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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   29559 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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The precedent against assassinating foreign heads of state is strong for a reason. It isn’t that hard for a competent government with a reasonable amount of funds (in the low tens of millions, ie. nothing for almost any state) to have someone killed. Therefore it’s not in anyone’s interest to engage in that kind of action.

Is there really a norm against killing foreign heads of state in war? It seems to me like this happens all the time.

When the US invades a country like Iraq and declines to kill their leader, one of the main strategic reasons for this decision is so that there exists a clear person with authority to surrender. Often, when a leader is killed without surrendering, the armed forces splinter into a variety of insurgent groups and there is no way to achieve a diplomatic resolution to the conlfict anymore.

This argument suggests that Putin would have a strategic reason to not kill Zelensky, but Zelensky has no corresponding interest in not killing Putin. My guess is that if Zelensky had the chance, he would definitely choose to kill Putin whether or not the US supported the decision.

Medvedev would likely not be any different from Putin, and Zelenskyy knows it. While Zelenskyy’s replacement would probably be more radical if anything.

Except it's not going to be Medvedev. Mishustin would become the acting president, and he's a bean counter extraordinaire, not a hawk looking for judeo-reptiloid Soros agents under his bed.

The US did try to kill Saddam though, and Saddam never bothered to surrender. When your tanks are rolling through Baghdad unmolested it was a pretty clear sign that his reign was over.

n the early morning of 19 March 2003, U.S. forces abandoned the plan for initial, non-nuclear decapitation strikes against 55 top Iraqi officials, in light of reports that Saddam Hussein was visiting his sons, Uday and Qusay, at Dora Farms, within the al-Dora farming community on the outskirts of Baghdad.[153] At approximately 04:42 Baghdad time,[154] two F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters from the 8th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron[155] dropped four enhanced, satellite-guided 2,000-pound GBU-27 'Bunker Busters' on the compound. Complementing the aerial bombardment were nearly 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from several ships, including the Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Cowpens, credited with the first to strike,[156] Arleigh Burke-class destroyers USS Donald Cook and USS Porter, as well as two submarines in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.[157]

I also think (regardless of whether or not Putin has tried to kill Zelensky) that a lot of the weight of Ukraine's decision-making complex is now effectively outsourced to the West. Meaning that killing Zelensky doesn't necessarily impact Ukrainian C&C (although it might impact morale).

Russia has made multiple assassination attempts against Zelensky.

according to Ukraine with zero independent verification of any of this*

I looked for something akin to evidence beyond "Zelensky Aide claims X" and I couldn't find it. Is there actual evidence to support any of this or is every single one a "Ukrainian claims X" story?

Is there another country's media as clownish on the coverage of the Ukraine war as the UK's?

Putin’s control over various factions, especially early in the war with separatist militias, wagner and others in the fray, was tenuous. I question to what extent he authorized most of these attempts (and not because I ascribe to him any particular morality).

None of these factions had credible means to kill Zelensky. Doing it up close is an extremely hard suicidal special-forces operation.

Doing it by Iskander is plausible, but there's little evidence Iskander units take orders from anywhere else but Kremlin.

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