Killing regime leaders is on the rise. Since the end of World War II, international assassination of foreign leaders as a relevant phenomenon in international politics has steadily resurfaced on the menu of states’ foreign policy options. Concurrently, moral and legal debates have highlighted the ethical disconnect of the century-long assassination taboo, questioning its moral plausibility. Despite the practical relevance of these events, International Relations scholarship has remained conspicuously silent on the sources of why states have increasingly resorted to international assassination as a foreign policy method. Addressing this gap, the paper argues that it is impossible to fully understand why the assassination taboo has waned without exploring an only seemingly unrelated tendency in international law: the growing accountability of regime leaders for committing aggression and their growing exposure to personal responsibility. These tendencies in international law have, as an unintended side effect, paved the way for the idea that assassinating regime leaders can be considered a valid foreign policy option. Through a number of case studies, the paper investigates the causal link between regime leaders’ personal accountability and the rise of international assassination.
