Does Targeted Killing 'Work'?

Sometimes governments choose policies not because they work but because they can con the public into thinking that they work.

Danielle Pletka wants you to know that she thinks targeted killing “works”:

Targeted killing has become a tool of statecraft because it works, in the sense that it achieves the limited goals prescribed: A key individual, critical to an enemy’s agenda, is gone. It will not end Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but it can slow it down. It will not end Iran’s missile program, but it will cause many Iranians who might have signed up to think twice about the risks.

As with anything a government does, when someone says that something “works” our first question should always be, “works to do what?” Do sanctions work? If the goal is to impoverish and starve people, then they work very well in their cruel, sadistic way. If it is to achieve constructive changes in policy or changes in regime, they usually never work. The same goes for assassinations, as our government’s practice of targeted killing with drones should have already taught us long ago. Killing someone at the top can temporarily disrupt a terrorist organization, but in practice it tends to make that organization more dangerous and radical. Leaders can be replaced, and others will step up to fill the role that the dead men had. Short-term “successes” often lead to long-term failure. The entire “war on terror” is a huge, bloody cautionary tale that you cannot kill your way out of these problems.

Can a government successfully target and kill specific individuals? Obviously, it can. Does that achieve anything beyond murdering those people? That is much less clear. In the case of Israeli assassinations of Iranian officials and scientists, these tactics backfire all the time. Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program, but today it is closer to having one than it was just a few years ago because of Israeli assassination and sabotage attacks. If Iran ever does build a nuclear weapon, it will have to send the Mossad a gift basket for helping to encourage them to go all the way.

Murdering Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in late 2020 was supposed to be a major blow that would significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program, but as it turned out it provoked such a strong reaction that the Iranian government started enriching uranium to much higher levels. Following the sabotage attack at Natanz, the Iranian government increased enrichment to 60%, which is far higher than it had ever dared go before. When you launch terrorist attacks and murder people in another country, their compatriots tend to take a dim view of your efforts and they accelerate the activities that you oppose. As Danny Citrinowicz said a few weeks ago, “Israel is piling up tactical successes while its Iran strategy is failing.”

Sometimes governments choose policies not because they work but because they can con the public into thinking that they work and they can make them believe that the government is “doing something” about a given problem. Once again, sanctions provide a useful point of comparison. The U.S. government uses sanctions routinely against many other governments and designates thousands of individuals and entities around the world, and in most cases those sanctions do not change the behavior of the targets at all or they encourage them to do more of what they were already doing. Clearly, sanctions don’t work as a means of bringing about changes in behavior, but the government can point to them as proof that it is taking “action” on this or that issue. Targeted killings are not so different from this. The government may kill lots of people with these attacks, but over time these tactics do not reduce the threat from the groups in question and they do not reduce the threat from terrorism overall. To liken it to Whac-a-Mole is unfair to that game, since at least in Whac-a-Mole you get a prize at the end.

Returning to the case of Iran’s nuclear program, the evidence is overwhelming that assassination and sabotage attacks do not “work” to slow the progress of that program. They have had the exact opposite effect, and it is telling that Pletka never acknowledges the connection between the attacks she praises and their consequences. If governments were concerned with what “works,” they would usually eschew bankrupt coercive tactics that tend to make existing problems worse. As we know, many governments rely heavily on those bankrupt tactics because they are easy and because they create the appearance of “taking care of” a problem while actually allowing it to fester and grow.