Author: Simon Ball
ISBN No: 9780300258042
Review date: 15/06/2026
No of pages: 464
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publisher URL:
https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300258042/death-to-order/
Year of publication: 01/07/2025
Brief:
Death to Order A Modern History of Assassination
price
£25
This history of assassinations since 1914 is a high-class read. The murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, led to the First World War. While itโs a story, then, of high politics โ in a vivid phrase, the author calls his study โakin to running a razor blade down the history of international politicsโ โ it also holds lots of interest to the private security reader, in terms of how to protect โvery very important peopleโ.
To leave the book for a moment and to turn to the dictionary, for a definition of assassination; itโs killing with treachery, which implies deceit or a betrayal of trust. As Julius Caesar famously said of one of his assassins, et tu, Brute? Someone has come within range, without showing murderous intent until itโs too late for the victim to do something about it. Ball notes that definitions are slippery; he terms assassination โpolitical murderโ. An ambush.
The author – a professor of history at the University of Leeds – has some enjoyably provocative ideas; such as that the most serious two periods of assassinations in the 20th century were from 1914 to 1928; and 1979 to 1986 (including attempts on Pope John Paul II and President Reagan; and the โ unsolved – shooting of Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme). That implies, and as the author spells out, the assassination of US President John F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the troubled 1960s in America were not so important, in terms of political outcomes.
As for the 1970s, the author notes that assassinations were part of a rise in terrorism in that era, whether nationalist or extreme left-wing or other. States responded by cooperating on the basis of โshared assumptionsโ (it pays heads of state to give a hand to other heads, because the sorts of dictator that help assassins, may well face assassination attempts themselves). That cooperation may be breaking down, not least because the United States demonstrably has a policy of targeting โ by intel to locate, and then sending special forces or drones – prominent foreigners it doesnโt like, no matter what political colour the president. The Democrat Obama gave permission for the killing of Osama bin Laden (in Pakistan, embarrassingly), while the Republican Trump opened his war on Iran in 2026 by killing its head of state.
As that implies and as Simon Ball points out from the outset, the storyโs not only people for various reasons โ political belief (such as Irish, Indians and Egyptians against the British Empire in the 1920s), or mere disgruntlement โ seeking to kill political leaders, but those leaders assassinating their critics, wherever they are. One example Ball gives at the very start; the Chilean dictator Pinochet had one critic blown up in Washington DC (the capital of the โsuperpower backerโ of Pinochet, making the killing either daring or stupid). Thatโs (to be cold-blooded) ideal for an historian because the case was so fully investigated. Ball notes โthe four common elements of assassination: the procurers of assassination, the assassins, the tools of the trade, and the cover-upโ. What may be an uncomfortable truth, Ball articulates at the very beginning; assassination is about the exercise of power. It reveals statesmen (and their servants, whether diplomats, intelligence agencies and hired killers and bombers) at their most authentic.
The book is up to date enough to include the attempt on the then candidate for election, Donald Trump, at Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024. We can call the verdict mixed: the author notes that the โsecurity perimeterโ worked – the assassin was not able to get close enough to use a handgun. Yet it stands to reason that the counter-sniper sweep failed. The author correctly points to the most serious shortcoming of protective security of all; not this gate or barrier missing, or process not followed, but human complacency.
Turning to Britain, the author gives the example of Westminster Bridge in 2017 for how a terror attack can go from targeting the general public (on the bridge) to VIPs and then VVIPs (government ministers rather than mere members of Parliament). But bodyguarding for British political figures on public appearances, Ball shows, goes way back, at least to the 1930s.
Ball has done an outstanding job. After all the marking of the centenary of the First World War, you might doubt anything original can be said about โSarajevoโ, yet he shows how โthe eventual unwinding of the Sarajevo assassination conspiracyโ โ how much did the authorities in Serbia know beforehand? โ eventually, taking about 15 years, โshaped the shared imaginative space of world statesmenโ such as Winston Churchill.
As for the foreseeable future, the fragmenting of international rules-based order is likely to be mirrored in assassination as nationsโ policy towards enemies. What Ball calls โobservable effectsโ โ and that democracies might find an uncomfortable read โ will continue.
