The recent salvo fired from the White House related to ‘pre-emptive’ strikes is not merely targeted at Iraq but aimed at transforming the existing state-centric international security paradigm. This article looks at the issue related to “assassination as foreign policy tool” and why using a ‘single bullet’ against Saddam is more costly for Washington than a full scale military operation against Iraq?

  According to President Bush, Saddam Hussein is the root of all evils afflicting Iraq, and is solely responsible for threatening international peace. The American establishment is actively pursuing a war against Iraq to confront its enemy number one. Any war on limited or large scale, carried out with crude or precision-guided munitions, involves killing innocent people. Any American attack on Iraq, howsoever precise, will result in enormous loss of life and property. Will the US be morally right to kill the Iraqi population for affecting a regime change in Iraq? Why can the US not assassinate Saddam for achieving their objective? If President Bush could openly say that he wanted Osama ‘dead or alive”, then what prevents him from using a similar policy against Saddam? What prevents the US from killing a single national leader rather than thousands of innocents? Is it strategic interests or international norms?  

  The “ethical disconnect” between targeting helpless people and allowing the leader to seek asylum in some other country is an international norm. The state-centric international system stigmatises assassination of foreign leaders because “civilized nations look with horror upon offers or rewards for assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.” The 1907 Hague convention prohibits assassinations and identifies it as "treacherous killing."  What is most interesting is that, assassination, which is taboo in the international context, does not invite similar indignation at the domestic level. The killing of foreign leaders has always been a covert operation planned by secret agencies of the state and out sourced to individuals or criminal organizations. Therefore, most assassinations of leaders have been executed by non-state actors and often linked to domestic factors.

  In the medieval age, assassination as a tool of statecraft was considered both legal and moral to spare ordinary citizens the hardships of wars for which their leaders were responsible. In the seventeenth century, the international norm against assassination began to take shape. With the advent of sovereign states and large standing armies it became imperative for states to insulate their leaders from violence and also to make clear distinctions between combatants and non-combatants.

  Assassination is proscribed in international law mainly because war is seen as a nation-state matter. An individual acts only as an agent of the state. However, identification of Saddam as the principal, against whom war is being waged, challenges the existing norms of war in international society. The concept of “fourth generation” war (between state and non-state actor) is normally associated with Osama-bin-Laden. But the US is adding a fresh dimension to concepts of war by pretending to deal with the state (Saddam) minus the nation (Iraqi people). The irony is that while the US has clearly identified the enemy, the people of Iraq would have to bear the brunt of aerial bombings.

  Why is the US not contemplating the liquidation of Saddam? The option of assassinating Saddam had been proposed by Britain during the 1991 Gulf war, but the proposal was shot down by both Washington and Tel Aviv. In 1991, it was the geopolitical need for getting a strong foothold in the Gulf, which saved Saddam from being eliminated. For the last decade, Iraq has been used as a live firing range to prove the efficacy of US weapon systems. Iraq has also been a perfect laboratory for testing the post- Cold War world order by undermining the sovereignty of states and challenging international law in the name of justice.   

  Today, the US, which is the strongest military power in the world, would once again refrain from using overt assassination as a foreign policy tool. Why? Firstly, a simmering Iraq with Saddam at the helm offers Bush greater strategic leverage to advance the perceived American interests by challenging the credibility of the United Nations and creating fissures in the European Union. Moreover, America is fully aware that once the international norm against assassinations is violated then it will be difficult to protect its own leaders from attack by motivated individuals who have mastered the use of suicide terrorism. And the ensuing anarchy could bring the soaring American empire down and push human civilisation back to primitivism.