US engaging in dangerous rhetoric
Experts denounce calls to assassinate Putin
“Wanted: Dead or alive. Vladimir Putin for mass murder,” the online image read.
A California-based entrepreneur posted the image to his Linkedin page in early March with a short note offering $1 million to the Russian officer who arrests Putin. The next day, as Russian military forces escalated attacks on civilian areas of Ukraine’s largest cities, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-south Carolina, publicly took up a similar call.
“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” Graham wrote on Twitter, referring to the Roman politician who assassinated Julius Caesar and the German officer who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler.
“The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service,” Graham wrote.
The White House emphasized that regime change is not U.S. policy, and researchers and academics warned that Graham’s comments could be interpreted as the United States disregarding international law and fuel disinformation in Russia.
“There are so many dangerous aspects to his comments,” said Anthony Arend, co-founder of the Institute for International Law and Politics at Georgetown University. “It sets the possible precedent that others will be able to look at the United States and say, ‘Well, they’re advocating it. Why don’t we simply move to a foreign policy that more broadly incorporates assassinations or targeting regime leaders?’”
The White House and lawmakers denounced Graham’s suggestions. Hours after Graham’s initial comments, White House press secretary Jen Psaki made clear the statements are not the policy of the United States.
“No, we are not advocating for killing the leader of a foreign country or a regime change,” Psaki said. “That is not the position of the United States government and certainly not a statement you’d hear come from the mouth of anybody working in this administration.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-texas, called Graham’s suggestion “an exceptionally bad idea.”
“Use massive economic sanctions; BOYCOTT Russian oil & gas; and provide military aid so the Ukrainians can defend themselves. But we should not be calling for the assassination of heads of state,” Cruz wrote on Twitter.
The Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, called the comments “unacceptable and outrageous.”
“It becomes scary for the US fate, which is run by such irresponsible and unprofessional politicians,” he wrote in a Facebook post March 4. “We demand official explanations and a strong condemnation of the criminal statements of this American.”
Graham doubled down on his calls in a news conference Wednesday, when a reporter asked, “Do you stand by your call to have Putin be assassinated?”
“Yeah, I hope he’ll be taken out, one way or the other,” Graham said. “I don’t care how they take him out. I don’t care if we send him to the Hague and try him. I just want him to go. Yes, I’m on record.”
Graham said he was not advocating for the United States to invade Russia or send troops to Ukraine: “I am asking the Russian people to rise up and end this reign of terror.” Graham’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nika Aleksejeva, a Latvia-based researcher with the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said Graham’s comments fuel a Kremlin narrative that portrays the United States as a violent and lawless sponsor of terrorism, out to get Russia.
“The U.S. is painted as the great evil in Russia,” she said. “One of the disinformation narrative lines is that Ukraine is our brother nation, and Russia is forced to carry out this military operation because the U.S. made Ukraine go away from Russia – that the U.S. is to blame in all these problems that are now between Russia and Ukraine.”
Ukraine became independent in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Aleksejeva said Graham’s comments were perceived as a “diplomatic scandal” in Russia but weren’t shocking for consumers of state-sponsored media. Audiences have been primed to expect U.S. threats.
“It gives Russia a particular case to point at,” she said. “These comments are qualified as calls to terror attacks.”
Aleksejeva said she’s concerned Graham’s comments may be used in Kremlin-backed propaganda campaigns to justify Russian aggression.
U.S. directives forbidding assassinations go as far back as 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Lieber Code. “Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism,” the code states.
The Lieber Code formed the basis of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The international treaties state it is “especially forbidden” to “kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.”
Other treaties, including the 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, also speak to the issue.
Concerns about assassinations gained renewed attention in the 1970s, after a series of post-watergate news reports and congressional investigations revealed evidence of CIA assassination plots or support of plots against Cuban President Fidel Castro and leaders in Chile, the Dominican Republic, South Vietnam and what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
President Gerald Ford responded in 1976 with an executive order banning “political assassinations,” followed by orders from Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
The standing directive, Reagan’s 1981 Executive Order 12333, states that “no person, employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government, shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” The order does not define “assassination.”
Since then, the United States has argued that “targeted killings” of alleged terrorists are acts of self-defense. There is “no concrete, verifiable number of deaths from U.S. targeted killings,” according to Human Rights Watch.
For the first time in public, President Joe Biden called Putin a “war criminal” on Wednesday. Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed with him Thursday.
“Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime,” Blinken said at a White House news briefing.
Kathryn Sikkink, a professor of human rights policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, noted three international courts are investigating Russian actions: the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court and European Court of Human Rights.
An assassination would rob Russia of the chance for legal justice and a stable transition in leadership, Sikkink said.
“If you’ve had leaders who’ve committed crimes, you want the new government to be able to put those leaders on trial and hold them criminally accountable using due process for crimes they’ve committed,” Sikkink said. “And if you find them guilty, to sentence them and imprison them.”