This isn’t a question to which I have a firm answer…but it always is a relevant topic.
To be clear: the optimal action against the mass murderer always is the suicide attack or similar direct action; it likely improves the immediate situation and clearly deters the continued bad behavior. However, if you’re white, and going after dictators surrounded by coloreds, there’s no way you’re getting that close – especially if you are a white foreigner – unless they travel, etc. In that situation, you have almost zero chance of getting the direct shot off.
The question then becomes, what is the correct laddering of actions? Let’s think about objective axes that don’t require a risk assessment.
For example, to increase the internal opposition, what are the most effective targets (other than the ruler), commensurate to the level of violence an individual can bring, in order of the effect of destroying each target?
- The heads of the intelligence services, military, and police, who have the means independently to betray the ruler (hence you are getting a force multiplier by putting them in a no-win situation)
- Bodyguards and their families, as they have a direct means to fix their problems. Similarly, other individuals and their families, who directly serve the ruler.
- Relatives of the ruling class, like children and wives (the similar points about force multiplier, but far less so. I think the benefit is it causes them to flee/be put in protective custody, all of which makes life “not normal” for the rulers)
- Any critical economic lifeline such as diamonds or oil, that could reduce the ruling class to a state of poverty. Similarly, trading magnates, CEOs, and others most responsible for facilitating these lifelines.
- Beyond this, I think most of the targets are about the same in regards to turning the people specifically against the government. Destroying ammunition dumps and stockpiles, attacks on shipping and other transport, and poisoning water and food supplies, all would contribute to demoralization, but don’t have a specific coercive effect either to the ruling class or the mass of people.
To decrease the strength of the ruling class to resist, what are the most effective targets suitable to individual action?
- Again we would start with killing as many of the highest members of the ruling class as possible
- The critical economic lifelines
- Any weak points in military or police logistics, such as weakly defended ammunition dumps and fuel depots, which have a major effect on the mechanized means to kill the ruler’s enemies
- Beyond this, I think there are no targets, which give a disproportionate loss of strength to the ruler’s forces.
One then would ask the question, which are the targets that you can attack with impunity or greatly reduced risk? That is, they might not be the most effective targets, but you can get a lot more of them, therefore having an ultimately larger impact before you are killed. In the era of the technological prison state, I do think there are regimes that don’t have that much surveillance, and therefore you could attack regime family members, pipelines, etc. a few times and get away with it. But in Beijing East Asia and Moscow, it’s very hard to estimate your chances, so I hesitate to give the advice of attacking easier targets. In those areas, I think you have to consider that you will die right away. In a developing country, you may have more options (but you should understand that the great powers can kill you at any time if you prove inconvenient).
I think the question about risk of elimination has more relevance in the context of the open seas, skies, and in relatively free countries. To simplify, let us consider that the reduced risk is: ordinary law enforcement authorities will pursue you if you take violent action against the enemy regime’s citizens and economic assets (and ignore e.g. the enemy regime’s intelligence services and their assassins).
In the open seas and skies, if you have the means to attack, you’re almost certainly going to succeed against commercial shipping and airplanes. Getting surface-to-air missiles is an issue, as is getting a light aircraft big/fast/high-altitude enough to reliably intercept a plane in a suicide attack, tracking that plane, etc. You’re more in the area of RPGs, but even those are tough to get in most countries without some tacit support. Attacking planes on the ground is an option – but it’s such a hard target due to airport security that you would be better off hitting the warehouse with mortars, infiltrate at night and arson the warehouse, etc.
The commercial shipping has a more direct equivalent in regards to piracy around the Arabian peninsula. Even the international coalition had difficulty stopping the piracy for ransom – let alone a direct attack that would sink/ruin the ship and its cargo, which could happen a lot faster. Here I think we could accurately assess the probabilities of success as being high, as long as the manifests/your intel were correct.
As for killing individuals, we also have a pretty good idea in regards to manhunts for mass shooters and bombers. If you are upfront, working in public areas, likely the police will get you in a week, so that’s a suicide attack (but if you are about to die anyway, that may be OK). If you are trickier and more skillful e.g. with stolen license plates and cars, you may be able to get away with it completely – but it will take some time and planning, as at that point you effectively are performing the similar mitigations as an organized crime operation.
Now, having examined three different axes of goodness in regards to what might be the most damaging individually-executed strategies to employ against the enemy, now we can bring them back together and come up with a tentative summary of the approaches to take:
In the case where you imminently will die/therefore do not have a large amount of time for preparations, and hence only may have a gun or even just a knife:
- If you can find any highest-ranking official, their bodyguards, or their family members abroad/in a vulnerable position, kill as many of them as you can
- If you know key industry leaders, traders, or similar who do a lot of business with the enemy (therefore providing a lot of economic support), kill them (economic damage by the backdoor)
- If you can’t find/access such a highest-ranking official, but you are in the country where they live, attack the most important government building you can access, with the intent to kill as many of the officials as you can; or, if the prospects look very poor for any such target, stalk the officials to their homes and kill them when they are vulnerable/you may be able to escape to kill more of them. Recognize in this case, that likely people who attempt this will only end up killing a few guards.
- If you are in not in the country where the bulk of the enemy operates, you kill diplomats and others who are likely to be facilitating international terrorist murder and other activities that impede resistance efforts. (Note: a diplomat of a country that is not known to engage in such activities, is a low-value target at best. You probably would do more good by attacking border guards.)
In the case where you are beginning the decline and therefore have time:
- Killing the highest-ranking officials specifically should be your goal, since you have patience and can wait for them to move into a more vulnerable position, or to infiltrate their organization/entice them into a trap
- If you have no access to such officials at all (and therefore likely not even their bodyguards), the balance should be between identifying economic damages vs. killing rulers’ friends and relatives without getting caught. A lot depends on your current role in society and the knowledge you have about trade flows. The more new and unusual research you do, and preparations for a direct attack on supply lines, the more likely you are to be exposed as a potential saboteur. Because of this, killing the highest-profile traders and industry leaders still is probably the better choice.