to kill me, and this is not difficult to understand. After all, did we not seize power by plottingagainst our predecessors?1

Saddam Hussein

Assassinations have been around forever. The word ‘assassination’ entered the English language after Crusaders returned home withstories about the Nizaris, an eleventh-century movement in the mountains of modern-day Iran. The Nizaris, lacked the military strength togo to war with their local enemies, so would instead hunt them down and murder them. According to the stories, real or imagined, theyconsumed hashish before setting out, and, at some point along the way, ḥashīshī (consumer of hashish) turned into ‘assassin’.2

The debate around the morality of ‘tyrannicide’ – the killing of a tyrant – is as old as the practise itself. To fight out in the open, to admitto the enemy that you mean him harm, is something that can be seen as honourable. But assassinating anyone, even a cruel leader, hassomething about it that makes many people shudder. Perhaps it’s because operating in the shadows seems cowardly or eventreacherous, whereas fighting people head on can be seen as brave.

As times have changed, so have views on tyrannicide. In parts of ancient Greece, tyrannicide was celebrated. When Harmodius andAristogeiton tried to kill the local tyrant Hippias during a festival in 514 bc, Athenians erected statues in their honour. Since they failed andwere subsequently executed, Harmodius and Aristogeiton didn’t get to enjoy the songs that were written about them, but theirdescendants were given special privileges. Their families received free food and tax-exemptions. They even got to sit in the front row at thetheatre. To avoid their names being blemished, slaves could not be named after them.3 Harmodius and Aristogeiton had tried to kill acruel leader for the benefit of the entire community, and they were heroes for it.

There were multiple ways in which ancient Greeks justified tyrannicide. Broadly speaking, tyrannicide was acceptable because everycitizen was seen as having equal standing under the law and a tyrant would destroy that bond.4 The Greek philosopher Aristotle arguedthat tyrannicide was not just defensible, but that the act could bestow great honour on those who did the killing.5 Plato consideredtyranny ‘an errant condition of the soul’. The Greek outlook carried over into Roman thinking.6

In the Middle Ages, justifying tyrannicide became significantly more difficult because kings and queens were seen as having divine right.They ruled on earth not because they had the support of their subjects but because a deity had chosen them. If you believe that to be thetruth, how do you justify killing monarchs given that they stand in direct line to God?

It’s not an easy argument, but some did try. One way out was to argue that the killing of God’s king could be justified if the king clashedwith God. The Christian thinker Augustine, for example, generally took issue with previous justifications of killing tyrants but he made anexception for cases in which a tyrant infringed on God’s worship.7 If that was the case, God’s king was no longer aligned with God,thereby making it easier to justify his death.

John of Salisbury, a twelfth-century bishop of Chartres, carefully distinguished between king and tyrant. In John’s view, the king workstowards the well-being of the polity. The tyrant, on the other hand, turns his subjects into slaves of his own private desires.8 And whileprinces are appointed by God, their subjects also have a ‘responsibility to God to act for the well-being of the body politic’.9‘Wickedness is always punished by the Lord,’ John says, ‘but sometimes He uses His own sword and sometimes He uses a sort ofhuman sword in the punishment of the impious.’10 Acting as God’s sword to kill a tyrant would therefore not be a sin but an act ofdivine inspiration;11 a duty.12 Theological arguments are now less relevant in much of the world, but the questions these thinkers soughtto answer persist. Is the killing of tyrants defensible? Is it perhaps even desirable?

Multiple factors make the question of tyrannicide complicated. First, ‘tyrant’ can have two meanings. One is the meaning that is mostcommon: a tyrant is a leader who uses his power not for the collective good of the community but for personal gain. The second is ameaning that used to be more widespread: the tyrant is not a tyrant by virtue of his cruel rule but because he has taken power withouthaving a right to it. He is a ‘usurper-tyrant’.13 This distinction is not purely academic because, depending on the definition, tyrannicidecan mean totally different things. It has come to mean the killing of a cruel leader, but as it used to be understood, it may even mean a cruelleader wielding his power to murder a challenger whom he sees as a potential usurper and therefore potential tyrant.

If the assassination of a cruel leader is morally permissible, it raises several other difficult questions. How do you separate those who kill atyrant because he is a tyrant from those who do it for personal gain? If it isn’t for personal gain, how do you differentiate betweentyrannicide and terrorism? Terrorists use violence not just because violence itself achieves their aim, but because they want to instil fear inpeople who aren’t directly implicated. Is that also the case for tyrannicides? It depends. Tyrannicide can be about sending a signal toothers to let them know that comparable behaviour will not be tolerated. But it can also be purely about removing one despot to returnthe country to its constitutional order.

Historically, assassinations have not been rare. According to one study there have been 298 assassination attempts on national leaderssince 1875. Of those, just under one in five have succeeded.14 Looking only at dictators, another study found that thirty-three dictatorswere assassinated between 1946 and 2010, with another 103 failed assassination attempts.15

The puzzle for tyrants is this: if a large segment of the population despises them, how do they avoid being killed?

The twenty-first century is familiar with two main types of assassination: the complex, highly coordinated attack and the attacks made bylone wolves.

On 7 July 2021, the president of Haiti, his wife and children were asleep at their private residence in a hilly suburb of Port-au-Prince.16 Butthen, calm turned to panic as shots rang out. This wasn’t a random robbery gone wrong out in the street; instead it was gunmen, comingfor the family themselves. Dozens of officers should have been outside, guarding the president. Where were they now, and why weren’tthey doing their job? Worried for their survival, Mrs Moïse went to tell the kids to hide. In desperation, Jovenel Moïse tried to get someone,anyone, to come and help. Eventually, the president told his wife to lie down on the floor. ‘That’s where you will be safe,’ he said.17 Itwas the last thing she ever heard from her husband. Shortly afterwards, a death squad executed President Jovenel Moïse with twelvebullets.18

According to court documents, the whole operation was based on a double deception. (This is an unfolding case and new informationcontinues to come to light. As a result, there is some uncertainty.) The Colombian mercenaries who did the killing were initially told thatthey were going to Haiti to provide protection to the president of Haiti, not kill him. Then, as the necessary weapons and equipment weredistributed on the day before the mission, they were told that this was a ‘C.I.A. operation’ to kill Moïse.19 When the killers arrived at theresidence and faced the prospect of having to fight the president’s guards, they pretended to be from another arm of the United Statesgovernment: the Drug Enforcement Agency. ‘DEA operation, everybody stay down,’ they shouted.20 Given that none of the guardsdied, many of them seem to have followed the order.

Clever leaders with a functioning security apparatus can prevent such complex attacks on their life. Since so many people were involved,intelligence agents had a realistic chance of finding out about the attempt before it happened. The weapons could have been interceptedand the presidential compound could have been fortified. And indeed, this is something states have got better at over time: the overallchance of being assassinated has dropped. In the 1910s leaders had roughly a one in a hundred chance of being killed every year. Nowit’s less than 0.3 per cent.21

That’s low, but it’s not nothing. And a large part of the reason for this is that it’s extremely challenging to stop less complexassassination attempts, especially if they don’t come from within the regime. In many countries, weapons are relatively easy to come by.Combined with enough zeal, all it takes is being in the right place at the right time. Stopping attacks like this is incredibly difficult, even forrulers who concentrate significant political power in their hands.

The tyrant’s chances of being assassinated are related to his success at insulating himself from other threats to his leadership. Oddlyenough, the better he gets at preventing the other threats, the more attractive assassinations become because there are simply no otheroptions – even for those who are part of the regime. That’s because assassinations, unlike coups or rebellions, don’t require a largedegree of coordination. As the tyrant concentrates power in his hands and makes other threats to his rule less viable, rivals are forced toturn to assassination as their only option.

When elites are comparatively powerful vis-à-vis the tyrant, they can hope to change the leader while maintaining their own power withinthe system. As the tyrant becomes more powerful, elites may no longer have the opportunity to reshuffle the leader while keeping thesystem as it is.22 Instead, they have to try to dismantle the entire system. At some point, when the despot has consolidated yet morepower in his hands, even that can become impossible. When it does, assassination can be the elites’ only way out.23

The problem, seen from the presidential palace, is that it only takes one. And unfortunately, there are many who could be in the right placeat the right time. The pool of potential assassins is as large as the number of people who can carry a rifle or a blade. That makesassassination a pervasive threat to every tyrant.

It’s an unfortunate situation to be in. However, tyrants have some options.

Since democratisation (or weakening their protection against other threats) isn’t attractive to most dictators, they must find othersolutions. One of the more common strategies they choose is to protect themselves with bodyguards. These bodyguards serve much ofthe same functions as bodyguards in democratic systems: they scout locations to make sure no assassins are hiding in them, work out howto flee in the event of an attack and, if need be, they catch a bullet for the president. But since this isn’t just a normal president but apresident for life, these men and women need to have some extra qualifications.

The method commonly used is to assemble a force of elite fighters who can defend the dictator against the public at large and also againstattacks from within the regime. The issue with this approach is that those elite fighters can easily become political actors in their own right,for example by supporting coup d’états against the leader. In ancient Rome, the Praetorian Guard ‒ supposed to protect rulers –regularly helped to overthrow them, the most notorious example being probably the Emperor Caligula, who was assassinated by hisGuard during a festival in 41 ad.

The Praetorian Guard were eventually dismantled by one of Caligula’s successors. However, the possibility of a personal bodyguardturning traitor is a constant threat to modern rulers. Because of it, some leaders have resorted to recruiting foreigners. By virtue of theirbeing foreign, such guards are seen as less of a coup risk because they have neither the same level of interest in domestic politics nor thelegitimacy that is required to run a government.

Today, demand for this ‘service’ has allowed the Russian government to turn itself into an insurance salesman for autocrats, especiallyin Africa. In the Central African Republic, the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, which had close ties to the Kremlin, was used by theregime to protect itself against assassinations. During the country’s 2020 election campaign, for example, Russian paramilitaries couldbe seen protecting Faustin-Archange Touadéra, the country’s president. In return for protecting the ruler against threats from within,the mercenaries get mining concessions and lucrative business opportunities in the host country. The Russian government, in turn, gets afoothold in Africa that can be used not just to make money, but also to advance political objectives – for example, getting African countriesto vote alongside the Kremlin’s interests at the United Nations.

To Central African President Touadéra and leaders like him, the deal is so attractive because the paramilitaries serve a triple function: notonly do they protect him without posing as much of a coup risk, they also provide an active deterrent against others who might be plottingagainst him. What’s more, they can also be used against other domestic enemies such as rebels. That’s particularly attractive becausethese ‘bodyguards’ can make up for at least some of the battlefield effectiveness that a dictatorship loses when it coup-proofs itsmilitary. When a special advisor to President Touadéra was asked what he made of Wagner’s mutiny against Vladimir Putin’sgovernment, he said: ‘Russia gave us Wagner, the rest isn’t our business . . . If it’s not Wagner anymore and they send Beethoven orMozart, it doesn’t matter, we’ll take them.’24

But even though the regime is keen on Wagner (or any other ‘composer’), there is a price to pay: Touadéra isn’t just losing miningrevenue, but also autonomy. For as foreign fighters become more entrenched in the regime’s security apparatus, they increase theirinfluence in the country’s economy and politics. Wagner’s increase in control has been so vast in the Central African Republic that someanalysts have started to refer to it as ‘state capture’.25 And since these fighters are ultimately loyal to Moscow (if even that) and not theregime they are protecting, they might not present a direct coup risk, but they aren’t exactly trustworthy either. If the Kremlin finds aleader who gives them better conditions than Touadéra, the Central African strongman won’t survive in power for long.

For that reason, many dictators prefer fighters who are seen as possessing a special loyalty to the leader. But, as we’ve seen already, alldespots face the dictator’s dilemma: they don’t know who around them is genuinely loyal and who is just pretending. Given thatstructural constraint, banking on the loyalty of subjects is always a gamble.

When Laurent Kabila rebelled against Mobutu Sese Seko to take control of the Democratic Republic of Congo, he made extensive use ofkadogo – child soldiers.26 He trusted them. Talking to a foreign businessman, he once said: ‘They will never do anything against me.They have been with me since the beginning.’ ‘They are my children,’ he went on to say. But then one day, when Kabila was discussingan upcoming summit with an advisor, one of his ‘children’ walked in, pulled out a revolver and shot him four times.27

Evidently, there’s no truly good option here. When dictators pick foreign fighters, they put themselves at the mercy of anothergovernment. When they pick compatriots, they become more vulnerable to coups because in dictatorships, nobody’s loyalty to theregime is assured.

Instead of putting bodyguards between the tyrant and others, there’s also the option of isolating the dictatorship using space, fencesand guard towers. That can be effective because most assassination attempts occur during the leader’s public appearances at speeches,rallies or parades, or when he is travelling by car, helicopter or plane.28 If there are fewer public appearances and the tyrant spends mostof his time in the remote fortress constructed specifically to guarantee his safety, he is less likely to be killed.

For democratic leaders, isolating themselves is extremely difficult. Because they need to win (fair) elections, they need to campaign and beseen among the people. It’s impossible not to be. Moreover, many of them genuinely enjoy meeting people and listening to theirconcerns. If they don’t, they are probably in the wrong profession. But what makes the work so enjoyable to them makes life hard forthose tasked with protecting them.

Dictators have an advantage here because there’s no need for them to go out and meet real voters. They can be more isolated thandemocratic leaders and some have taken this to an extreme, isolating their entire country out of fear for themselves.

Landlocked and difficult to access due to mountains and deserts, Paraguay was always more isolated than Chile, Brazil or Uruguay.29 Butwhen José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia became the country’s ‘Perpetual Dictator’ in 1814, he took matters to extremes. Paranoidand fearing that colonial forces or large neighbouring states could undermine Paraguay’s independence, he turned his nation into ahermit kingdom. Trade with neighbouring states was reduced and foreigners were barely let into the country. If foreigners did enter deFrancia’s Paraguay they could soon find themselves in danger. When the celebrated French botanist Aimé Bonpland settled near theParaná River to cultivate the plant yerba mate, things initially seemed to be going well. Bonpland’s connections, and the labour andwisdom of local workers were a winning combination.30 Then one morning, Bonpland’s colony was attacked when hundreds ofParaguayan soldiers, who had crossed the river under cover of night, struck at daybreak. Nineteen men were killed, dozens takenprisoner.31 For Paraguay’s dictator, Bonpland was a problem twice over: first, his cultivation of yerba mate threatened El Supremo’sown position in the lucrative trade, and second, the French plant expert was an untrustworthy figure who might be working with foreignpowers to undermine the regime.32 Perhaps the botanist might even try to kill him? To neutralise the threat, de Francia took Bonplandhostage.

Bonpland wasn’t the only foreigner treated in this way. Johann Rudolf Rengger, a Swiss doctor, was also taken hostage. Renggerdescribes what it was like to have an audience with the supremo himself: ‘When you meet the dictator, you are not allowed to comecloser than six paces until he gives a signal to step forward,’ he wrote. Even then, he went on, ‘you have to stop at a distance of threepaces.’ De Francia was so worried about being killed that those meeting him were required to let their arms hang loose with their handsopen and facing towards him so he could make sure they didn’t carry a weapon. In fact, not even the dictator’s own officers or civilservants were allowed to approach him if they had a blade on them. And just in case, de Francia always made sure that he had his ownweapons within reach wherever he went.33

Following in de Francia’s footsteps and turning an entire country into a hermit kingdom is difficult to do in the modern world, but thepoint persists: unlike democratic leaders, dictators can afford to isolate themselves. If they can’t do it with their entire country, they can atleast isolate themselves from the people they rule.

In the winter of 2022, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, was not just isolated but also disconnected from the lived reality of the Russianpeople. The regime’s future was in question. With Ukrainians bravely resisting Russia’s war of aggression, the Russian armed forceswere slowly running out of soldiers. Since there weren’t nearly enough voluntary recruits, young Russian men were forced into the fight.Conditions for these soldiers were horrendous. For tens of thousands of families, the war that they had previously seen on slicklyproduced propaganda shows had now become reality as sons, fathers and husbands were sent to get killed in Ukraine’s cold,unforgiving mud. Some of the conscripted soldiers were so poorly equipped that their families had to buy them medical kits. And if theyever dared to retreat, away from the enemy’s artillery shells or anti-tank missiles, they might have to face so-called ‘barrier troops’,deployed by Moscow (or Grozny) to shoot soldiers who simply wanted to escape from the carnage.34

The aunt of one young Russian man from the western region of Lipetsk said her nephew was sent to the frontlines in Ukraine eight daysafter being mobilised. There weren’t even any commanders there. ‘They were hit by mortar fire,’ she said. ‘Why, after one week oftraining, were they thrown into the woods and left there to die?’ she wanted to know.35

On 25 November 2022, Putin was sitting in a cream-coloured chair in front of television cameras at his luxurious estate west of Moscow.He spoke to seventeen mothers with sons fighting in Ukraine. ‘I want you to know that me [sic] personally and the country’s leadershipshare this pain,’ Putin said. ‘We understand that nothing can replace the loss of a son, a child,’ he added.36 It finally looked as if Putinhad been brave enough to meet popular dissatisfaction head on. But instead, the whole thing was staged. All the mothers werehandpicked by the regime: one was a former government official; another the mother of a senior military official from Chechnya; severalof them were active in pro-war NGOs financed by the state.37

To add insult to injury, Putin didn’t just fake the meeting to make it seem as if the war had more public support than it did. He told thewomen (and more importantly viewers at home) that they shouldn’t trust anything he hadn’t faked. ‘It is clear that life is morecomplicated and diverse than what is shown on TV screens or even on the internet – you can’t trust anything there at all, there are a lot ofall sorts of fakes, deception, lies,’ Putin said.38 Obviously, the chance of one of those handpicked women getting up and stabbing Putinwas extremely low. But if he hadn’t faked the meeting and had met with real mothers instead, could one of them have attempted to killthe man who had sent her beloved child to his death in Bakhmut? Maybe, but Putin will never have to find out because, unlike democraticleaders, he can avoid meeting real people.

Another avenue despots can pursue is an intense cult of personality coupled with extreme repression. This can create an atmosphere ‘inwhich the assassination of a leader is not even contemplated, let alone planned or executed’.39 There are tyrants in history who havemade their people believe that they can literally read minds, that they are a deity. And if the man on the poster in the classroom, on thebillboard and in the little book everyone has to carry around with them is no man but a God, challenging him would be madness.

A deity would know about it even before it happened. Even if he were to get fired at, he’d undoubtedly survive. Sitting where we do, thismight seem rather strange, but from the perspective of the people in those countries, it makes at least some sense. These are people whohave witnessed dictators put up giant golden statues of themselves that rotate to follow the sun, or who have created entire cities in themiddle of nowhere, seemingly out of thin air. In schools, on television shows and on the radio they are told that the supreme leader sees alland hears all. Why shouldn’t they believe that it’s true?

If ordinary Haitians had met their president during the 1960s, they would probably have seen a man wearing a black top hat, thick blackglasses and black suit. With his hands rarely visible, he talked slowly and in a high-pitched voice. He almost looked as though he was fromanother world, and that was no coincidence. François Duvalier, known as ‘Papa Doc’, due to his background in medicine, deliberatelymodelled his image on Baron Samedi, a voodoo spirit of the dead.

Knowing that millions of Haitians had strong connections to voodoo, he used it to his advantage. At one point he allegedly ordered hismen to cut off a rival’s head and bring it to him because he wanted to talk to his ‘spirit’.40 Duvalier cast himself as a seeminglyomnipotent being out of the reach of mere mortals. ‘My enemies cannot get me,’ he used to say. ‘I am already an immaterial being.’41

And to drive home the point of his God-like status, he relentlessly bombarded the population with images of his omnipotence. He evenwent so far as to introduce a Papa Doc version of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Our Doc, who art in the National Palace for life, Hallowed be Thyname by present and future generations. Thy will be done at Port-au-Prince and in the provinces.’42

If that wasn’t enough to achieve compliance, Papa Doc still had his bogeymen. The Tontons Macoute would often wear dark uniformsand sunglasses while they killed and tortured Haitians who stepped out of line. As was intended, some of Duvalier’s opponents came tobelieve that Duvalier knew where they were and what they did.43 He stayed in power for more than thirteen years until he died a naturaldeath.44

But even if tyrants manage to keep their own people from killing them, that’s not the only actor they have to worry about.

In September 1990, United States Air Force chief of staff Michael J. Dugan gave an interview to a Washington Post reporter named RickAtkinson. This was a time of high tension, as Iraq, under the control of Saddam Hussein, had just invaded and occupied neighbouringKuwait. The Gulf War was about to begin. In the interview, Dugan suggested the United States would target Saddam Hussein and thoseclose to him, including his personal guard and his mistress. Since Saddam Hussein was ‘a one-man show’, Dugan said, ‘if and when wechoose violence he ought to be at the focus of our efforts.’ A little later in the interview the general went on to say that he didn’t expectto be concerned with political constraints.45 As it turned out, Dugan was wrong. Shortly after his comments, he was fired byVice-President Dick Cheney.

His firing was related to a 1976 executive order which stated: ‘No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United StatesGovernment shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.’46 It was issued by President Gerald Ford, after Americanintelligence agencies were found to be implicated in several plots to assassinate foreign leaders. Most notable of these was the supplyingof weapons to dissidents trying to kill Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and also the attempts to kill Fidel Castro, which went on foryears. Less well-known is the case of CIA operatives tasked with assassinating the Congolese nationalist Patrice Lumumba in Zaire.47

The commission reporting on the matter had argued that assassination was ‘incompatible with American principles, international orderand morality’.48 But it also left a loophole by saying that this only applied outside war – meaning that the assassination of foreign leaderscould be acceptable if their nation was at war with the United States.

The United States isn’t the only country that allows for the assassination of foreign heads of state. The Democratic People’s Republic ofNorth Korea, one of the countries against which the United States might attempt targeted killing in the future, has a history ofassassinations.

In early 1968, twenty-seven-year-old Kim Shin-jo was in the mountains. It was January when, in the mountains of Korea, it is desperatelycold. Sent by Pyongyang, he and his comrades were on their way to Seoul to kill South Korea’s President. Whether by mistake or purechance, Shin-jo was spotted by some villagers. He knew what he had to do: kill them and bury them. He had a mission and if he didn’t killthem now, the whole plan could be imperilled. But the ground was frozen. If he had to bury them here, he would be at it forever.

After some deliberation, he told them not to tell anyone who they had encountered. As Shin-jo left them, they immediately contacted thepolice, which informed the military. South Korean soldiers were now on the lookout for Shin-jo and the other infiltrators. Against all odds,they continued advancing towards South Korea’s presidential palace, where they were to assassinate President Park Chung-hee. In theend, they made it to within 100 metres of the Blue House. And although the attack itself failed, it took more than a week and hundreds ofsoldiers to find and deal with the North Korean death squad. Even then, one of the commandos somehow managed to make it back acrossthe border to North Korea alive. Only discovered by chance, the killers had come very close to achieving their object, which was a majorembarrassment to the South Korean regime.49

Three months later, the South Korean government’s answer was being prepared on an islet named Silmido in the Yellow Sea. Thirty-onemen, the ‘type that often got into street fights’, were being trained by South Korean security forces.50 The most important lesson theywere being taught, as one of their trainers put it, was that you must kill to live.51 The men’s mission was to go up to North Korea, acrossthe demilitarised zone, to kill Kim Il-sung. It was time for payback for the Blue House raid and they were about to slit Kim Il-sung’s throat.52

On the islet of Silmido, life was hard. Isolated, Unit 684 had to battle not just their training routines and the sea, but also their superiors.After a few months on the island, they simply stopped getting paid. The food they were getting was poor. On top of all that, contact withthe outside world was strictly prohibited. When two of them tried to escape in June 1968, they were beaten to death. Another recruit diedduring sea-survival training.53

Early in August 1971, Yang Don-soo, one of the trainers on Silmido, was getting ready for his regular supply run off the island. He heardgunfire. Confused, he thought that it could be North Korean special forces out to attack them. Before he knew what was happening, he wasshot in the neck. But it wasn’t the enemy, it was his own men. ‘When I woke up, I was bleeding from my neck and everywhere the trainerswere being killed by the recruits or running away, or were being shot again by recruits who were making sure that they were dead,’ hesaid.54 Bleeding heavily, he crawled to the beach. He prayed to God, hoping that his recruits wouldn’t find him.

Luckily for him, they had bigger plans. After making their way off the island in their paratrooper uniforms, the death squadcommandeered a bus and made their way to Seoul armed with carbines and grenades.55 Instead of going to Pyongyang to kill KimIl-sung, they were now on their way to the Blue House to kill South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee whom they held responsible for theirsuffering.56 In the capital, they fought South Korean security forces that had been gathered hastily to intercept them.57 When it becameclear that they were outgunned and with no chance of escape, some of the recruits blew themselves up with hand grenades.58 Of the initialtwenty-four recruits who had taken part in the rebellion, only four survived – until 1972, when they were executed.59

But why did Unit 684 crack? The harsh conditions in the Yellow Sea undoubtedly played a role, but there was also speculation that theSouth Korean government, then still a military dictatorship, was about to murder the death squad to make sure nobody ever knew theyexisted in the first place. But according to one of their trainers, the real reason why the assassins acted the way they did is because theywere without hope.60 The communist North and capitalist South had recently and unexpectedly improved their ties, so the attack onPyongyang was called off. Because of that, the killers seemingly thought that they would never get off Silmido. As one observer put it, thetrainees increasingly saw themselves as ‘prisoners with indefinite sentences’.61

Yet, despite this experience, ‘decapitation’ of North Korea’s leadership is still part of South Korea’s strategy. ‘The best deterrencewe can have, next to having our own nukes, is to make Kim Jong-un fear for his life,’ a former South Korean general said in 2015.62 Tothat end, South Korea pursues a double strategy: if conflict with North Korea were to escalate, the South Korean military would unleash aflurry of precision missiles to target the North Korean leadership. In addition, a special military unit would be dispatched to find and killKim Jong-un before he was able to order the launch of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.63

Nuclear weapons expert Ankit Panda, author of Kim Jong Un and the Bomb, describes the logic behind this strategy:

As a personalistic dictatorship whose nuclear forces and military are under control of one person, North Korea may be undeterred fromnuclear escalation in the course of a limited conflict by threats of damage against military or economically valuable targets. Accordingly, itmust be deterred by threatening to punish the leadership directly.64

In other words, since Kim Jong-un is not greatly concerned with the destruction of North Korea, South Korea has to find something else hecares about. And that is his own life.

Though this strategy is logical, it is also highly dangerous and there are many ways it can go wrong. To illustrate just one, imagine thefollowing scenario. Tensions between South and North Korea escalate.65 Unaware of Kim Jong-un’s exact whereabouts, South Koreanmissiles target a North Korean munitions dump that happens to be close to one of the dictator’s many hideouts. Kim Jong-un is in there,cowering, and he misinterprets the attack on the military facility as an attack on his life. In that scenario, he now has a huge incentive to usenuclear weapons before he gets killed.

Beyond that, it gives the dictator a reason to change the way the use of nuclear weapons is authorised, and that creates a massive structuralrisk. The South Korean strategy is based on the idea that the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons can be averted if Kim Jong-un iskilled before they can be launched. In democracies, there would be an easy solution to this problem. If the president of the United States,who ordinarily controls the launch of nuclear weapons, were to die, that power would automatically be transferred to the vice-president.66 This model of command structure is called ‘devolution’ and for democracies, it works well.

But for dictators, this is not an attractive model because establishing a line of succession risks creating alternative power centres.67 Andsince the principal threat to most tyrants, including Kim Jong-un, is internal rather than external, the North Korean dictator did somethingelse. In 2022, the North Korean regime declared:

In case the command and control systems over the state nuclear forces is placed in danger owing to an attack by hostile forces, a nuclearstrike shall be launched automatically and immediately to destroy the hostile forces including the starting point of provocation and thecommand according to the operation plan decided in advance.68

Faced with the threat of foreign assassins, Kim Jong-un had put things on nuclear autopilot and that autopilot brought all kinds of risks.69What if it malfunctioned, for example because Kim was alive but could not be reached? Would the officers panic and assume that Kim wasdead? Nuclear war could easily break out despite neither side wanting it. Questions of morality and law aside, that’s precisely theproblem with threatening dictators with assassination from abroad: the moment ‘decapitation’ becomes a realistic threat, every formof conflict risks becoming existential for the dictator. And when that’s the case, the stakes immediately become so high that the risk ofall-out war drastically increases. That’s a massive problem for all of us, especially when the dictator doesn’t just have access toconventional forces but also weapons of mass destruction.

Whilst the threat of assassination has been a problem with which tyrants have had to deal from time immemorial, the nature and severityof the threat has recently changed.

At 5:41 in the afternoon local time, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was standing on a stage, giving a speech, when suddenly hestopped speaking and looked up. He was nervous because something in the sky above didn’t look quite right.70 Nevertheless, he stayedwhere he was and, two minutes later, he was talking about economic recovery. Its time had arrived, he said. In front of him were thousandsof soldiers marching along Avenida Bolívar, one of Caracas’ grandest thoroughfares.

Suddenly, a loud explosion was heard above. In the blink of an eye, an explosive charge on a drone went off, leading to dark clouds ofkinetic energy being released below and above the aircraft. Obviously confused by what was happening, Maduro stopped his speech andthe state broadcast cut away from the stage. Shortly after, the tyrant’s bodyguards scrambled to get in front of him. Just fourteenseconds after the first explosion, another drone crashed and exploded within audible distance.

Whereas the first explosion was met by confusion, this one was met by utter panic. Instead of defending Maduro against whatever enemythis was, the uniformed men and women who had marched on Avenida Bolívar were now running for their lives.

Maduro wasn’t harmed, but the way the attack was carried out should serve as an alarm signal to all tyrants. The Venezuelan presidentcould have been killed using a commercial drone that can be bought on Amazon. As these drones proliferate, they solve one of the bigproblems that non-state actors have when planning to kill a tyrant: the need to be in physical proximity to their target to poison, stab orshoot him.71 Because of the need for physical proximity, such attacks are extremely risky for the tyrant and for the attacker.

Seconds after a shot is fired, the tyrant may be dead or dying, and the attacker will probably die as well, or at least be on their way to prison.Think of famous assassins: John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed United States president Abraham Lincoln, was shot; Gavrilo Princip, whoassassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, died a horrible death in prison. With modern drones, it doesn’t have to be that way:attackers can be kilometres away, waiting for the perfect opportunity to launch their shot. And when they do so, they might now get awaywith it. To dictators, who stake their survival on fear, it’s a horrifying prospect.

Assassination is something of a wildcard. Tyrants can do everything ‘right’ to stay in power: manage elites, weaken the men with gunsand deal with the masses while deterring foreign powers so they don’t ‘decapitate’ their regime. But no leader can control everything,and that’s precisely the problem when it comes to tyrannicide. Complex assassination attempts can often be prevented, but lone wolvesare hard to stop. How well tyrants can respond to the threat depends in large part on the extent of their power. The more powerful, themore of an attractive target they are, but the power they hold also means that they can protect themselves better.

But let’s say things go wrong and the leader dies. A new dawn begins. With the tyrant out of the way, what happens next? Will things getbetter? Will they get worse? We will find out in the next chapter.

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