That is a huge misconception. Can you name a single US assassination of a foreign head-of-state, in the last 50 years, that didn’t blow back on us? In every case I can think of, where the US has assassinated a head-of-state, the state has either ended up collapsing into instability or has eventually replaced the leader with a leader that was even more hostile to the United States.
Also, depending on your model of history, assassinations may be completely ineffective. If historical events are the result of large historical trends converging, then assassinating any particular politician might shift things around by a few years, but may not actually stop events from occurring.
Political goals also seem ripe for sabotage.
Also incorrect. This was tried in the 1970s by a number of far-left revolutionary terror groups, both in the United States and Europe. Weatherman, Symbionese Liberation Army, Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigades, all tried overthrow their respective states via a campaign of terror bombing and sabotage. They all failed. The book Days of Rage, by Burrough, chronicles many of the American revolutionary groups, and how they were all eventually either hunted down or scattered by state pressure. (If you don’t have time to read the book, David Hines has an excellent summary on the blog Status 451).
As it turns out, nation-states are pretty resilient, and can remain functioning even in the face of enormous pressure, and a guerilla campaign of sabotage and assassinations hardly constitutes any pressure at all, much less enormous pressure.
That is a huge misconception. Can you name a single US assassination of a foreign head-of-state, in the last 50 years, that didn’t blow back on us? In every case I can think of, where the US has assassinated a head-of-state, the state has either ended up collapsing into instability or has eventually replaced the leader with a leader that was even more hostile to the United States.
Also, depending on your model of history, assassinations may be completely ineffective. If historical events are the result of large historical trends converging, then assassinating any particular politician might shift things around by a few years, but may not actually stop events from occurring.
Also incorrect. This was tried in the 1970s by a number of far-left revolutionary terror groups, both in the United States and Europe. Weatherman, Symbionese Liberation Army, Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigades, all tried overthrow their respective states via a campaign of terror bombing and sabotage. They all failed. The book Days of Rage, by Burrough, chronicles many of the American revolutionary groups, and how they were all eventually either hunted down or scattered by state pressure. (If you don’t have time to read the book, David Hines has an excellent summary on the blog Status 451).
As it turns out, nation-states are pretty resilient, and can remain functioning even in the face of enormous pressure, and a guerilla campaign of sabotage and assassinations hardly constitutes any pressure at all, much less enormous pressure.