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Nick_Tarleton comments on Open Thread: May 2010 - Less Wrong
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Most people's intuition is that assassination is worse than war, but simple utilitarianism suggests that war is much worse.
I have some ideas about why assassination isn't a tool for getting reliable outcomes-- leaders are sufficiently entangled in the groups that they lead that removing a leader isn't like removing a counter from a game, it's like cutting a piece out of a web which is going to rebuild itself in not quite the same shape-- but this doesn't add up to why assassination could be worse than war.
Is there any reason to think the common intuition is right?
I've always assumed that the norm against assassination, causally speaking, exists mostly due to historical promotion by leaders who wanted to maintain a low-assassination equilibrium, now maintained largely by inertia. (Of course, it could be normatively supported by other considerations.)
It makes sense to me that people would oversimplify the effect of assassination in basically the way you describe, overestimating the indispensability of leaders. I know I've seen a study on the effects of assassination on terrorist groups, but can't find a link or remember the conclusions.