Shortly after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Republican senator Lindsey Graham called for someone to “take out” the Russian president as away of ending the war. The suggestion was hastily criticised across the political spectrum in the United States and elsewhere yet Graham’s plea reflects a wider public perception that targeted killing can sometimes be justified.
The classic case is Claus von Stauffenberg's failed attempt in July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Stauffenberg was executed for treason but many would consider his actions morally justifiable on the grounds that it would have hastened the end of the second World War.
Making a distinction between what is legal and what is moral seems to be very much part of the human psyche. Just how so is illustrated by research partly conducted in Ireland into "evil orders".
Several hundred students at Maynooth University were surveyed to ascertain views on whether refusing to honour a wicked statute – eg an instruction from German Nazi command – was truly breaking the law. Intuitively people tend to regard such breaches as technically unlawful but not unlawful “in a deep sense”, Brian Flanagan, associate professor at the university’s school of law, explains.
The study suggests there might be “some doubts about whether someone like Stauffenberg truly breaks the law” by trying to kill Hitler. It also indicates that Stauffenberg may, in fact, have broken the law if he continued to honour Hitler’s malevolent statutes.
“Most modern legal theorists think that such [evil] statutes count as laws in just the same as benevolent ones, but our studies suggest otherwise,” says Flanagan.
A relevant case from Irish history is the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson MP by Irish republicans in June 1922 – a murder explored by Irish Times journalist Ronan McGreevy in a new book. One of the killers Reginald Dunne defiantly told his trial judge "a higher court, the only court that matters will judge me by my actions in this world and consider the purity of my intentions".
Dunne reputedly cited Ignatius of Loyola as part justification for the political killing five months after the Anglo-Irish Treaty had been signed. In a relatively obscure passage, the founder of the Jesuits wrote “to kill a tyrannical king” was permissible as “an act of justice”.
Fr Séamus Murphy SJ, an international expert on just war theory, is sceptical of the idea Dunne was influenced by Catholic thinking. Ignatius "was not an intellectual" and, as for approving tyrannicide, "I'm pretty certain that the Church never taught anything of the kind", says Murphy, associate professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. In a more developed theology, Thomas Aquinas "allows that a tyrant may be removed, but not by an individual: it would have to be done by something like a representative group of prominent citizens".
The philosophy most likely to endorse assassination is utilitarianism: If taking one saves many then fire ahead, so to speak. But even if this were accepted, the defence doesn’t stack up in the case of Wilson’s murder.
“I fail to see what political or strategic benefit accrued to [Michael] Collins from it,” Murphy observes – Collins was reportedly gleeful when he heard of the assassination but debate still rages as to whether he approved it.
Thinking a complex conflict can be solved by “decapitating” a leader, or prominent individual, is somewhat naïve. One might describe it as unthinking. However, Flanagan points out that spending more time contemplating a moral dilemma does not necessarily guarantee a superior outcome.
Studies show "when we reason under time pressure – four seconds or less – our rule interpretations become even more moralistic", he says.
“Moral psychologists often associate fast, intuitive reasoning with a deontological moral perspective – the sort that tends to underpin the idea of human rights. In contrast, slow, methodical reasoning is often associated with a utilitarian moral perspective. It is the utilitarian, however, who would be potentially more open to the morality of taking one life to save many through the assassination of a tyrant.”
Turning to contemporary events, would it be right to assassinate Putin? “Probably not,” Murphy replies. For a start, “what would replace him might be worse.” He points out that had Stauffenberg and his fellow plotters succeeded “the Nazi supporters would then have blamed them for Germany’s defeat – not Hitler. That might have led to far larger numbers of post-1945 German neo-Nazis.
“It may have been as well that the way the Nazi regime ended was by being thoroughly defeated on the battlefield,” he adds.
Another counterfactual that could be asked from an Irish perspective is what would have happened had Collins not been assassinated. Given his anger at how partition was exploited by Orangemen and his history of settling personal scores – there was "something vindictive about Collins", Murphy notes – would he have thrust Ireland into an even more bloody civil war 100 years ago between the 26 counties and the six?
Collins "made it very clear" from his diaries he planned to mount an "onslaught on the North", according to Tim Pat Coogan who wrote a biography of the Big Fella. Collins faced having to back down to more moderate colleagues "or we could have had a military dictatorship if he had won out, if he hadn't the support of the cabinet", Coogan observed in RTÉ's What If? series some years ago, while acknowledging many other outcomes were possible.
“Here’s a fine philosophical point for you,” Murphy says. “Would it be good if Hitler had died a cot-death as a baby? Not as easy to answer as people think. It definitely would be good, better, if he had not grown up to set up the Nazi party, take over Germany, massacre Jews, and start a war.
“In other words, his actions were evil, and it would be good if they had never happened. That’s clear enough. But does that mean that the world today would be overall a better place if he had died as a baby? Ah, that we cannot tell: we do not know.
“If Hitler had died as a baby, it is possible that today Earth might be an atomic radiation ruin, humanity nearly all dead. This illustrates a big objection to utilitarianism: the claim that it is the results of our actions that determine the morality of our actions.
“The sting here is that it is the actual consequences, not the reasonably anticipated consequences, that matter in utilitarian doctrine. And none of us can know all the actual consequences of our actions. Hindsight is easy but, when we want an ethic, we want guidance with respect to what to do now.”
Returning to the question of whether it is ever right to assassinate, Murphy says he broadly agrees with Aquinas. “I take him to mean (a) that we can’t say that in principle it is always wrong to kill a tyrant; (b) but a private individual – or a few such – do not have the authority on their own to do it; and (c) more often than not, it will not make the situation better. Conclusion: in general, as a practical rule, don’t.”
