If the USA assassinates foreigners, foreigners can fight back. It’s in everyone’s best interest to maintain a low-assassination equilibrium instead of a high-assassination one.
This is the standard, game-theoretic reason I’ve always heard. Assassination and sabotage are effective and can be carried out with enough secrecy that no one could necessarily prove you did it, but engaging in them creates a world where you have to defend against them because they are normalized, so it’s a tool that gets reserved for only those cases where it is deemed to be worth the risk.
I’m not so sure it’s feasible to carry out an assassination with enough secrecy that no one could know you did it. It’s hard to keep a secret if the world’s best intelligence agencies are all highly motivated to figure it out! Now, your word choice was “no one could necessarily _prove_ you did it,” but even if it could not be proven in say an international tribunal, if other countries knew that my country did it, they could retaliate.
This is the standard, game-theoretic reason I’ve always heard. Assassination and sabotage are effective and can be carried out with enough secrecy that no one could necessarily prove you did it, but engaging in them creates a world where you have to defend against them because they are normalized, so it’s a tool that gets reserved for only those cases where it is deemed to be worth the risk.
I’m not so sure it’s feasible to carry out an assassination with enough secrecy that no one could know you did it. It’s hard to keep a secret if the world’s best intelligence agencies are all highly motivated to figure it out! Now, your word choice was “no one could necessarily _prove_ you did it,” but even if it could not be proven in say an international tribunal, if other countries knew that my country did it, they could retaliate.