Imagine you’re the leader of a country. You’ve got beef with the leader of another country.

You can resolve your beef by sending thousands or tens of thousands of plebs to die, while remaining safe yourself, or you can normalize directly targeting each other with assassins.

In the first case, you sit safely on your ivory throne sipping wine while the conflict resolves itself. In the latter case, you’re constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering who’s going to come for you next.