The media has made a lot of noise over the last few weeks as details began to emerge of the assassination of a high ranking Hamas leader in Dubai. Interestingly, though, most of the consternation in Western circles has focused on the use of forged passports from a number of countries, and not directly on the assassination itself. This is a notable attitude shift; for the last decades of the Cold War, assassination was at least theoretically off-limits. The US famously had three successive Executive Orders (starting in the late 70s), progressively outlawing virtually every form of assassination, and assassinations in the 70s, 80s, and 90s aroused official concern in diplomatic circles the world over.
Yet since 1998 there has been a major shift in the perception of assassination. It is no longer formally off the table - the US has added it to the range of options in counterterrorist operations, and many other countries have followed suit. By far the largest number of assassinations are carried out by the United States' drones in Pakistan and border regions of Afghanistan (to the tune of a couple every week, nowadays), and literally thousands of people have died in the strikes. Other countries, though, are hardly far behind - Israel pioneered the use of drones for targeted killings in the latest intifada, and much of the Western world has been quietly complicit in the ramp-up of assassinations of high ranking terrorists. Less sophisticated methods of assassination are also on the rise, from former Soviet kleptocracies to African dictatorships.
Why the sudden shift? I spoke with a friend about this, and she maintained that assassination of terrorist targets is somehow different from assassinating a political leader of a sovereign nation (e.g. Fidel Castro and the CIA's failed attempts in the 60s and 70s). She was unable to articulate it fully, but she suggested that leaders of sovereign entities are to some extent accountable to their people, and thus more options are available short of assassination. Perhaps there is some truth buried in that idea, but I'm not sure how it informs the moral debate over assassination.
Certainly, there are practical pros and cons to assassinations and its methodology, but let's suggest that you determine it would be best for your country if enemy X were to die. Is it morally right to order that killing, provided they are not at that time engaged in violence against your country (as a soldier might be in war)? Certainly, if one were able to capture them it might be possible to put them on trial and execute them (according to the prevailing laws). Yet is it fair to effectively carry out their sentence without a trial? What about collateral damage? Do the rules somehow change from the middle of a warzone to a hotel in a neutral country?
I feel that most of the Western world has quietly turned a blind eye to assassination of terrorist leaders, whether military or political, but still draws some ambiguously defined line between that and assassinating political or military leaders of sovereign countries. I'm just not sure how and why this distinction has been articulated.
Any thoughts? Why is assassination okay in some circumstances but not others? What is the moral lesson thereof?