International law on targeted killing is not settled. It is contested. The same act, killing a designated terrorist on foreign soil, is simultaneously justified under the self-defense doctrine enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, prohibited under the sovereignty provisions of Article 2(4), and conditionally permitted under international humanitarian law if the target qualifies as a direct participant in hostilities. Five countries currently operate or have recently operated programs that depend on this legal ambiguity: Israel, the United States, Russia, India, and the United Kingdom through its intelligence-sharing complicity. Each country has constructed a different legal architecture, or deliberately refused to construct one, around the same fundamental act. None of them has resolved the ambiguity. Every one of them exploits it.

Global Targeted Killing Legal Debate - Insight Crunch

The question at the center of this analysis is not whether targeted killing is moral. Morality is a separate inquiry, and the participants in this debate have drawn their moral conclusions independently of the legal framework. The question is whether international law, as it currently exists, permits, prohibits, or deliberately avoids clarity on a practice that at least five major states conduct regularly. Philip Alston, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, submitted a report to the Human Rights Council in May 2010 that defined the problem precisely: targeted killing is the intentional, premeditated, and deliberate use of lethal force by a state or its agents against a specific individual who is not in the perpetrator’s custody. That definition encompasses drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, motorcycle assassinations in Karachi, Novichok poisoning in Salisbury, and consular dismemberment in Istanbul. The law that governs all of them is the same body of international law. The interpretations could not be more different.

Paul Staniland of the University of Chicago has documented how states construct legal justifications for political violence not from first principles but from strategic necessity. The legal argument follows the operational decision, not the other way around. Israel developed its legal framework for targeted killing after decades of conducting the practice, not before. The United States formulated its Office of Legal Counsel memos to justify a drone program already in operation. Russia passed legislation authorizing extraterritorial killings in 2006, months before poisoning Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 in London. India has constructed no framework at all, relying instead on total deniability, a position that George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment has argued creates the most dangerous accountability vacuum of any of the five cases.

This article maps the legal landscape across all five countries, examines the four critical dimensions along which the legal debate fractures, identifies where the comparison breaks down, and argues that the ambiguity is not an accident of incomplete legal development but a deliberately maintained feature that allows states to kill while maintaining the appearance of rule-bound behavior.

Five national approaches to the legal question of targeted killing define the boundaries of the current debate. Each has constructed a distinct relationship between the practice of killing and the law that theoretically governs it. Understanding what each country argues, and what each country avoids arguing, reveals why the debate has remained unresolved for decades.

Israel: Conditional Legality Through Judicial Review

Israel’s legal architecture for targeted killing is the most developed of any state’s, and it emerged from the only domestic court ruling in history to address the practice head-on. On December 13, 2006, the Israeli Supreme Court delivered its judgment in Case HCJ 769/02, commonly known as the Targeted Killings Case. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment had petitioned the court to declare Israel’s policy of preventive strikes against Palestinian militants illegal under international law. President (Emeritus) Aharon Barak wrote the majority opinion, and his reasoning has shaped every subsequent legal debate on the subject.

The court’s framework rested on three foundational determinations. First, the conflict between Israel and Palestinian armed groups constituted a continuous armed conflict of an international character, meaning international humanitarian law applied rather than domestic criminal law alone. Second, members of Palestinian armed organizations were not combatants under international law because they did not meet the requirements for combatant status (wearing uniforms, carrying arms openly, following a chain of command that respects the laws of war). Third, and most consequentially, these individuals were therefore civilians, but civilians who lost their protection under international humanitarian law for such time as they directly participated in hostilities.

That phrase, “for such time,” became the fulcrum of the ruling. Barak distinguished between civilians who participate in hostilities sporadically, who regain their protected status the moment they disengage, and civilians who have joined armed organizations as their permanent framework, for whom the rest periods between hostilities are nothing more than preparation for the next act. For the latter category, targeted killing was conditionally permissible, subject to four requirements: the target must be positively identified as directly participating in hostilities; no less harmful means of neutralization (arrest, for example) could be available; the strike must satisfy proportionality (expected civilian casualties cannot be excessive relative to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage); and an independent investigation must follow every strike to verify compliance.

The ruling did not declare all targeted killings legal. Nor did it declare them illegal. It established a case-by-case legal framework that required the state to justify each operation individually. Research by Shahaf Rabi and Avery Plaw published in the Israel Law Review examined whether subsequent Israeli operations actually complied with the court’s four requirements and two safeguards. Their findings were mixed: strong evidence of compliance with the four substantive requirements, but uncertainty about whether the ex-post investigative committee (safeguard one) actually functioned independently, and no public evidence that judicial oversight (safeguard two) occurred at all.

By 2014, the Israeli government had quietly shifted its position. The 2014 Gaza Conflict Report adopted a formal membership approach to targeting, meaning all members of Hamas’s armed wing were legitimate targets regardless of their individual function or whether they were actively engaged in hostilities at the time of the strike. This represented a significant departure from the 2006 ruling’s conduct-based approach. The court, which had been notably activist on conduct-of-hostilities questions from the late 1990s through 2008, appeared to defer to the executive on these matters after 2009, enabling the shift without judicial intervention.

Israel’s framework remains the most transparent of the five cases. It is also the only framework that has been tested and progressively weakened by the very state that created it. The 2006 ruling established conditional legality. The 2014 shift eroded the conditions. The result is a legal architecture that provides democratic legitimacy to the practice Mossad has conducted for sixty years while the actual constraints it imposes have grown increasingly nominal.

The American legal architecture for targeted killing differs fundamentally from Israel’s in that it was never tested in court. It was constructed entirely within the executive branch, through classified legal memoranda produced by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, and it was disclosed to the public only through a combination of intentional policy speeches and Freedom of Information Act litigation.

The foundational legal argument appeared first in a September 2011 speech by Harold Koh, the State Department Legal Adviser, and was subsequently elaborated in a sixteen-page White Paper dated November 2011, which NBC News obtained and published in February 2013. The core argument rested on three pillars. First, the United States was engaged in a non-international armed conflict with al-Qaeda and its associated forces, authorized by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by Congress three days after the September 11 attacks. Second, under this authorization, the president had the constitutional authority to order lethal force against senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda who posed an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States. Third, such force was consistent with international law under the inherent right of self-defense recognized in Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Controversy centered on the American framework’s definition of imminence. Traditional international law requires an imminent threat to be immediate and overwhelming, leaving no moment for deliberation. The OLC memo, a forty-one-page classified document dated July 16, 2010, authored by David Barron (then acting chief of the OLC), redefined imminence for the counter-terrorism context. The concept of imminence, the White Paper argued, did not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on United States persons and interests would take place in the immediate future. Instead, an individual could be targeted if they had recently been involved in activities posing a threat, if there was no evidence they had renounced such activities, and if the threat window was assessed to remain open.

This elasticized definition of imminence allowed the drone program to target individuals whose threat was ongoing and diffuse rather than specific and imminent in the traditional sense. Critics, including Philip Alston, argued that this interpretation extended the right of self-defense so far that it destroyed the prohibition on the use of force contained in the UN Charter. If every state could invoke this broadened definition of imminence against those it designated as threats, the result would be legal chaos. Alston stated publicly that intelligence agencies determined to remain unaccountable had no place in running programs that killed people in other countries.

Additional notoriety surrounded the OLC memo because it authorized the killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, who was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. The ACLU filed a FOIA lawsuit that forced partial release of the memo in June 2014, revealing that even the legal framework the executive branch had constructed internally was heavily caveated and narrowly reasoned. Eleven additional OLC opinions related to targeted killing or drone strikes existed, according to Senate Intelligence Committee estimates, but the full Senate had access to only one.

The American framework thus operates in a space fundamentally different from Israel’s. Where Israel submitted its practice to judicial review and received a conditional legal framework, the United States constructed its framework internally, classified it, and disclosed only the portions it chose to share. The architecture was robust in the sense that serious lawyers at the OLC engaged the relevant law. It was fragile in the sense that no independent body ever tested the reasoning against adversarial argument. The result, as the ACLU described it, was a body of secret law governing the most consequential power any government can exercise: the power to take a human life.

The comparison between America’s drone campaign and India’s shadow war reveals that the two programs differ most sharply on this dimension. The United States constructed elaborate legal justifications and then classified them. India constructed none at all.

Russia’s approach to the legal question of extraterritorial killing is the simplest of the five cases, and the most revealing about the relationship between law and power. In July 2006, the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, passed legislation authorizing the president to use the country’s armed forces and special services outside Russian borders to combat threats from those Moscow accused of extremism and terrorism. The law was presented as a response to the killing of four Russian embassy employees in Iraq by an al-Qaeda-affiliated group earlier that year.

No proportionality requirements appeared in the legislation, no imminence standards, no requirement for host-state consent, no independent oversight mechanism, and no judicial review process. It authorized force. It placed no constraints on how that force was exercised. Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Alexander Vershbow, who served as United States ambassador to Russia from 2001 to 2004, observed that the law’s passage reflected a deliberate decision to provide legal cover for operations the Russian state intended to conduct regardless.

Within months of the law’s passage, Alexander Litvinenko was dead. The former FSB officer, who had defected to the United Kingdom and become a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin, was poisoned with polonium-210 in central London in November 2006. A British public inquiry concluded in 2016 that the operation was probably approved by FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev and President Putin personally. The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights subsequently ruled that Russia had conducted an extrajudicial, targeted killing on British soil, violating Litvinenko’s right to life under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Russia’s response to every accusation has been categorical denial, followed by procedural obstruction. After the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury in March 2018, where former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were targeted with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok, Russia dismissed British allegations as propaganda. The Bellingcat investigative journalism team subsequently identified the two GRU officers who carried out the operation, traced their travel, and published their military service records. Russia’s official position did not change.

Russia’s approach serves a function distinct from Israel’s or America’s. It does not constrain the state. It immunizes it. The 2006 legislation exists not to define the boundaries of permissible action but to provide domestic legal cover for the president’s decisions. There is no Russian equivalent of the Israeli Supreme Court ruling that requires case-by-case justification. There is no Russian equivalent of the OLC memo that engages international law on its own terms. The law authorizes, and the state acts, and the denial that follows is itself part of the legal architecture. Russia’s position is that operations conducted under deniability require no legal justification because no operation has been acknowledged.

India occupies the extreme end of the legal spectrum. Where Israel has conditional legality, the United States has classified legality, and Russia has statutory authorization without constraint, India has constructed nothing at all. No legislation authorizes extraterritorial killings. No executive order governs targeting decisions. No legal memorandum has been prepared or leaked. No court has been asked to rule. No official has acknowledged any operation, even obliquely. The Indian position, maintained consistently since the first reports of the shadow war’s unknown gunmen pattern emerged, is that targeted killings are not Indian government policy.

This position has become increasingly difficult to maintain. The Washington Post investigation published in January 2025 documented at least six targeted assassinations inside Pakistan conducted by the Research and Analysis Wing since 2021. The Guardian’s April 2024 investigation cited unnamed intelligence operatives and documented nearly twenty killings by unknown gunmen since 2020. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused India of involvement in the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June 2023. A United States federal indictment named RAW officer Vikash Yadav in connection with a plot to assassinate Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York.

India’s incumbent National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, articulated the strategic logic without the formal framework in a 2014 speech at a university. He argued that it was unrealistic to invade Pakistan but that India should use covert means to punish Pakistan for backing militant groups that attack Indian troops and civilians. “We can defend ourselves by going to the place from where the offense is coming,” Doval told the audience. “Pakistan’s vulnerability is many, many times higher than India’s.” This statement, while not a legal authorization, reveals the doctrinal foundation: India treats the threat from Pakistan-based terrorism as sufficiently existential to justify extraterritorial action, but it refuses to construct any legal framework around that action.

George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has argued that India’s total-deniability approach creates the most dangerous accountability vacuum of all five cases. Israel’s framework, however weakened, provides at least the possibility of accountability. The American framework, however classified, reflects internal legal engagement. Russia’s framework, however cynical, acknowledges that the state kills abroad. India’s position denies the predicate entirely. If no operation exists, no framework is needed. If no framework exists, no constraint can be violated. The circularity is the point.

Strategically, the advantage of this approach is real. India’s covert operations have produced minimal diplomatic consequence compared to Russia’s operations, in part because the targets (designated terrorists rather than political dissidents or journalists) generate less international sympathy, and in part because the deniability prevents the kind of formal state-to-state confrontation that followed the Skripal poisoning. The strategic risk is equally real: without any formal framework, there is no mechanism for democratic oversight, no process for learning from operational failures, and no accountability structure if the targeting criteria expand beyond designated terrorists to encompass political opponents, diaspora critics, or other categories that the international community would not tolerate.

United Kingdom: Domestic Prohibition, Complicity Through Intelligence Sharing

The United Kingdom presents the most paradoxical case in the five-country comparison. British domestic law prohibits targeted killing unambiguously. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and subsequent legislation governing intelligence activities do not authorize lethal operations on foreign soil. MI6 officers operate under strict legal constraints that distinguish the British service from Mossad, the CIA, or the FSB. The United Kingdom has never publicly acknowledged conducting a targeted killing outside of armed conflict situations. The Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which updated the legal framework for intelligence-agency surveillance, contains no provision authorizing lethal action against individuals on foreign territory. The Security Service Act of 1989 and the Intelligence Services Act of 1994 authorize intelligence-gathering and other activities overseas, but neither explicitly authorizes the use of lethal force.

British practice during the Northern Ireland conflict offers a historical counterpoint. Between 1976 and 1992, according to Amnesty International documentation, an elite unit of the British army killed thirty-seven reported members of the Irish Republican Army. The United Kingdom consistently denied that these killings constituted a targeted killing policy, characterizing them as lawful engagements during security operations. The European Court of Human Rights addressed several of these cases and found violations of the right to life, not because the use of lethal force was inherently unlawful, but because the planning and control of the operations failed to meet the standard of necessity and the subsequent investigations were inadequate.

And yet, in the contemporary period, the United Kingdom has been deeply implicated in the targeted killing programs of its allies. British intelligence sharing with the United States contributed to the drone program’s targeting database in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The degree of British complicity in American drone strikes was the subject of sustained parliamentary inquiry, with the Intelligence and Security Committee examining whether British intelligence was used to facilitate strikes that the United Kingdom could not have lawfully conducted itself. The legal question this raises is whether a state that provides targeting intelligence for a lethal operation conducted by an ally bears legal responsibility for the killing, even if it did not pull the trigger.

Britain’s official position has been that intelligence sharing is governed by the Consolidated Guidance on the detention and interviewing of detainees overseas and the passing and receipt of intelligence relating to detainees, which was updated after revelations about British complicity in CIA rendition. The guidance addresses the risk that British intelligence might contribute to torture or cruel treatment but does not explicitly address whether sharing intelligence that leads to a lethal drone strike constitutes complicity in an unlawful killing. This gap is not accidental. Closing it would require the United Kingdom to either acknowledge complicity in its allies’ programs or terminate intelligence sharing arrangements that are central to the Five Eyes alliance.

Britain’s case demonstrates that the debate on targeted killing extends beyond states that conduct the practice themselves. Complicity through intelligence sharing creates a spectrum of legal responsibility that international law has barely begun to address. The international community’s selective response to India’s operations compared to its strong reaction to Russia’s poisonings reveals how deeply politics, rather than law, shapes which targeted killings produce consequences and which produce silence.

Dimension One: Self-Defense, Article 51, and the Question of Armed Attack

The first and most fundamental fracture in the legal debate runs through Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which preserves the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations. Every state that has constructed a legal justification for targeted killing has invoked Article 51 as part of its argument. The question is whether Article 51 extends to killing non-state actors on the territory of a state that has not itself committed an armed attack against the targeting state.

Under the traditional reading of Article 51, dominant among international law scholars and reflected in International Court of Justice jurisprudence, is restrictive. An armed attack must be attributable to a state. A non-state actor operating from the territory of a foreign state without that state’s direction or control does not trigger the right of self-defense against the host state’s territory. Under this reading, Israel cannot invoke self-defense to justify strikes in Syrian territory against Hezbollah unless Syria directed or controlled Hezbollah’s actions. The United States cannot invoke self-defense to justify drone strikes in Pakistan unless Pakistan directed or controlled al-Qaeda’s operations. India cannot invoke self-defense to justify the pattern of motorcycle-borne killings across Pakistani cities unless Pakistan directed or controlled the specific attacks that motivated the response.

An expansive reading, advocated by the United States and Israel and increasingly accepted in state practice by other countries, rejects the state-attribution requirement. The “unwilling or unable” doctrine holds that when a host state is unwilling to suppress the threat posed by non-state actors operating from its territory, or unable to do so even with good faith efforts, the targeting state may exercise its right of self-defense on the host state’s territory without consent. The United States formally articulated this position in the context of its drone program in Pakistan, arguing that Pakistan was unable or unwilling to address the al-Qaeda threat in its tribal areas. Israel has applied the same logic to operations in Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian territories.

In its 2004 advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory appeared to reject the expansive reading. The court stated that Article 51 recognizes the right of self-defense in the case of an armed attack by one state against another state. Since the threat Israel cited originated in occupied territory under Israeli control rather than from a foreign state, Article 51 did not apply. However, the court’s reasoning was contested even among its own judges. Judge Buergenthal’s separate opinion argued that the court had failed to address whether self-defense could apply against non-state actors.

Philip Alston’s report of May 2010 addressed this question directly. He acknowledged that targeted killing may be lawful in the limited context of armed conflict, when used against combatants or fighters, or civilians who directly participate in combat-like activities. He criticized the United States’ expansive interpretation of self-defense as going far toward destroying the prohibition on the use of armed force in the Charter. His argument was practical as well as doctrinal: if every state could invoke the American interpretation of self-defense to justify killing individuals on foreign soil whom it designated as threats, the result would undermine the entire Charter framework governing the use of force.

State practice, however, has moved in the opposite direction from the restrictive scholarly consensus. Turkey regularly conducts cross-border operations against PKK targets in Iraq and Syria, invoking self-defense without meaningful international opposition. France has conducted lethal operations against jihadist targets in the Sahel. Australia participated in coalition drone strikes in the Middle East. The “unwilling or unable” doctrine has not been formally accepted in treaty law or ICJ jurisprudence, but it has been accepted in the practice of a sufficient number of states that some scholars argue it is becoming customary international law through state practice and opinio juris.

India’s position on Article 51 is the most ambiguous of all five cases. India has never invoked self-defense to justify any specific operation because India has never acknowledged any specific operation. But India’s broader strategic posture, articulated through the “ghar mein ghus ke maarta hai” rhetoric and the doctrine of punitive deterrence that culminated in the Balakot airstrike and Operation Sindoor, rests on an implicit invocation of self-defense. When India strikes targets in Pakistan, whether through air strikes on terrorist training camps or through covert operations against designated militants, the unstated legal argument is that Pakistan’s failure to dismantle terrorist organizations that attack India triggers the right of self-defense. India simply refuses to make this argument explicitly because doing so would require acknowledging the operations the argument is meant to justify.

The gap between the scholarly consensus and state practice has widened steadily since 2001. In the two decades following the September 11 attacks, at least eight states have invoked self-defense to justify the use of force against non-state actors on foreign territory: the United States in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia; Israel in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza; Turkey in Iraq and northern Syria; France in Mali, Niger, and Chad; Australia as part of coalition operations in Iraq and Syria; Russia in Syria (against groups it designated as threats, though the legal justification was also based on Syrian government invitation); the United Kingdom through participation in coalition strikes; and Saudi Arabia in Yemen against Houthi forces. Each of these states either explicitly or implicitly relied on the “unwilling or unable” doctrine to bridge the gap between Article 51’s authorization of self-defense and Article 2(4)’s prohibition on the use of force.

Scholarly response has been divided. Ashley Deeks, writing in the Virginia Journal of International Law in 2012, argued that the “unwilling or unable” test had sufficient historical pedigree and state practice to constitute an emerging norm of customary international law. She proposed a framework of factors for assessing whether a host state was genuinely unwilling or unable, including the host state’s track record, its governance capacity, its control over the relevant territory, and whether the targeting state had exhausted diplomatic options. Kevin Jon Heller, in a direct response, argued that Deeks had cherry-picked state practice to support a conclusion that the evidence did not support. The vast majority of states had never invoked the doctrine, Heller noted, and state practice by a handful of powerful states did not constitute the widespread and consistent practice required for customary international law formation.

The debate between Deeks and Heller encapsulates the fundamental tension in the Article 51 question. If customary international law is formed by the practice of the states that actually exercise military force, then the “unwilling or unable” doctrine is rapidly becoming law. If customary international law requires the practice and agreement of the broader international community, including the many states that have never conducted targeted killings, then the doctrine remains a unilateral claim by powerful states dressed in legal language. The distinction matters enormously for the legal assessment of India’s shadow war. If the broad reading prevails, India’s hypothetical legal position (were it to acknowledge its operations) would rest on stronger ground. If the restrictive reading prevails, India’s operations would constitute straightforward violations of the Charter’s prohibition on the use of force.

What emerges is a landscape in which the restrictive reading of Article 51 remains the majority position among legal scholars, the expansive reading is the majority position among states that actually conduct targeted killings, and India occupies a position of deliberate silence that contributes nothing to the legal development of either interpretation.

Dimension Two: Sovereignty, Article 2(4), and the Prohibition on the Use of Force

Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter provides that all members shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. This prohibition is the cornerstone of the post-1945 international legal order. Every targeted killing conducted on the territory of a state without that state’s consent violates Article 2(4) unless it falls within one of two recognized exceptions: authorization by the UN Security Council under Chapter VII, or the exercise of self-defense under Article 51.

The sovereignty dimension of the legal debate operates differently from the self-defense dimension because it focuses not on the right of the targeting state but on the right of the host state. When unknown gunmen kill a designated terrorist in Karachi, the question is not only whether India (hypothetically) has the right to act in self-defense but whether Pakistan’s sovereignty has been violated. When the CIA conducts a drone strike in Yemen, the question is whether Yemen’s sovereignty has been violated, or whether Yemen’s consent (which was reportedly given in varying degrees under different Yemeni governments) negates the sovereignty claim.

Consent has proved critical in distinguishing between programs that generate international opposition and those that do not. Pakistan’s relationship with American drone strikes illustrates the ambiguity. Publicly, the Pakistani government protested every drone strike as a violation of sovereignty. Privately, according to leaked diplomatic cables and subsequent reporting, Pakistani officials not only consented to many strikes but provided targeting intelligence. This dual posture allowed both governments to maintain useful fictions: the United States could argue it was operating with host-state consent, and Pakistan could argue domestically that its sovereignty was being violated.

India’s operations in Pakistan involve no such ambiguity. Pakistan has not consented, publicly or privately, to Indian covert operations on its soil. Pakistan has officially accused India’s RAW of conducting assassinations and has presented evidence to the international community. The sovereignty violation, if the operations are attributed to India, is unambiguous. India’s response, consistent denial, avoids the sovereignty question by denying the predicate. If India did not conduct the operations, India has not violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Russia’s approach to the sovereignty question after Skripal was to reject the entire framework of the inquiry. Russia denied involvement, dismissed British evidence as fabrication, and argued that the investigation was politically motivated. The European Court of Human Rights ruling that Russia had violated Litvinenko’s right to life and failed to comply with its investigatory obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights had no practical effect because Russia withdrew from the Convention’s jurisdiction. The sovereignty violation was established in law but unenforceable in practice.

Nils Melzer’s analysis, published through his academic work on targeted killing in international law, identified the sovereignty dimension as the most analytically tractable part of the legal debate but the least practically significant. States that conduct targeted killings either secure host-state consent (real or fabricated), deny the operation entirely, or accept the sovereignty violation as a cost of doing business. No state has ever been subjected to meaningful enforcement action for violating another state’s sovereignty through a targeted killing. The United Nations Security Council, the only body authorized to impose binding consequences for sovereignty violations, is structurally unable to act against any of the five states examined here because three of them (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia) hold veto power, and the other two (Israel and India) are protected by the vetoes of their allies.

This structural impunity explains why the sovereignty dimension of the legal debate generates vigorous academic discussion and minimal practical consequence. Article 2(4) prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity of a state. Targeted killings on foreign soil violate that prohibition. No enforcement mechanism exists. The prohibition remains on the books, universally acknowledged in principle and routinely violated in practice.

Failure of enforcement mechanisms reveals a deeper structural problem in the international legal order. The UN General Assembly has passed numerous resolutions affirming the sovereignty principle and condemning the use of force against the territorial integrity of states. These resolutions are not binding. The International Law Commission has addressed related questions in its work on state responsibility, establishing that a state is responsible for internationally wrongful acts attributable to it, including the use of force on foreign territory. But responsibility without enforcement is merely an academic finding. No mechanism compels a state found responsible for sovereignty violations through targeted killings to pay reparations, change behavior, or face sanctions.

Consequences that do exist are bilateral rather than institutional. After the Skripal poisoning, the United Kingdom responded through diplomatic expulsions, and 28 countries followed suit in a coordinated action that expelled over 150 Russian diplomats. This response was punishing but temporary. Diplomatic relations normalized. Russia’s behavior did not change. After Canada accused India of involvement in the Nijjar assassination, diplomatic relations deteriorated, intelligence-sharing arrangements were disrupted, and both countries expelled diplomats. These consequences were real but limited to the bilateral relationship and did not involve any institutional enforcement mechanism.

Pakistan’s response to allegations of Indian operations on its soil illustrates a further complication. Pakistan has formally accused India of conducting assassinations, has presented evidence to international bodies, and has demanded accountability. But Pakistan’s own position is compromised by its documented support for the very organizations whose members are being targeted. Calling for international enforcement of the sovereignty principle when the sovereignty in question is being used to shelter designated terrorists responsible for mass-casualty attacks against the targeting state undermines the moral authority of the sovereignty claim. This is precisely the dynamic the “unwilling or unable” doctrine was designed to exploit: the targeting state argues that the host state’s sovereignty claim is weakened by the host state’s complicity in the threat that provoked the use of force.

Underneath the sovereignty debate lies a philosophical question about is whether sovereignty is absolute or conditional. Traditional Westphalian sovereignty is absolute: states have exclusive authority over their territory regardless of how they exercise that authority. Conditional sovereignty, a concept that gained traction through the Responsibility to Protect doctrine adopted at the 2005 World Summit, holds that sovereignty carries obligations, and states that fail to protect their populations or that harbor threats to other states forfeit certain protections. The “unwilling or unable” doctrine is a variant of conditional sovereignty applied to the counter-terrorism context: a state that is unwilling or unable to suppress terrorist organizations operating from its territory has forfeited its sovereignty claim against the targeting state’s use of force.

Neither the absolute nor the conditional reading of sovereignty has prevailed. The result is a sovereignty concept that is formally absolute and practically conditional, with the conditions determined not by neutral legal analysis but by the power dynamics between the targeting state and the host state. When Israel conducts operations on Lebanese or Syrian territory, the sovereignty violation produces minimal consequence because Israel has the military capacity to absorb any response. When India operates in Pakistan, the sovereignty violation produces diplomatic protest but no enforcement because both states possess nuclear weapons and neither can compel the other’s compliance. When Russia operates on British soil, the sovereignty violation produces significant diplomatic consequences because the United Kingdom possesses the institutional capacity and political will to organize a multilateral response. Sovereignty, in practice, means whatever the balance of power permits it to mean.

Dimension Three: Combatant Status, Civilian Protection, and International Humanitarian Law

The third dimension of the legal debate addresses who may lawfully be killed. International humanitarian law, the body of law governing conduct during armed conflict, draws a fundamental distinction between combatants and civilians. Combatants are legitimate targets of military force at all times during an armed conflict. Civilians are protected from attack unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities. The phrase “direct participation in hostilities” has become perhaps the most contested concept in modern international humanitarian law, and the targeted killing debate sits at the center of that contestation.

Classification poses the initial challenge. Members of non-state armed organizations do not fit neatly into either the combatant or civilian category as traditionally understood. They do not wear uniforms. They do not carry arms openly at all times. They do not operate within a chain of command that respects the laws of armed conflict. Under the strict terms of the Third Geneva Convention, they do not qualify as combatants entitled to prisoner-of-war status. By the negative definition used in international humanitarian law (civilians are everyone who is not a combatant), they are technically civilians.

The Israeli Supreme Court in the 2006 ruling addressed this classificatory problem directly. President Barak rejected the concept of “unlawful combatants” as a third category not recognized in international law. Members of Palestinian armed organizations were civilians. But they were civilians who had forfeited their protection by directly participating in hostilities. The critical question was what constituted “direct participation” and for how long the forfeiture lasted.

In an effort to resolve this question, the International Committee of the Red Cross through its Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law, published in 2009 after six years of expert consultations. The Guidance distinguished between direct participation (acts that are likely to adversely affect the military operations or capacity of a party to an armed conflict or to inflict death, injury, or destruction on protected persons or objects) and indirect participation (financial support, propaganda, recruitment, general logistics). Only direct participation forfeited civilian protection, and only for the duration of each specific act.

This restrictive interpretation, if applied strictly, would render most targeted killing programs unlawful. A Hamas financier is not directly participating in hostilities when he transfers funds. A Lashkar-e-Taiba commander is not directly participating when he recruits fighters or plans operations at a level of generality rather than directing a specific attack. A former intelligence operative living in exile, like Sergei Skripal, is not participating in hostilities at all. The ICRC Guidance would protect all of these individuals from targeting.

States that conduct targeted killings have responded by rejecting or circumvent the ICRC framework. The United States adopted a “continuous combat function” test, under which individuals who perform a continuous combat function within an organized armed group may be targeted at any time, regardless of whether they are directly participating in hostilities at the moment of the strike. This approach, closer to the formal membership model the Israeli government adopted in 2014, allows the targeting of individuals based on their organizational role rather than their real-time activity.

Practically, the difference between the ICRC’s conduct-based approach and the American continuous combat function approach is enormous. Under the ICRC framework, a Lashkar-e-Taiba commander who plans attacks but is sleeping in his home at night is a civilian protected from attack because he is not, at that moment, directly participating in hostilities. Under the continuous combat function approach, the same commander is targetable at any time because his organizational role constitutes a continuous combat function that he does not suspend during periods of rest. The ICRC approach protects more lives. The continuous combat function approach permits more operations. States that conduct targeted killings have overwhelmingly adopted the latter.

Nils Melzer’s framework, developed through his academic work before he became UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, provided a middle position. Melzer argued that direct participation in hostilities should be defined by three cumulative criteria: the act must be likely to adversely affect the military operations or military capacity of a party to an armed conflict, or to inflict death, injury, or destruction on persons or objects protected from direct attack (threshold of harm); there must be a direct causal link between the act and the expected harm (direct causation); and the act must be specifically designed to directly cause the required threshold of harm in support of a party to the conflict and to the detriment of another (belligerent nexus). Melzer’s framework was influential in the ICRC’s final Interpretive Guidance but did not resolve the fundamental disagreement about whether membership alone, absent specific conduct, could justify targeting.

Combatant-status questions also intersect with the emerging practice of targeting individuals based on intelligence signatures rather than positive identification. The American drone program’s use of “signature strikes,” which target individuals matching behavioral patterns associated with terrorist activity rather than specifically identified individuals, raised acute questions about whether the distinction principle was being satisfied. If the target is not positively identified, how can the targeting state determine whether the individual is a combatant, a civilian directly participating in hostilities, or a civilian with no connection to the armed group? The Obama administration reportedly curtailed the use of signature strikes early in its tenure, but the practice was not eliminated entirely.

India’s shadow war poses the most acute classificatory challenge of any of the five programs. The targets, as documented by multiple investigative reports, include UN-designated leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, organizations responsible for mass-casualty terrorist attacks against India. Under the continuous combat function test, these individuals might qualify as legitimate targets if India were engaged in an armed conflict with these organizations. But India has never characterized its situation as an armed conflict. India has not invoked the law of armed conflict to justify any operation. The deniability framework means that no classification analysis applies because no acknowledged operation exists against which to apply it.

The absence of any legal classification means that if India were to acknowledge its operations and submit them to legal analysis, the most likely applicable legal framework would not be international humanitarian law (which applies in armed conflict) but international human rights law (which applies at all times). Under international human rights law, the right to life may be derogated only in the most exceptional circumstances, and extrajudicial killing by state agents is prohibited absolutely. The same operation that might be conditionally lawful under the Israeli Supreme Court’s framework or the American OLC’s framework would be unambiguously unlawful under international human rights law. India’s deniability is not merely an operational convenience. It is a legal necessity. The moment India acknowledges its operations, it must either argue that an armed conflict exists (triggering international humanitarian law and the combatant-status debate) or accept that international human rights law applies (rendering every operation an extrajudicial execution). Both paths are legally treacherous. Silence is the only path that avoids them both.

Dimension Four: The Unwilling or Unable Doctrine and Its Acceptance in State Practice

At the center of the debate sits the “unwilling or unable” doctrine, which has become the linchpin of the legal debate on targeted killing, and its status in international law remains fiercely contested. The doctrine holds that when a host state is unwilling to suppress the threat posed by non-state actors operating from its territory, or unable to do so despite genuine efforts, the targeting state may use force in self-defense on the host state’s territory without the host state’s consent. If accepted, the doctrine bridges the gap between Articles 51 and 2(4) of the Charter: self-defense justifies the use of force, and the host state’s unwillingness or inability removes the sovereignty objection.

The United States has been the doctrine’s most prominent advocate. The 2011 White Paper stated explicitly that the use of force against a specific individual would need to account for the sovereignty of the state where force was used. Sovereignty concerns could be avoided if the United States obtained the host nation’s consent. In the absence of consent, the White Paper asserted the need for a determination that the host nation was unable or unwilling to suppress the threat. John Brennan, then the White House counterterrorism adviser, stated in 2012 that international legal principles, including respect for sovereignty, imposed important constraints on America’s ability to act unilaterally. But, he added, the use of force in foreign territory would be consistent with these principles if conducted with the host nation’s consent or if the host nation was unable or unwilling to take action.

Eric Holder, then the Attorney General, echoed this position: protecting the nation from terrorist threats did not mean the United States could use military force whenever or wherever it wanted. International legal principles constrained American ability to act unilaterally. But the use of force in foreign territory would be consistent with these principles if conducted with the consent of the host nation or if the host nation was unable or unwilling to act.

Beneath the doctrinal clarity of the American position lies a practical ambiguity: who determines whether a state is unwilling or unable, and by what standard? The determination is currently made unilaterally by the targeting state, based on its own assessment of the host state’s capacity and willingness. No neutral arbiter reviews the assessment. No burden of proof applies. No time limit governs how long the “unwilling or unable” designation lasts. Once applied, the designation functions as a standing authorization for force on the host state’s territory for as long as the targeting state judges the condition to persist.

Daniel Bethlehem, a former principal legal adviser to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, published a set of proposed principles in 2012 that attempted to formalize the “unwilling or unable” doctrine. Bethlehem’s principles suggested that the doctrine required the targeting state to first request the host state’s action, allow reasonable time for a response, and use force only as a last resort. These principles were influential in academic circles but have not been adopted by any state, including the United Kingdom.

Israel’s application of the doctrine has been implicit rather than explicit. Israel has never formally argued that Lebanon or Syria is “unwilling or unable” to suppress Hezbollah or Iranian forces on their territory. Israel acts, the doctrine is invoked by analysts after the fact, and the international response is calibrated based on political rather than legal considerations. Russia has never invoked the doctrine at all. Russia does not argue that the United Kingdom was unable to suppress the threat posed by Litvinenko or Skripal. Russia denies that any operation occurred.

India’s relationship with the “unwilling or unable” doctrine is the most analytically interesting of the five cases because, in substantive terms, India has the strongest factual basis for invoking it. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate has maintained organizational, financial, and logistical relationships with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed for decades. These organizations operate from Pakistani soil with varying degrees of state protection. Pakistan has consistently refused to extradite or prosecute individuals India has designated as terrorists, even when presented with evidence of their involvement in mass-casualty attacks. Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, lived openly in Lahore for years after the attacks. Pakistan is not merely “unwilling” to suppress the threat in the sense that the American doctrine uses the term. Pakistan has been, in certain periods, an active sponsor of the threat.

If any state has a factual basis for arguing that the “unwilling or unable” doctrine justifies extraterritorial force, India does. And yet India has never made this argument. The deniability framework precludes it. Invoking the doctrine would require acknowledging the operations the doctrine is meant to justify, and acknowledgment would trigger the entire cascade of legal questions that deniability avoids. India has the strongest factual case and the weakest legal architecture. The gap between the two reveals that the legal debate on targeted killing operates independently of the factual merits of any individual case. Legal frameworks are constructed or withheld based on strategic calculation, not legal analysis.

How the “unwilling or unable” doctrine currently stands in international law remains unresolved. A growing number of states invoke it in practice. No treaty codifies it. No international court has endorsed it. No authoritative body has defined its elements. Philip Alston’s characterization remains the most accurate: the doctrine has the potential to become customary international law through state practice and opinio juris, but it has not yet achieved that status, and its acceptance by the states that use it does not reflect disinterested legal analysis but strategic self-justification.

Where the Comparison Breaks Down

The five-country comparison illuminates the dimensions of the legal debate, but it conceals differences that are as important as the similarities. Three points of breakdown reveal the limits of treating all targeted killing programs as variations on a single legal question.

Target selection constitutes the first breakdown. Israel and the United States target individuals identified as participants in armed conflict against their countries, and both have constructed (however imperfectly) targeting criteria linked to the individual’s role in hostilities. Russia targets political dissidents, former intelligence officers who defected, and critics of the Putin government. The Litvinenko and Skripal cases involved no armed conflict, no combatant status, and no self-defense claim. They were acts of political repression conducted extraterritorially, more analogous to the assassination programs of Cold War-era security services than to counter-terrorism operations. Placing Russian operations in the same legal framework as Israeli or American operations distorts both.

India’s target selection, based on the available reporting, falls between the counter-terrorism programs (Israel, US) and the political repression program (Russia). The targets in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed figures designated as terrorists, are analogous to Israeli and American targets. The targets in Canada and the United States, Sikh separatists whose designation as terrorists has been questioned by Western officials, raise uncomfortable questions about where counter-terrorism ends and political targeting begins. The India-Israel comparison is strongest when examining the Pakistan theater and weakest when examining the Western cases.

Operational environment constitutes the second breakdown. Targeted killings conducted in active conflict zones (Israel in Gaza, the United States in Afghanistan) operate under a fundamentally different legal framework than those conducted in peacetime environments (Russia in the United Kingdom, India in Canada). In conflict zones, international humanitarian law provides the governing framework, and the combatant-status and proportionality requirements are well-established if imperfectly applied. In peacetime environments, international human rights law governs, and extrajudicial killing is prohibited without qualification. The same act, killing an identified individual with premeditated lethal force, may be conditionally lawful in Rafah and absolutely unlawful in Salisbury. The geographic context determines which legal framework applies, and the applicable framework determines legality.

Accountability constitutes the third breakdown. Israel has produced the only domestic court ruling in history to address targeted killing, has permitted investigative journalism that documents its operations in detail (Ronen Bergman’s work, based on access to current and former Mossad officials, would be unthinkable in the Indian, Russian, or Chinese intelligence contexts), and has a domestic civil society that challenges the state’s practices through litigation. The United States has produced classified legal memoranda that were partially disclosed through FOIA litigation, has permitted congressional oversight (however constrained), and has faced domestic legal challenges from the ACLU and others. Russia has provided statutory authorization but no oversight, no transparency, and no accountability. India has provided nothing: no authorization, no oversight, no transparency, and no accountability.

Ranking these cases on a transparency spectrum from most to least open produces: Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom (complicit but publicly debated), Russia, India. The ranking correlates inversely with the ease of conducting the programs. Israel’s transparency has created domestic constraints on its operations. India’s total opacity has created none. The lesson for states contemplating targeted killing programs is perverse: the less legal architecture you build, the fewer constraints you face. Deniability is not a bug in the legal system. It is a feature that India has exploited more effectively than any other state.

This perverse incentive structure has implications for the future of the legal debate. As targeted killing technology proliferates, and as more states develop the capacity to conduct extraterritorial operations through drones, cyber weapons, or contracted operatives, the question of legal framework becomes more pressing. China has not yet conducted confirmed targeted killings abroad, but its development of armed drone technology and its expanding intelligence capabilities suggest that the question may arise. Iran has conducted targeted killings of dissidents abroad, though its program is smaller and less systematic than Israel’s or America’s. Turkey’s cross-border operations against PKK targets in Iraq and Syria are conducted openly and justified under self-defense, representing yet another variation on the legal architecture question. Each new entrant to the targeted killing practice will face the same choice that the five states examined here have faced: construct a legal framework that constrains future operations, or maintain deniability that preserves maximum operational freedom. India’s experience suggests that the second option produces better strategic outcomes in the short term, and the first option produces better democratic outcomes in the long term. The tension between these two goals may prove irresolvable.

What the Comparison Teaches

The five-country comparison reveals three conclusions about the relationship between international law and targeted killing that the legal academic literature has been reluctant to state plainly.

International law on targeted killing is not ambiguous because the law has not yet developed. It is ambiguous because the states that shape the law have a strategic interest in maintaining the ambiguity. The “unwilling or unable” doctrine is neither accepted nor rejected. It exists in a liminal space between customary law and state practice, and it will remain there as long as the states that use it benefit from its indeterminacy. Clarity would force choices. If the doctrine were formally accepted, states would lose the ability to protest when their adversaries invoked it. If the doctrine were formally rejected, states that rely on it would face unambiguous legal exposure. The ambiguity serves everyone who conducts targeted killings and hurts no one except the targets and the civilians caught in the crossfire.

Philip Alston identified this dynamic in his 2010 report. He observed that the expansive interpretations of self-defense and imminence advanced by the United States, if adopted as general principles, would undermine the entire framework governing the use of force. But the United States had no interest in its interpretations being adopted as general principles. The American position was exceptional by design: the United States claimed the right to act under these interpretations while vigorously protesting when other states (Russia, China, Iran) invoked similar logic. The legal framework was not universal. It was transactional. Each state invoked the interpretation that served its interests and rejected the same interpretation when invoked by others.

The second conclusion is that the legal debate serves a legitimating function that is independent of its constraining function. Israel’s Supreme Court ruling did not end targeted killings. The OLC memos did not prevent the expansion of the drone program. Russia’s legislation did not impose any constraint on the FSB or GRU. The architecture in each case exists not primarily to limit state action but to provide democratic legitimation for action that the state has already decided to conduct. The debate is real, the legal analysis is serious, and the legal constraints are minimal.

This observation is not cynical. It is descriptive. The Israeli Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling represented a genuine exercise of judicial review over executive military action, a remarkable achievement for any democracy. The OLC memos represented genuine legal analysis by career government lawyers engaging with difficult questions of international law. The problem is not that the analysis is insincere. The problem is that the analysis operates within a political context that predetermines its conclusion. No Israeli Supreme Court was going to prohibit targeted killings that the Israeli public overwhelmingly supported. No OLC lawyer was going to tell the President that the drone program was unlawful when the executive had already decided to conduct it. The analysis refines the boundaries of permissible action. It does not determine whether action occurs.

India’s absence from the legal debate is, paradoxically, the most honest position. India does not pretend that a legal framework governs its actions. India does not construct elaborate justifications that constrain nothing. India simply denies that any actions have occurred. The dishonesty lies in the denial, not in the legal architecture. But the denial at least avoids the performative quality of the Israeli and American positions, where serious analysis produces formal frameworks that impose minimal practical constraint.

The third conclusion is that the debate will not be resolved through formal argument. It will be resolved, if it is resolved at all, through changes in state practice driven by political consequences. The Israeli Supreme Court ruling came after decades of targeted killings, not before. The OLC memos were produced after the drone program was operational, not before. Russia’s legislation was passed after the decision to resume extraterritorial killings, not before. Legal frameworks follow political decisions. If the political consequences of targeted killing change, whether through diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, or retaliatory action, the frameworks will change in response. If the consequences do not change, the ambiguity will persist, because it serves the interests of every state that operates within it.

A fourth conclusion emerges from the comparative analysis that deserves separate attention: the relationship between transparency and legitimacy is not linear. The conventional assumption in democratic theory is that transparency produces legitimacy, that states which operate openly and subject themselves to legal scrutiny earn greater democratic legitimacy for their actions. The targeted killing comparison challenges this assumption. Israel’s transparency has produced domestic legitimacy (Israeli public opinion strongly supports targeted killings) but has also produced the only binding legal framework that constrains the state’s actions. India’s opacity has produced no domestic legal constraint and, because the operations target designated terrorists rather than political critics, has generated minimal domestic opposition. The implication is disturbing: from the narrow perspective of operational freedom, opacity is more valuable than transparency, and the architecture of accountability that democracies construct to legitimate their violence also constrains that violence in ways that operational planners consider burdensome.

This dynamic creates a perverse incentive structure. States that engage in the legal debate, construct frameworks, and subject themselves to judicial review face constraints that states operating in total deniability do not. Over time, this incentive structure could erode the norm of legal engagement. If India demonstrates that total deniability produces equivalent strategic results with fewer constraints, other states may conclude that constructing accountability frameworks is a liability rather than an asset. The proliferation of targeted killing programs, which multiple analysts have predicted will accelerate as drone technology and surveillance capability spread to more states, makes this incentive structure increasingly dangerous. A world in which a dozen states conduct targeted killing programs and none of them construct formal frameworks is a world in which the rule of law in this domain has functionally collapsed.

Staniland’s analysis is relevant here. If states construct legal justifications for political violence from strategic necessity rather than principled commitment to the rule of law, then the legal frameworks themselves are instruments of strategy, not constraints on it. The Israeli framework legitimates Israel’s operations domestically and internationally. The American framework provides democratic cover for executive action. The legal architecture is a strategic asset, not a legal constraint. When this understanding becomes widespread, the debate on targeted killing ceases to be a juridical debate and becomes a strategic competition conducted in legal vocabulary.

The legal debate on targeted killing is not, ultimately, a debate about law. It is a debate about power: who has the power to kill, who has the power to justify the killing, who has the power to impose consequences, and who has the power to avoid them. International law provides the vocabulary for this debate. It does not provide the answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

The answer depends on which body of international law applies and how contested legal doctrines are interpreted. Under international humanitarian law, which governs conduct during armed conflict, individuals who qualify as combatants or civilians directly participating in hostilities may be targeted with lethal force, subject to the principles of necessity, proportionality, and distinction. Under international human rights law, which applies at all times, the right to life can be derogated only under the most extreme circumstances, and extrajudicial killing by state agents is generally prohibited. If a state can establish that an armed conflict exists between itself and the non-state organization to which the target belongs, international humanitarian law provides a framework for conditional legality. If no armed conflict exists, international human rights law applies, and the killing is almost certainly unlawful. The critical preliminary question, whether an armed conflict exists, is itself contested and depends on factors including the intensity of violence, the organization of the parties, and the duration of the conflict.

Q: What does international law say about targeted killing specifically?

International law does not contain a specific prohibition or permission for targeted killing as a category. The term itself is not found in any treaty. Philip Alston’s 2010 UN Special Rapporteur report defined it as the intentional, premeditated, deliberate use of lethal force by a state or its agents against a specific individual not in the state’s custody. The legality of any particular targeted killing depends on the applicable legal framework (international humanitarian law versus international human rights law), the status of the target (combatant, civilian directly participating in hostilities, or civilian not participating), and whether the use of force satisfies the requirements of necessity, proportionality, and distinction. There is no blanket prohibition and no blanket permission. The law applies case by case, and the application is contested at every step.

Q: Does the right of self-defense under Article 51 cover targeted killings?

Article 51 of the UN Charter preserves the inherent right of self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member state. The traditional interpretation requires the armed attack to be attributable to another state. The expansive interpretation, advocated primarily by the United States and Israel, holds that self-defense may be exercised against non-state actors operating from the territory of a state that is unwilling or unable to suppress the threat. The International Court of Justice has not definitively ruled on whether self-defense applies against non-state actors, though the 2004 Wall advisory opinion suggested a restrictive reading. State practice, however, has increasingly supported the expansive interpretation. The question remains unresolved in authoritative legal sources, with scholars divided and states acting on the basis of their preferred interpretation rather than settled law.

Q: What is the unwilling or unable doctrine in international law?

The doctrine holds that when a host state is unwilling to suppress a non-state threat emanating from its territory, or unable to do so despite genuine efforts, the state facing the threat may use force in self-defense on the host state’s territory without consent. The United States formally articulated this position in its 2011 White Paper. Daniel Bethlehem proposed principles for applying the doctrine in 2012, suggesting requirements including prior request for host-state action, reasonable time for response, and use of force as a last resort. The doctrine has not been codified in any treaty, endorsed by any international court, or formally defined by any authoritative body. Its growing acceptance in state practice has led some scholars to argue it is becoming customary international law, while others argue that the states invoking it are simply powerful enough to act without legal constraint.

Q: What did the Israeli Supreme Court rule about targeted killings in 2006?

In Case HCJ 769/02 (the Targeted Killings Case), the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that members of Palestinian armed organizations were civilians, not combatants, because they did not meet the requirements for combatant status under international humanitarian law. However, these civilians lost their protection from attack “for such time” as they directly participated in hostilities. The court established four requirements for lawful targeted killings: positive identification of the target as directly participating in hostilities, unavailability of less harmful means, proportionality in expected civilian casualties, and independent post-operation investigation. The ruling neither prohibited nor blanket-authorized targeted killing. It established a case-by-case framework that required individual justification for each operation. By 2014, the Israeli government had shifted to a broader formal membership approach that expanded targeting authority beyond the 2006 ruling’s conduct-based framework.

Q: How does the United States legally justify its drone program?

The United States justified its drone program through three legal pillars. First, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force provided congressional authorization for the use of force against those responsible for the September 11 attacks and their associated forces. Second, the OLC produced classified legal memoranda arguing that the president had constitutional authority to order lethal force against senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda who posed an imminent threat. Third, the program was consistent with international law under the inherent right of self-defense recognized in Article 51. The most controversial element was the elasticized definition of “imminence,” which did not require clear evidence of a specific imminent attack but only a continuing threat pattern. The legal framework was constructed entirely within the executive branch, classified, and disclosed only partially through policy speeches and FOIA litigation. No independent court ever tested the reasoning against adversarial legal argument.

India maintains no legal framework because India denies conducting any operations. The deniability posture makes legal architecture unnecessary and dangerous: unnecessary because no acknowledged operation requires justification, and dangerous because creating a framework would imply that operations exist to be governed by it. George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment has argued that this creates the most dangerous legal vacuum of the five cases examined here, because there is no mechanism for democratic oversight, no process for reviewing targeting decisions, and no accountability structure if the targeting criteria expand. India’s strategic logic is that deniability provides more protection than legal justification: Israel’s legal framework constrains it, America’s legal framework is challenged in court, but India’s silence generates no constraint at all.

Q: How does Russia justify targeted killings abroad?

Russia passed legislation in 2006 authorizing the president to use armed forces and special services outside Russia to combat threats from those designated as extremists or terrorists. The law contains no proportionality requirements, imminence standards, host-state consent requirements, oversight mechanisms, or judicial review processes. When Russia is accused of specific operations, such as the Litvinenko poisoning in London in 2006 or the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury in 2018, it categorically denies involvement. The 2006 legislation provides domestic legal cover. The denial provides diplomatic cover. The combination allows Russia to maintain that it operates lawfully while facing no domestic legal constraint on its actions. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia violated Litvinenko’s right to life, but Russia had already withdrawn from the Convention’s jurisdiction.

Host-state consent is a recognized exception to the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. If the state where force is used consents to the operation, the sovereignty objection is removed. The United States argued that Pakistan at least tacitly consented to drone operations in the tribal areas, though Pakistan publicly protested every strike. Pakistan reportedly provided targeting intelligence for some strikes while condemning the program publicly. This dual posture illustrates how consent operates in practice: ambiguously, revocably, and often performatively. No state has ever consented to Indian covert operations on its territory. Pakistan, Canada, and the United States have all formally protested Indian actions. Consent, where it exists, simplifies the legal analysis. Where it does not exist, the targeting state must rely on the self-defense or “unwilling or unable” justifications, both of which remain contested.

Q: What is the difference between targeted killing and assassination?

The distinction is legal and political rather than factual. Both involve the premeditated killing of a specific individual by state agents. “Assassination” carries connotations of illegality and political motivation. Executive Order 12333, signed by President Reagan in 1981, prohibits United States government employees from engaging in or conspiring to engage in assassination. The United States has argued that targeted killings under the drone program do not constitute assassination because they are conducted in the context of armed conflict against lawful targets under the law of armed conflict. Israel avoids the term “assassination” in favor of “targeted prevention” or “focused foiling.” India does not use any terminology because it does not acknowledge any operations. Russia denies all alleged operations regardless of terminology. The distinction is functionally a question of framing: the same act is a “targeted killing” when conducted by allies and an “assassination” when conducted by adversaries.

Q: Has any state faced meaningful consequences for conducting targeted killings?

Consequences have varied dramatically based on the target’s status and the targeting state’s geopolitical position. Russia faced significant diplomatic consequences after Skripal: 28 countries expelled over 150 Russian diplomats in a coordinated response, the largest mass diplomatic expulsion in modern history. Saudi Arabia faced sustained international condemnation and economic pressure after the Khashoggi killing in Istanbul in 2018. Israel has faced periodic diplomatic protests but no sustained consequences for its decades-long program. The United States has faced domestic legal challenges and international criticism but no diplomatic or economic consequences. India has faced diplomatic friction with Canada and scrutiny from Western media but no formal consequences for its Pakistan operations. The pattern suggests that consequences depend less on the legality of the act than on the political identity of the target: killing a journalist (Khashoggi) or a former spy on allied territory (Skripal) produces consequences; killing a designated terrorist produces silence.

Q: Why does the international community respond differently to different targeted killings?

Three factors explain the differential response: the target’s identity, the method used, and the targeting state’s geopolitical importance. Operations against designated terrorists generate less condemnation than operations against journalists, political dissidents, or diaspora activists. Discreet methods (gunfire in Karachi) generate less condemnation than spectacular methods (Novichok nerve agent in an English suburb or bone saw in a Saudi consulate). Strategically important states (India as a counterweight to China, the United States as a NATO leader) face less condemnation than strategically dispensable ones. The legal framework is nominally the same in all cases, but the political response is calibrated entirely by extra-legal factors. This selective enforcement is itself one of the most significant facts about the international legal order governing targeted killing.

Q: Can a targeted killing ever satisfy proportionality requirements under international law?

Proportionality in international humanitarian law requires that expected civilian casualties not be excessive relative to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage of the operation. A targeted killing that results in zero civilian casualties and eliminates a senior operational commander of an armed group responsible for ongoing attacks against the targeting state would likely satisfy proportionality requirements, assuming the other conditions for lawful targeting (necessity, distinction, positive identification) are also met. The proportionality analysis becomes more difficult when civilian casualties occur, when the target’s military significance is uncertain, or when “signature strikes” target individuals based on behavioral patterns rather than confirmed identity. Israel’s 2002 killing of Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh, which also killed fourteen civilians including nine children, was widely condemned as disproportionate, even by analysts who accepted the legality of targeting Shehadeh himself.

Four principles govern targeting under international humanitarian law. Distinction requires that parties to a conflict distinguish between combatants and civilians and direct attacks only against combatants or military objectives. Proportionality requires that expected civilian casualties not be excessive relative to the anticipated military advantage. Necessity requires that force be used only when necessary to accomplish a legitimate military objective. Precaution requires that all feasible measures be taken to minimize civilian casualties. These principles apply to targeted killings conducted in the context of armed conflict. Their application to targeted killings conducted outside armed conflict situations is disputed: some scholars argue they apply by analogy, while others argue that international human rights law, with its stricter protections for the right to life, is the only applicable framework.

Q: Does international human rights law prohibit targeted killing entirely?

International human rights law does not contain an absolute prohibition on the use of lethal force by state agents. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of life. The key term is “arbitrarily.” Lethal force used in law enforcement is not arbitrary if it is strictly necessary to protect life and if all less-lethal alternatives have been exhausted. Outside the law-enforcement context, international human rights law permits the use of lethal force only in the most exceptional circumstances. In practice, a targeted killing conducted outside the context of armed conflict, against an individual who is not posing an immediate threat to life at the moment of the strike, would be extremely difficult to justify under international human rights law. This is why states that conduct targeted killings prefer to characterize their situation as an armed conflict, where international humanitarian law provides more permissive targeting rules.

Q: How do international courts address targeted killing?

No international court has issued a binding ruling on the legality of targeted killing as a general practice. The International Court of Justice addressed related questions in its 2004 advisory opinion on the Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (questioning whether self-defense applies against non-state actors) and its 1986 Nicaragua judgment (establishing standards for the attribution of non-state actor conduct to states). The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia violated Litvinenko’s right to life, but this was a specific finding rather than a general ruling on targeted killing. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over war crimes, which could include disproportionate attacks on civilians, but no case involving a state-sponsored targeted killing has been prosecuted. The absence of authoritative international judicial guidance is itself a significant feature of the legal landscape: states operate in a space where the law is uncertain, and no court has been willing or able to provide certainty.

The 2001 AUMF, passed by the United States Congress three days after the September 11 attacks, authorized the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the attacks, or harbored such organizations or persons. It has been interpreted expansively to cover not only al-Qaeda but its “associated forces” and successor organizations, providing the domestic legal basis for the drone program across multiple countries and against organizations that did not exist on September 11, 2001. Critics argue that the AUMF has been stretched far beyond its original intent, authorizing force against groups and individuals with tenuous connections to the September 11 attacks. Defenders argue that the evolving nature of the terrorist threat requires an evolving interpretation of congressional authorization. The AUMF remains in force and continues to provide the primary domestic legal authority for American counter-terrorism operations globally.

Q: Why has India not invoked the unwilling or unable doctrine despite having strong factual grounds?

India has the strongest factual case for invoking the “unwilling or unable” doctrine of any state in the five-country comparison. Pakistan’s ISI has maintained relationships with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed for decades. Pakistan has refused to extradite or prosecute individuals India has designated as terrorists. Hafiz Saeed lived openly in Lahore for years after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. But invoking the doctrine would require acknowledging the operations it is meant to justify, and India’s entire legal posture rests on denial. Acknowledging operations would trigger the cascade of legal questions that deniability avoids: which legal framework applies, what targeting criteria were used, whether proportionality was satisfied, whether less harmful means were available. Silence is legally safer than the strongest factual argument, because silence prevents the argument from being tested.

Q: What accountability mechanisms exist for targeted killings that go wrong?

Accountability mechanisms vary by country and are universally inadequate. Israel’s Supreme Court required an independent post-operation investigation for every targeted killing, but research has questioned whether the investigative committee functions independently. The United States conducted internal reviews through the CIA Inspector General and the Senate Intelligence Committee, but these reviews were classified and their findings rarely led to policy changes. Russia has no accountability mechanism; the European Court of Human Rights ruling on Litvinenko had no practical effect. India has no acknowledged operations and therefore no accountability mechanism. The United Kingdom has conducted parliamentary inquiries into intelligence sharing but has not addressed individual complicity cases. The structural problem is that targeted killing programs are conducted by intelligence agencies that are designed to operate in secrecy, and accountability requires transparency. The two imperatives are fundamentally in tension, and in every case examined here, secrecy has prevailed.

Q: Could international law be reformed to explicitly address targeted killing?

Reform is theoretically possible but practically unlikely. A new treaty or protocol could codify standards for when targeted killing is permissible, define the “unwilling or unable” doctrine, establish proportionality thresholds, and create accountability mechanisms. The drafting of such a treaty would require consensus among states that currently benefit from the ambiguity, including the five states examined here. None of them has incentive to clarify the law, because clarity would constrain their own programs while empowering adversaries who might invoke the same standards. The ambiguity is a Nash equilibrium: no state can improve its position by unilaterally clarifying the law, and no coalition of states has the incentive and power to impose clarity on the rest. The legal status quo, contested, ambiguous, and exploitable, will persist as long as the states that shape international law benefit from maintaining it.

The legal debate has had no practical effect on India’s shadow war because India does not participate in the debate. India has not constructed a legal framework, has not invoked any legal doctrine, and has not acknowledged any operation. The legal analyses conducted by scholars, the UN Special Rapporteur reports, the Israeli Supreme Court ruling, and the OLC memos all address programs that have been at least partially acknowledged by their operators. India’s total deniability places its operations outside the legal debate entirely. The debate affects India only indirectly, through the political and diplomatic consequences that the debate shapes. When Western governments assess how to respond to allegations of Indian covert operations, the legal framework informs their response: if the targets are designated terrorists and the operations satisfy informal proportionality expectations, the response is muted. If the targets are diaspora activists on Western soil, the response is sharper. The legal debate provides the vocabulary for political decisions, but the decisions themselves are driven by strategic interests.

Both the Skripal and Khashoggi cases demonstrate that legal consequences for targeted killings depend less on the law than on the political context. The Skripal poisoning, which used a military-grade nerve agent in a British city and endangered thousands of civilians, produced the largest coordinated diplomatic expulsion in history: 28 countries expelled over 150 Russian diplomats. The Khashoggi killing, which involved the dismemberment of a journalist inside a diplomatic facility, produced sustained international condemnation, damaged Saudi Arabia’s international reputation, and led to congressional action in the United States. Both cases involved targets who were not terrorists, methods that endangered bystanders or violated diplomatic norms, and targeting states that could not maintain deniability. The lesson is specific: targeted killings produce consequences when the target is sympathetic, the method is outrageous, or the deniability fails. When the target is a designated terrorist, the method is discreet, and the deniability holds, consequences are minimal. The legal framework is the same in both scenarios. The outcome is entirely different.

The proliferation of precision-guided munitions, armed drones, cyber capabilities, and artificial intelligence-driven targeting systems has transformed the legal debate in three ways. First, precision technology has strengthened the proportionality argument by reducing collateral damage. Early Israeli targeted killings used fighter jets dropping one-ton bombs in densely populated neighborhoods, producing significant civilian casualties. Modern drone-fired precision munitions allow strikes with dramatically reduced collateral damage, making the proportionality calculation more favorable to the targeting state. Second, drone technology has lowered the threshold for conducting targeted killings. When targeted killing required human operatives infiltrating hostile territory, as India’s shadow war still does through its motorcycle-borne methodology, the operational cost and risk constrained the number of operations. Drones remove the risk to the targeting state’s personnel, enabling programs of much greater scale: the United States conducted thousands of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia over two decades. Third, artificial intelligence raises new questions about the human role in targeting decisions. Autonomous targeting systems that identify and engage targets without real-time human approval would challenge the fundamental assumption that a human being is responsible for each targeting decision, complicating accountability and potentially violating the requirement for precautionary measures in targeting.

Q: What role do domestic courts play in constraining targeted killing programs?

Domestic courts have played a significant role in only one of the five cases examined: Israel. The Israeli Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling established a framework of conditional legality that, while progressively weakened, remains the most developed judicial engagement with targeted killing anywhere in the world. In the United States, domestic courts have addressed tangential questions (the FOIA litigation that forced disclosure of OLC memos, challenges to the placement of individuals on the targeting list) but have not ruled on the underlying legality of the drone program. American courts have generally deferred to the executive on national security questions, citing the political question doctrine. In Russia, domestic courts have no independence from the executive and have not addressed the issue. In India, no domestic court has been asked to rule because no operation has been acknowledged. In the United Kingdom, parliamentary committees have examined intelligence-sharing complicity, but courts have not adjudicated the question. The limited role of domestic courts reflects both the secrecy in which targeted killing programs operate (courts cannot review what they cannot see) and the institutional reluctance of judiciaries to constrain executive authority in the national security domain.

The targeted killing debate has implications that extend far beyond the practice itself. The “unwilling or unable” doctrine, if accepted as customary international law, would fundamentally weaken the sovereignty protections that anchor the post-1945 international order. Any state could argue that another state was unwilling or unable to suppress a threat and use force on its territory without consent. The elasticized definition of imminence that the United States adopted would allow any state to claim an ongoing threat from any adversary and justify lethal force in response. The combination would produce an international environment in which the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) was functionally nullified. Philip Alston warned of precisely this outcome in his 2010 report: if the United States’ legal interpretations were adopted by other states, the result would be chaos. The question is whether the targeted killing precedents established by Israel, the United States, and now India will remain exceptional (invoked by a few powerful states against specific threats) or become general (invoked by many states against many threats). The trajectory of the precedent will determine whether the prohibition on the use of force, the most consequential achievement of the post-1945 legal order, survives or erodes into irrelevance.

Q: What would a legally compliant targeted killing program look like?

A targeted killing program that satisfied the requirements of international law would need to meet several conditions simultaneously. The targeting state would need to establish that it is engaged in an armed conflict with the organization to which the target belongs, or that the target poses an imminent threat justifying the use of force in self-defense. The target would need to be positively identified as a combatant or a civilian directly participating in hostilities. The operation would need to satisfy proportionality (expected civilian casualties not excessive relative to military advantage), necessity (no less harmful means available), and distinction (targeting only the identified individual, not bystanders). The targeting state would need host-state consent or a credible argument that the host state is unwilling or unable to suppress the threat. An independent post-operation investigation would need to verify that each condition was met. No state currently operating a targeted killing program satisfies all of these conditions for every operation. Israel comes closest on paper. India comes furthest because it acknowledges nothing and therefore satisfies nothing. The gap between what international law requires and what states actually do is the central fact of the targeted killing debate.