Note from Asha: When Murder Becomes a Foreign Policy Tool

Why green-lighting foreign assassination attempts against dissidents is among the many issues on the ballot.

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Dear Reader,
 
Last week, the Justice Department charged a high-ranking official of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for his participation in a murder-for-hire scheme against Masih Alinejad, a U.S. citizen and outspoken critic of the Iranian regime. These charges are the latest in a troubling stream of cases demonstrating that assassination plots—including on the soil of western countries—are increasingly becoming a foreign policy tool of choice among authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning countries. The question is whether the current legal and political tools the U.S. and its western allies have are enough to stem this tide.
 
In my national security courses at Yale, I teach about “hybrid warfare,” a concept that is a little hard for people in rule-of-law countries like the U.S. to grasp. Hybrid warfare—also known as “asymmetrical warfare,” “irregular warfare,” or “gray zone” warfare—are actions taken by a foreign nation that fall short of “conventional warfare,” i.e., actions involving the use of traditional land, naval or air military capabilities. Hybrid warfare is also distinct from traditional intelligence activities or foreign policy, which involve intelligence gathering or diplomacy to achieve geopolitical goals. Hybrid warfare takes advantage of rule-of-law regimes by operating outside of existing legal and normative frameworks, making it difficult for the target to respond effectively or proportionally. Take, for example, one form of hybrid warfare we know well: electoral interference, in the form of disinformation and hack and leak operations. What, exactly, are these actions? Crimes? Intelligence operations? Acts of war? They defy easy categorization, which is why we have found it so difficult to deter and defend against them.
 
Foreign-sponsored assassination attempts are a form of hybrid warfare, as well. To use an example, let’s go back to the OG of these tactics, Russia. In 2018, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, two dual Russian-British citizens, were found slipping in and out of consciousness on a park bench in Salisbury, England. The two were rushed to the hospital, where it was determined that both had been poisoned by a Novichok, a Russian-developed nerve agent. Investigative journalists later attributed the poisoning to Russia’s military intelligence unit, the GRU, which had targeted Sergei because he was a former Russian military intelligence officer who had “flipped” to become a double agent on behalf of the United Kingdom—basically, Putin wanted to send a message to those who betrayed him that they aren’t safe anywhere. (Skripal had originally been arrested and imprisoned in Russia for high treason but was allowed to go to Great Britain following a “spy swap” between the U.S./U.K. in 2010.) Sergei and Yulia survived, though two other individuals who had come in contact with the nerve agent died. The amount of Novichok—a substance that would legally qualify as a biological weapon—used in the assassination attempt was enough to kill thousands of people.
 
So, how would you characterize this operation? Merely an attempted murder? Or an act of war? It’s a tough question. In fact, the incident led to a flurry of analyses by international legal experts on whether the incident would fall under the definitions of a “use of force” or an “armed attack” in the U.N. Charter. But even if they did, what then? Was the United Kingdom really going to retaliate with, say, a missile attack on Russia? No, of course not. In the end, the U.K. responded with a series of diplomatic measures, including the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats (who were actually spies), the freezing of a number of bilateral contracts, and the boycott by government officials and the British royal family of the FIFA World Cup taking place in Russia that year. Ooooooooooh. I’m sure Putin was really scared.

 This highlights the problem of hybrid warfare for rule-of-law countries. We play by the rules. And the tools we use all fall into neat little buckets, based on the set of rules that we are dealing with: legal tools for crimes, diplomatic tools for intelligence and foreign policy, and military tools for warfare. But our adversaries aren’t playing by the rules. And they basically dump all of their tools into one big pile, and use them however and whenever they want. The result is a mismatch, where economically and militarily weaker countries have the upper hand–which is why we call it “asymmetrical.” Our adversaries know it—and incidents like the Skripal poisoning make it clear to them that they can literally get away with murder.
 
It’s not surprising, then, that other countries have gotten in on the action. In October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist and legal U.S. resident, was lured to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was ambushed, murdered and dismembered. A CIA investigation later determined that the murder was approved by Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani national tied to the government of Iran for a conspiracy to assassinate a U.S. government official on American soil, in retaliation for the January 2020 killing of IRGC leader Qasem Soleimani ordered by then-President Trump. This past May, Canada arrested and charged three Indian nationals believed to be linked to the Indian government for the murder of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who advocated for a separate state for Sikhs in India. Just last week, the Justice Department filed charges against an Indian government employee for another assassination plot (which was foiled) against a different Sikh separatist leader living in New York.

In short, this seems to be a trend. The fact that some of these plots have been thwarted, and the perpetrators charged, is promising—exposing the foreign-sponsorship behind these extrajudicial plots and assassinations is important to generate international opprobrium and diplomatic pressure against these rogue operations. But at the end of the day, these charges are often largely symbolic; in some cases—like the most recent charges against the IRGC official—the perpetrators have been charged in absentia, and it’s unlikely that they’ll actually face justice. And in the Khashoggi murder, no one has been charged at all, because the diplomatic and political interests are too sensitive. The legal and diplomatic toolboxes seem to fall short when it comes to deterrence. At some point, the U.S. and other rule-of-law countries will have to decide whether and how to increase the consequences for these brazen acts.
 
But right now, the more immediate question for America might be whether we, too, will join this group of international thugs. You could say that this question is on the ballot, given Trump’s record: His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a close friend of the Saudi Crown Prince, and reportedly offered him advice on “how to weather the storm” following Khashoggi’s murder; Kushner received a $2 billion investment from the Crown Prince to start a private equity firm after he left the White House. I’m willing to bet that some foreign countries know that under the right president, and for the right price, they may have free rein to go after dissidents, even on American soil. For these putative targets, the upcoming election could mean the difference between life, and death.
 
Stay Informed,
 
Asha