>sometimes abused by politicians to field armies at affordable prices in the service of their own greed and vanity.
After Khamenei death Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that Russia is "against killing of the leaders of sovereign countries". Somehow they didn't mention nor regular citizens nor rank-and-file soldiers of sovereign countries.
In the Spanish series "El Cid" there is a nice depiction of how a battle and the whole war immediately ends once the king of one side is killed in that battle. Everybody just went back to their regular business.
A translation of saying in Russian, not sure whether it exists in English - "One's heroism is always a result of incompetency and idiotism of somebody else."