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A structural-relational analysis of party dynamics in proxy wars
Abstract
Abstract
Proxy wars are still under-represented in conflict research and a key cause for this is the lack of conceptual and terminological care. This article seeks to demonstrate that minimising terminological diffusion increases overall analytical stability by maximising conceptual rigour. The argument opens with a discussion on the terminological ambivalence resulting from the haphazard employment of labels referencing the parties involved in proxy wars. Here, the article introduces an analytical framework with a two-fold aim: to reduce label heterogeneity, and to argue in favour of understanding proxy war dynamics as overlapping dyads between a Beneficiary, a Proxy, and a Target. This is then applied to the issues of defining and theorising party dynamics in proxy wars. It does so by providing a structural-relational analysis of the interactions between the above- mentioned parties based on strategic interaction. It presents a tentative explanation of the proxy relationship by correlating the Beneficiary’s goal towards the Target with the Proxy’s preference for the Beneficiary. In adding the goal-preference relational heuristic, the article advances the recent focus on strategic interaction with a novel variant to explanations based on interest, power, cost–benefit considerations or ideology.
Keywords
conceptual analysis, external support, proxy war, strategic interaction, terminology
... Yet, even when accounting for trends and fashions, a closer inspection reveals multiple barriers of entry into the debate, across fields and disciplines, each with conceptual, theoretical, and methodological preferences. As previously remarked, these include Cold War historiography, covert action and secrecy, and conflict and terrorism research (Rauta, 2018). Moreover, proxy war literature pushed through by ignoring some of this research, and by being ignored by others in return, 1 in such a way that it emerged and evolved in and from relative anarchy with multidisciplinarity disguised as interdisciplinarity (Barkawi, 2011, p. 707). ...
... Overlapping war and warfare as well as the dynamics of terrorist and insurgent violence, the adjective "proxy" came to delineate a category of thought complicated "by the myriad of forms that proxy intervention can take" (Loveman, 2002, p. 31). As discussion of definitions already exist in in the literature (Rauta, 2018), two observations are relevant here because they link to the search for knowledge gaps and the types of questions the framers asked. First, what might be regarded as conceptual disarray 3 is the by-product of the framers re-discovering a concept with slightly compromised analytical capital-due to the pioneering, yet hugely diverse Cold War literatures of the founders. ...
... With the notion gaining significant policy traction, reformers saw beyond concepts as nominal problems. The debate evaluated the theoretical implications of labeling parties in proxy wars (Rauta, 2018), and proceeded to differentiate between proxies, auxiliaries, and surrogates (Scheipers, 2017). This typological effort provided greater coherence to the debate since explicit conceptualization is not merely a means of classification but functioned as a way of fostering dialogue between the many corners from which proxy wars were studied. ...
The rapid expansion of the proxy war literature invites an examination of its advances and developments. This article’s aims are threefold. First, to assess proxy war literature with a view to understand how it has progressed knowledge. Second, to map the field’s effort to cumulate knowledge. Third, to think creatively about the future directions of this research agenda as it addresses a problem no longer at the periphery of contemporary security debates. This article proposes a novel categorization of the evolution of our thinking about proxy wars across three “generations”: founders, framers, and reformers. Following on from this, it provides an assessment of the literature’s assumptions in order to show what remains, or not, under-studied. In doing so, it makes a case for a historiography of the idea of “proxy war,” and one for embedding strategy in analyses of wars by proxy.
... Salisbury (2015) e Munteanu (2015) exploram o jogo geopolítico entre os dois poderes regionais no conflito entre os Houthis e o governo iemenita reconhecido internacionalmente. Rauta (2018Rauta ( , 2021 foca-se na conceptualização do termo "guerra por procuração" e nas dinâmicas de envolvimento das partes. Karakir (2018) avalia a natureza da guerra iemenita, questionando-se acerca da viabilidade em descrever o conflito como uma guerra por procuração. ...
The conflict in Yemen, ongoing since 2015, between the Houthi movement and the internationally recognized central government, presents an international dimension, as part of the military campaign carried out by a coalition of Sunni countries led by Saudi Arabia, in support of the President Abd Mansur al-Hadi in fighting houthi forces; and the tactical and military assistance given to the Houthis by Iran. In that way, a proxy war was established by the two major powers of the Middle East region, in the context of a geopolitical rivalry, characterized by a fierce competition for the status of regional hegemonic power. However, Riyadh´s offer of a ceasefire in Yemen, and the diplomatic overtures granted to Saudi Arabia by the new Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, have represented a reversal of the status quo. Keywords: Yemen; Conflict; Saudi Arabia; Iran
... Around the same time, Russia's annexation of Crimea, its interventions under the threshold of open hostilities elsewhere, and Chinese activities in the South China Sea underpinned debates on 'hybrid' (Renz 2016) and 'grey/gray zone' (Hughes 2020;Rauta & Monaghan 2021) warfare. Interest in the indirect intervention of outside powers in the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars (amongst other recent conflicts) has similarly renewed scholarly and practitioner interest in the study of conflict delegation and 'proxy war' (Rauta 2018(Rauta , 2021aKarlén et al 2021). ...
... By orientating remote warfare scholarship around the analytical puzzles generated from the distancing of conventional ground forces from frontline fighting, it becomes difficult to differentiate remote warfare from other frameworks such as surrogate warfare (Krieg and Rickli 2018) and vicarious warfare (Waldman 2018). The relationship between remote warfare and proxy war (Rauta 2018(Rauta , 2020 is also ambiguous, despite direct references to the use of "proxies" within some remote warfare literature (Riemann and Rossi 2021a, 79;Watson and Mckay 2021, 10). ...
This paper aims to develop the study of remote warfare’s constitutive “remoteness.” It proposes a novel definition of remoteness as the degree of the American public’s socio-psychological detachment from the realities of political violence fought at a physical distance from the continental United States, as mediated through spectatorship of the use of military force. The remoteness of remote warfare has physical, psychological, and social properties. We argue that it exists on a continuum subject to change over time and should not be approached as a fixed condition measured solely by the physical distance separating combatants involved in armed fighting or as the use of various weapons technologies. The numerous dynamics associated with the remoteness of remote warfare are illustrated through an examination of American military intervention in Libya during Obama’s presidency. From the height of the 2011 NATO intervention in the country onwards, US military operations in Libya became more “remote” for the American public. Whilst other contextual factors contributed toward this outcome, we argue that the diminished spectacle surrounding the 2016 Operation Odyssey Lightning helps explain the American public’s increasing remoteness from military intervention in Libya.
... 5 We expect a sponsor's fear of rebels' non-compliance to be significantly diminished by shared ethnic ties. While aligned goals between a rebel group and a sponsor might stem from a diversity of sources (Rauta 2018;San-Akca 2016), ethnic ties between a sponsor and a rebel group indicate shared or at least compatible goals in many conflict settings (see Saideman 1997Saideman , 2001Saideman , 2002Maoz and San-Akca 2012;Cederman, Girardin, and Gleditsch 2009;Cederman et al. 2013;Salehyan 2010, 505;Byman and Kreps 2010, 5). Ethnic ties might also provide both parties with information about each other. ...
Instead of attacking their adversaries directly, states often do so indirectly by supporting rebel groups. While these support relationships vary considerably, existing research lacks a comprehensive account thereof. To explain states’ choice of support, we suggest differentiating between two modes of support relationships according to the control opportunities they offer states over rebels: while delegation enables “hands-on” control, “hands-off” orchestration allows for plausible deniability and does not harm rebels’ local legitimacy. We argue that sponsors prefer orchestration when “hands-on” control can be substituted by goal alignment or competition; and they prefer delegation when the conflict is highly salient. Tests using global data for the period 1975-2009 support the first two expectations. Surprisingly, states’ capabilities also render “hands-off” orchestration more likely. The paper advances the understanding of external rebel support by transferring insights from indirect governance theory to the study of indirect wars and putting it to a statistical test.
... First, as Tamm argued, there is a lack of conceptual work on proxy war (2014, p. 381; see Hughes 2012, p. 5), with the exception of an analysis of the theoretical implication of terminological choices regarding the parties involved in proxy wars (Rauta 2018), and Hauter's attempt at bridging the 'intervention '-'delegation' gap (2019). There have been calls to 'get real about what a proxy war is' (Beehner 2015), to move beyond the paralysis of the debate by providing richer and sharper definitions (Groh 2019, Sterman 2019, and an acknowledgement of the theoretical impediments brought by the lack of conceptual clarity (Moghadam and Wyss 2020, p. 124). ...
This article presents a definitional structure for the notion of 'proxy war' organised around three components: (1) a material-constitutive feature, (2) a processual feature and (3) a relational feature. First, the article evaluates the multiple usages of the term of 'proxy war' in light of its contested character. Second, it proposes a way of making sense of the literature's conceptual turmoil by analysing the different attempts at defining the notion. To this end, it adds an important link to the methodology of concept analysis, namely the 'semantic field', which it reintroduces as a heuristic to identify 'military intervention' as a root concept for defining proxy wars. The article does so by identifying a type of semantic relationship between 'proxy war' and 'military intervention', namely sub-type inclusion.
... While innovative in that is seeks to capture something more than just a mode of war, it is worth discussing what the new term -"surrogate warfare"adds or what terrain it seeks to cover in the already crowded semantic field of delegation (Rauta 2018). Hew Strachan remarked that the clarity of a concept rests it its ability to link the context, process, and dynamic of the problem war is tasked to tackle (2009). ...
... As Carey and Mitchell recently put it, governments often 'settle for less than a monopoly of violence' (Carey and Mitchell 2017, 128), proxies being one conduit of managing this situation. Recent scholarly efforts have refined our understanding of proxies (Berman and Lake 2019 ;Rauta 2018;Waldman 2018;Mumford 2013;Hughes 2012), distinguished between proxy and auxiliary relationships (Rauta in Brown et al 2019;Scheipers 2015) and identified surrogacy as a standalone strategic relationship (Krieg and Rickli 2018;Waldman 2019;Krieg 2016;Hughes and Tripodi 2009). The complexity of the consumption and management of violence in contemporary settings, and the differences between proxies, auxiliaries, and surrogates are relevant to the hybrid warfare debate. ...
This article presents a typology of armed non-state actors in hybrid warfare: proxy, auxiliary, surrogate and affiliated forces. By focusing on the kinetic domain of hybrid warfare, the article offers a corrective to a debate that has so far ignored variation in roles and functions of non-state actors and their relationships with states and their regular forces. As a denominator, ‘hybrid’ identifies a combination of battlespaces, types of operations—military or non-kinetic—and a blurring of actors with the scope of achieving strategic objectives by creating exploitable ambiguity. However, there has been a disproportionate focus on what hybrid war supposedly combines across battlespaces and domains (socio-political, economic, informational), at the expense of who and how. Using the Ukrainian crisis as a theory-building exercise, the article suggests a four-category schema that identifies non-state actor functions as a tool to better represent the complex franchise of violence that is found nested next to non-military operations in hybrid activity. In so doing, the article speaks to a call for better conceptualization the role of non-state violent actors in civil war, in general, and in hybrid warfare, in particular.
There are two dominant perspectives in the literature regarding the concept of proxy war, which was forgotten in the post-Cold War era but is now regaining popularity. The group led by Karl Deutsch defines proxy war as the intervention of other states in a civil war in a country, and the situation where the civil war in question gains an interstate conflict nature. The other group argues that proxy war was a common form of warfare even before 1945. This study problematizes two perspectives. Accordingly, a new conceptual framework of proxy wars is constructed, aiming to eliminate the conceptual ambiguity caused by these two perspectives.
Continuing from Chap. 4 with the theme of death, Chap. 5 asks about the circumstances in which tens of thousands of migrants crossing the Mediterranean have been left by EU states to drown, being rescued at sea by civilians, and then are returned to Libya or Turkey. Especially since 2015, a plethora of studies has emerged on this question of ‘push-back’ by the EU. This chapter shows how selective visa regimes punish those most in need of protection, as EU member states decide who will survive and who must risk death by drowning. EU member states do not even bother to identify the border-dead; that too is done by NGOs instead of governments. Why do EU member states go to such lengths (and spend so much money) in order to avoid moral, legal and historical, post-colonial responsibilities for those fleeing danger and disaster to the islands and shores of Europe? This chapter includes testimonies of the life and near-death experiences of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean.
Proxy wars are an increasingly common feature of great power competition in the 21st century. In this context, the role of the small states is less clear and has not been properly addressed in the academic literature. Although states of this type have often been chosen as battlegrounds for such wars and have even acted as proxies for the superpowers, this article argues that they are also capable of conducting proxy warfare themselves. Since the start of the 2014 conflict in Donbas, Eastern Ukraine, this country has experienced proxy interventions from many external actors, both large and small, that provided resources to both conflict parties. One of the smallest states which has been trying to affect the course of this conflict in support of the Ukrainian government is Lithuania. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with the security and defence policy-makers in Vilnius, the article aims to explain why Lithuania is punching above its weight and interfering with this conflict from backstage. The empirical evidence points to an almost perfect alignment of interests between the current governments in Kiev and Vilnius in that they both see Russia as their long-term ‘enemy’ which makes Ukraine a surprisingly suitable proxy for Lithuania to exploit.
This chapter addresses fundamentalism by placing it within international relations broadly and the interactive strategic environment more narrowly. By comparing the role played by fundamentalism within two ethno-nationalist groups and the development of their campaigns, this chapter challenges some of the long running assumptions around the topic of fundamentalism, including the role of religion and the simplistic answers which have been offered on the topic in the past. We present fundamentalism as a strategic choice which brings positive and negative consequences to those who embrace it. Arguing that adopting and maintaining, or eventually abandoning, a fundamentalist position is a strategic choice, we reposition the topic of fundamentalism away from a simplistic label of non-state actors and towards a more nuanced position within the wider strategic environment.
Irregular militaries and militias are armed non-state actors playing increasingly significant roles in international conflicts, yet they are not studied in International Relations (IR) theories as independent from states. This chapter provides an overview and illustrates how irregular militaries and militias work independently of states, with a focus on the three main cases of Iraqi Shiite militias: Wala’iya, Marja’iya, and Sadrist. It argues that the main IR theories have insufficient tools to adequately explain the existence and influence of irregular militaries and militias in the international environment because of the state being the main unit of analysis. Many irregular militaries and militias have more coercive capabilities than states and engage in strategic conflicts in the international environment, yet there is no established epistemology to study them. This is a gap in IR theories that needs to be filled.
The recent assassinations of General Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh have renewed debates surrounding governments’ use of assassination. Some commentators have interpreted these episodes as an escalation in practices of “remote warfare.” Recently, the literature on remote warfare has expanded to include multiple activities at – and below – the threshold of war. From its original focus on geographical distance, “remoteness” now encompasses the “political” distance of deployments of force. In this understanding, “remoteness” has blurred the line separating the methods used to deploy force and the ways – overt or covert – in which they are deployed. Having highlighted the role of covertness, this article establishes that assassination should be included in the “remote warfare” canon. A study of the US government’s involvement in assassination permits us to elucidate the interplay between remoteness and covertness. The article shows that a deeper engagement with the assassination as a tool of US foreign policy provides two main advantages. First, it permits us to better historicise the “opacity” and “political distance” of practices associated with “remote warfare.” Second, it helps unveil the origins of the legal, political, and technological infrastructures that currently sustain much of the US government’s global “remote wars.”
The debates around remote warfare have grown significantly over the last decade, leading to the term acquiring a certain buzz in the media, think-tank, and policy discourse. The lack of any serious attempt to reflect and take stock of this body of scholarship informs the scope of this special issue, in general, and of this article in particular. This paper addresses this former gap and, in doing so, serves a threefold purpose. First, to provide a state-of-the-art review of this emerging debate. Second, to both categorise what properties make a buzzword and to make the case for why existing remote warfare scholarship should be approached in this way. Third, to introduce how the various contributions to this special issue extend the debate’s conceptual, theoretical, and empirical parameters.
This forum provides an outlet for an assessment of research on the delegation of war to non-state armed groups in civil wars. Given the significant growth of studies concerned with this phenomenon over the last decade, this forum critically engages with the present state of the field. First, we canvass some of the most important theoretical developments to demonstrate the heterogeneity of the debate. Second, we expand on the theme of complexity and investigate its multiple facets as a window into pushing the debate forward. Third, we draw the contours of a future research agenda by highlighting some contemporary problems, puzzles, and challenges to empirical data collection. In essence, we seek to connect two main literatures that have been talking past each other: external support in civil wars and proxy warfare. The forum bridges this gap at a critical juncture in this new and emerging scholarship by offering space for scholarly dialogue across conceptual labels.
This paper explores the question of what drives proxy alignment in war and argues that current proxy war scholarship needs further thinking to go beyond focusing on the principal–agent theory and individual actors’ motivation analysis. Rather, there is a need to look at the generative mechanisms of proxy alignment as a process that constitutes patterns of friend–enemy relations. The paper argues securitization patterns from domestic to regional and international levels drive actors to re-evaluate their positions and define their enemies and friends. This is a process of securitization alignment and confluence, which serves as a generative mechanism for proxy alignment in a conflict. Securitization alignment is based on a convergence of securitizations by different actors that create a friend–enemy dynamic and convergence of security interests between actors. The confluence of securitizations from the domestic level to regional and beyond also connects actors across different levels to be in alignment and impact the conflict.
The phenomenon of war by proxy has received inadequate academic analysis. At the same time, an understanding of how ex-combatants are demobilised, disarmed and reintegrated into society after conflicts that have seen large-scale third-party intervention has been systematically overlooked. In seeking to rectify this gap and transform understanding of peacebuilding after proxy wars, this article will enhance the conceptualisation of the effect of proxy wars on post-conflict development. In order to achieve this, the article is split into five main parts. The first section assesses disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) and proxy wars in theory and practice to establish some conceptual fundamentals. The second section analyses the nature of proxy war and highlights the problems it poses for the commencement of DDR policies. The third section analyses how the implementation of DDR policies has historically accounted for the role played by external actors. The fourth section utilises a case study approach to look at the DDR consequences of the recent proxy war against Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. The fifth section ties the policy and scholarly issues together by exploring some important lessons for DDR policy design and implementation after proxy wars.
The United Kingdom’s integrated defense and security review put “grey zone” or “hybrid” challenges at the center of national security and defense strategy. The United Kingdom is not alone: The security and defense policies of NATO, the European Union, and several other countries (including the United States, France, Germany, and Australia) have taken a hybrid-turn in recent years. This article attempts to move the hybrid debate toward more fertile ground for international policymakers and scholars by advocating a simple distinction between threats and warfare. The United Kingdom’s attempts to grapple with its own hybrid policy offer a national case study in closing the gap between rhetoric and practice, or stagecraft and statecraft, before an avenue of moving forward is proposed—informally, through a series of questions, puzzles, and lessons from the British experience—to help international policy and research communities align their efforts to address their own stagecraft-statecraft dichotomies.
The heated bilateral relation between Iran and the United States has brought the middle east into another level of problem. The divided geopolitical and regional interest of both countries has led to several and many multidimensional issues, ranging from political, security, and even to economic ones. This article discussed the Iran – US tension on their proxy conflict in the Middle East. This article employs the Regional Security Complex Theory to construct the events related to both states’ proxy conflicts. The polarized region for sure has drawn another line that seems to be more complexed for both countries to achieve mutual understanding and continued peacebuilding. The US withdrawal from JCPOA, killing of Soleimani, and Saudi Arabia – Iran Yemen proxy war exacerbated the status quo. This article perceived that the intertwined issues show how the traditional thought of security should be redefined as both countries try to gain bargaining power. Especially with Iran that was hindered very much by sanctions and embargo placed by the US. This article discusses many important issues on Iran, US, and Saudi Arabia involvement and their correlated dynamics within the UN. This article analyzed Trump’s leadership style in the Middle East and its implication from the proxy war to the Middle East security architecture.
How does external support to insurgents influence the likelihood that the latter will get involved in violent clashes against other rebel groups? In this article, we outline a theoretical framework which contends that, in multiparty civil wars, rebels sponsored by foreign states are more likely to participate in high-intensity inter-rebel conflicts than rebels receiving no support from external states. We argue that this is because external support creates strategic incentives for insurgent leaders to target other rebel contenders in order to signal resolve to their sponsors and to crowd out the battlefield ahead of the post-conflict period. External support, moreover, tends to activate potent socio-psychological mechanisms among rank-and-file combatants that may remove restraints on the use of violence against other rebel fighters. Using data on inter-rebel conflicts from 1989 to 2018, we test these hypotheses with a set of large-N regressions and find strong support for our theory. Further analyzes inductively reveal that our statistical results are likely, to some extent, to be driven by the prevalence of religious insurgencies in contemporary conflicts. Religious insurgencies display organizational features that could reinforce vertical strategic incentives and horizontal socio-psychological dynamics, thereby increasing their involvement in inter-rebel fighting. To further probe the ‘meso-foundations’ of inter-rebel fighting following rebel sponsorship, we then provide qualitative evidence on the Syrian Civil War. Our article contributes to scholarship by highlighting the consequences of external support on conflict processes beyond the insurgent-incumbent dyad.
¿De qué manera el apoyo externo a los insurgentes influye en la probabilidad de que se involucren en enfrentamientos violentos contra otros grupos rebeldes? En este artículo, exponemos un marco teórico que sostiene que, en las guerras civiles en las que hay varias partes involucradas, los rebeldes financiados por estados extranjeros tienen más probabilidades de participar en conflictos de gran intensidad entre grupos rebeldes que los que no reciben apoyo de estados externos. Sostenemos que esto se debe a que el apoyo externo crea incentivos estratégicos para que los líderes insurgentes apunten a otros rivales rebeldes con la finalidad de dar una señal de resolución a sus financiadores y atestar el campo de batalla para tener una ventaja en el período posterior al conflicto. Además, el apoyo externo tiende a activar potentes mecanismos sociopsicológicos entre los combatientes de base que pueden eliminar las restricciones sobre el uso de violencia contra otros combatientes rebeldes. Mediante el uso de datos sobre conflictos entre rebeldes de 1989 a 2018, probamos estas hipótesis con un conjunto de regresiones de N grandes y descubrimos que nuestra teoría tiene un gran sustento. Análisis adicionales revelan por inducción que nuestros resultados estadísticos probablemente, en cierta medida, estén impulsados por la prevalencia de insurgencias religiosas en los conflictos contemporáneos. Las insurgencias religiosas muestran rasgos organizativos que podrían reforzar los incentivos estratégicos verticales y las dinámicas sociopsicológicas horizontales y, por consiguiente, aumentar su implicación en peleas entre rebeldes. Para indagar más las “bases a nivel meso” de las peleas entre rebeldes a consecuencia de la financiación, podemos proporcionar pruebas cualitativas de la guerra civil siria. Nuestro artículo contribuye a la investigación mediante el énfasis en las consecuencias del apoyo externo en los procesos de conflicto más allá de la díada formada por los insurgentes.
Comment le soutien extérieur aux insurgés influence-t-il la probabilité que ces derniers s’impliquent dans des affrontements violents contre d’autres groupes rebelles ? Dans cet article, nous présentons un cadre théorique qui affirme que, dans les guerres civiles multipartites, les rebelles soutenus par des États étrangers sont davantage susceptibles de participer à des conflits entre rebelles de forte intensité que les rebelles ne bénéficiant d’aucun soutien d’États extérieurs. Nous affirmons que cela est dû au fait que le soutien extérieur donne lieu à des incitations stratégiques motivant les chefs insurgés à cibler des groupes rebelles concurrents afin de signaler leur détermination aux acteurs qui les soutiennent et d’évincer ces groupes concurrents du champ de bataille avant la période post-conflit. De plus, le soutien extérieur tend à activer des mécanismes socio-psychologiques puissants pouvant éliminer la retenue des combattants de base à recourir à la violence contre d’autres combattants rebelles. Nous nous sommes appuyés sur des données sur les conflits entre rebelles entre 1989 et 2018 pour vérifier ces hypothèses à l’aide d’un ensemble de régressions à grande échelle, et nous avons constaté que notre théorie était solidement étayée. D’autres analyses inductives ont révélé que nos résultats statistiques étaient susceptibles, dans une certaine mesure, d’être déterminés par la prévalence des insurrections religieuses dans les conflits contemporains. Les insurrections religieuses présentent des caractéristiques organisationnelles pouvant potentiellement renforcer les incitations stratégiques verticales et les dynamiques socio-psychologiques horizontales, ce qui peut accroître l’implication des insurgés dans des combats entre rebelles. Nous proposons ensuite des preuves qualitatives issues de la guerre civile syrienne pour explorer encore davantage les « bases au niveau méso » des combats entre rebelles qui interviennent suite au soutien aux rebelles. Notre article contribue aux recherches en soulignant les conséquences du soutien extérieur sur les processus de conflit au-delà de la dyade insurgés-pouvoir en place.
Although information is nothing new to war or conflict, the speed at which it reaches a much wider target audience, and thus its potential impact and consequences, is changing due to the rapid development of information and communications technology. Regime change and information warfare have been around for a very long time in the history of organised human societies. An undertaken review of academic literature demonstrates a great interest today to these concepts in academic, policymaking and practical terms. The present article attempts to track the evolution of the Western conceptual and theoretical thinking on the use of regime change and information warfare, seeking to understand the factors that precipitate it. In the paper I address the following, what is the relationship between information warfare and regime change? The high level of information and communications technology development and persisting leadership globally have allowed the United States to engage in regime change and information warfare more effective, although not without risks. The author considers the most illustrative examples of such engagement and, based on them, concludes that we have seen a shift in motivation from an offensive stance (the desire to spread influence) to a defensive one (the desire to prevent other international actors from gaining influence and power) on the global level. The theoretical method chosen for the analysis is phenomenology, as a means of the reading and analysis of a lived experience as well as a qualitative method will be used to analyse the data, where the goal is to capture the complexity of the object of study.
Global datasets on interstate armed conflict suggest that African states clash with each other rarely and only for short periods. This research note shows that existing datasets paint a misleading picture. In fact, African states fight each other more often and for longer than is commonly thought, but they do so by mutually intervening in each other's intrastate conflicts. Instead of relying solely on their own armed forces, they support their rival's armed opposition groups. Such mutual interventions—most prevalent in Africa but also evident in other regions—thus span the boundaries of interstate and intrastate conflict. As a result, they have been largely overlooked by conflict scholars. Our note conceptualizes mutual intervention as a distinct form of interstate conflict, comparing and contrasting it with concepts like proxy war, competitive intervention, and international rivalry. The note then presents the first systematic survey of mutual interventions across the African continent. We identify twenty-three cases between 1960 and 2010 and demonstrate that they typically ended independently of their associated intrastate conflicts. We conclude with a research agenda that involves studying the onset, duration, termination, and consequences of mutual interventions, including collecting data on mutual interventions outside Africa to explore cross-regional differences.
This article presents an examination of the dynamics of interstate cyber disputes. More precisely, it explores which country-level factors will lead to a larger/smaller number of cyber incidents involving that state. A number of different predictors for cyber disputes are tested using negative binomial regression analysis. The dataset for this paper is based on the Dyadic Cyber Incident and Dispute Dataset. There are four main takeaways. First, more conventional military strength also leads a state to be more frequently involved in cyber incidents. Second, countries that are better connected to the internet employ cyber operations more often but they are also more appealing targets. Third, having a highly educated population makes countries more prone to using cyber tactics. Fourth, the dynamics of cyber disputes differ significantly from those of more conventional conflicts. GDP per capita, military alliances, and regime type do not affect cyber operations in the way they influence conventional warfare.
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The intention of this paper is to clarify how state patrons control non-state proxy forces fighting on their behalf. In order to address
the subject matter thoroughly, specific attention was paid to a number of questions including a) the criteria determining patron proxy
relations, b) factors influencing the selection process of proxy forces, and c) principles governing the maximisation of potential
benefits of using proxies, whilst simultaneously reducing risks and associated costs. The author applied a neo-realistic research
paradigm to his work. Patron-proxy relations were presented in the context of the principal-agent theory, as well as through detailed
analysis of ongoing scenarios involving Iran and Hezbollah, Russia and the Donbass separatists, Pakistan and Kashmiri militias, the
US and Syrian rebels. The essence of war by proxy is to influence the strategic result of an armed conflict without direct, full-scale,
military intervention. The use of non-state proxy, external actors is aimed at maximising their political goals and strategic interests
whilst maintaining “plausible deniability”. By supporting non-state proxies, indirectly or by providing limited direct assistance,
sponsors operate below the threshold of war. Empirical analysis of proxy war cases proves that such models may both guarantee
“strategic victory” or become a “double-edged sword”. One of the key challenges for external powers engaged in war by proxy is to
avoid unintended consequences (blowback). The author argues that elements such as ideology, ethnicity or religion do not necessarily
ensure control over proxies, whilst the range of common goals and interests, and the level of the proxy’s dependency, are crucial.
Studies of conflicts involving the use of surrogates focus largely on states, viewing the relationship between sponsors and proxies primarily as one in which states utilize nonstate actors as proxies. They have devoted far less attention to sponsor-proxy arrangements in which nonstate actors play super-ordinate roles as sponsors in their own right. Why and how do nonstate actors sponsor proxies? Unlike state sponsors, which value proxies primarily for their military utility, nonstate sponsors select and utilize proxies mainly for their perceived political value. Simply put, states tend to sponsor military surrogates, whereas nonstate actors sponsor political ancillaries. Both endogenous actor-based traits and exogenous structural constraints account for these different approaches. An analysis of three case studies of nonstate sponsors that differ in terms of ideology and capacity—al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the People's Protection Units in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon—confirms this argument, but also suggests that the ability and desire to control proxies varies with the sponsor's capacity. High-capacity nonstate sponsors such as Hezbollah behave similarly to state sponsors, but remain exceptional. Most nonstate sponsors are less dominant, rendering the relationships to their proxies more transactional and pragmatic, and ultimately less enduring than those of state sponsors and their clients.
The malaise that the United States, and the West, have experienced in recent campaigns stems in large part from unclear thinking about war, its political essence, and the strategies needed to join the two. Instead, analysis and response are predicated on entrenched theoretical concepts with limited practical utility. The inadequacy of understanding has spawned new, and not so new, terms to capture unanticipated trends, starting with the re-discovery of “insurgency” and “counterinsurgency” and leading to discussion of “hybrid threats” and “gray-zone” operations. New terminology can help, but the change must go deeper. Challenging analytical orthodoxy, this article sets out a unifying approach for the study of political violence, or more accurately: violent politics. It provides a conceptual foundation that helps to make sense of recent shifts in warfare. In effect, it offers sorely needed theoretical insights into the nature of strategy and guides the process of responding to nontraditional threats.
This article examines contemporary modes of American warfare. It posits the concept of “vicarious warfare” as a means of capturing prominent patterns in warfighting approaches. Although rooted in long-standing traditions of military practice, vicarious warfare is sufficiently novel as to be identifiable as a distinct phenomenon. The precise manifestation or combination of vicarious methods vary according to the specific circumstances and political contexts prevailing in different theaters. However, America’s general preference is to fight its wars by delegating tasks to proxies and limiting exposure of its own military to danger. Where U.S. forces are employed directly, this takes place largely in the shadows. Such approaches have clear attractions, offer undoubted tactical advantages, and permit successive administrations to maintain a persistent tempo of operations that evades rigorous democratic scrutiny. Yet, prominent cases and numerous studies suggest that vicarious warfare has a high potential to generate counterproductive effects and significant strategic harm.
This article takes as its point of departure Stefano Guzzini’s recent call for ‘ontological theorizing’ as a reflexive engagement with central concepts. In an attempt to advance this agenda, the article presents an accessible overview of different approaches to concept analysis to stake out the field for a discussion of what ontological theorising might entail. The article advances the notion of concepts as ‘basic’ and lays out the parameters through which they obtain meaning, followed by a discussion of three approaches, which tackle the multifaceted nature of basic concepts within and across different contexts. These approaches are labelled ‘historical’, ‘scientific’ and ‘political(critical)’ and presented through the work of Reinhart Koselleck, Giovanni Sartori and Michel Foucault, respectively. The article notes that concept analysis, as discussed here, stands in tension with modern forms of theory building yet is a creative source for theorising that accepts the unstable, political and context-bound nature of ontology.
Existing research maintains that governments delegate extreme, gratuitous, or excessively brutal violence to militias. However, analyzing all militias in armed conflicts from 1989 to 2009, we find that this argument does not account for the observed patterns of sexual violence, a form of violence that should be especially likely to be delegated by governments. Instead, we find that states commit sexual violence as a complement to—rather than a substitute for—violence perpetrated by militias. Rather than the logic of delegation, we argue that two characteristics of militia groups increase the probability of perpetrating sexual violence. First, we find that militias that have recruited children are associated with higher levels of sexual violence. This lends support to a socialization hypothesis, in which sexual violence may be used as a tool for building group cohesion. Second, we find that militias that were trained by states are associated with higher levels of sexual violence, which provides evidence for sexual violence as a “practice” of armed groups. These two complementary results suggest that militia-perpetrated sexual violence follows a different logic and is neither the result of delegation nor, perhaps, indiscipline.
From Syria to Sudan, governments have informal ties with militias that use violence against opposition groups and civilians. Building on research that suggests these groups offer governments logistical benefits in civil wars as well as political benefits in the form of reduced liability for violence, we provide the first systematic global analysis of the scale and patterns of these informal linkages. We find over 200 informal state-militia relationships across the globe, within but also outside of civil wars. We illustrate how informal delegation of violence to these
States engage in coercive diplomacy by sponsoring militant violence against their rivals. This gives militant groups’ sponsors bargaining power, but may produce moral hazard, because it can empower groups so much that sponsors cannot control them. This study develops a game theoretic model to explain why states take the risk of sponsoring militant groups. The model demonstrates that sponsorship may be a form of costly signalling that increases the probability both of bargaining failure and of a negotiated settlement favourable to the sponsor. The model further demonstrates that only moderately weak states and major powers are likely to gain coercive power through sponsorship. Data on militant violence during the period 1989–2001 support the model's predictions.
This article starts from the following observation. Although the debate on expanding the security agenda to non-military sectors and non-state referent objects launched an interesting discussion about the security (studies) agenda, it has not really dealt with the meaning of security. It has concentrated on adding adjectives such as `societal', `environmental', `world', etc. to security but has largely neglected the meaning — or, more technically, the signifying work — of the noun `security' itself. This article wants to draw attention to the question of the meaning of security. First, it differentiates three ways of dealing with the meaning of the noun — a definition, a conceptual analysis and a thick signifier approach, which focuses on the wider order of meaning which `security' articulates. Two things are claimed — (a) an increasing degree of sophistication if one moves from the first to the third approach; and (b) a qualitative change in the security studies agenda if one uses a thick signifier approach. The second part of the article illustrates how this thick signifier approach contributes to a better and also different understanding of security. Here, the main argument is that security mediates the relation between life and death and that this articulates a double security problematic — a daily security and an ontological security problematic.
Why do some small terrorist and guerrilla groups succeed in becoming full-blown insurgencies while many others fail? Proto-insurgencies face many difficulties in creating an insurgent movement: they must create a politically salient identity, harness a compelling cause, create an effective sanctuary, and defeat both violent and peaceful organizational rivals, all while evading the police and security services of the much more powerful state. Outside support is a mixed blessing for proto-insurgents. Often, the ultimate success of the proto-insurgency in becoming a full-blown insurgency depends on the mistakes of the government it opposes.
This analysis begins by exploring various reasons that the concept of terrorism has evaded a widely agreed upon definition for so long despite the efforts of so many writers. Emphasis is placed on the difficulties associated with all “essentially contested concepts.” In addition, the investigation calls attention to such problems as conceptual “stretching” and “traveling.” In an effort to solve the difficulties, the inquiry attempts to determine a consensus definition of terrorism by turning to an empirical analysis of how the term has been employed by academics over the years. Specifically, the well-known definition developed by Alex Schmid, based upon responses to a questionnaire he circulated in 1985, is compared with the way the concept has been employed by contributors to the major journals in the field: Terrorism, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Terrorism and Political Violence. The 22 “definitional elements” of which Schmid's definition is composed are compared to the frequency with which they appear in the professional journals. If these elements appear frequently in both the Schmid definition and those employed by the journal contributors, they are then used to form a consensus definition of the concept. The most striking feature of this academic consensus over the meaning of terrorism is the virtual absence of references to the psychological element, heretofore widely thought to be at the heart of the concept.
Jim Ray has set out a challenge to students of international conflict: how can we improve our research to do better in the cumulation of knowledge and understanding of international phenomena? While most of the commentary in this special issue revolves about more technical statistical issues, the questions that Ray raises must also be addressed not just on statistical/methods grounds, but within the context of broader theoretical concerns and theoretical specification. That is the aim of this article. Drawing on the concept of the “research triad” of logic, theory, and methodology presented by Most & Starr (1989), this article will stress the relationship of theory to the development of research designs that will permit both the additive and integrative cumulation of knowledge. This article will discuss how statistical model specification can be informed by broader principles of research design, demonstrating how Ray's basic points are supported by earlier, complementary, and converging lines of argument.
Why do some armed conflicts that have ended experience renewed fighting while others do not? Previous research on conflict recurrence has approached this question by looking at domestic factors such as how the war was fought, how it ended or factors associated with its aftermath. With the exception of the literature on third-party security guarantees, the influence of outside actors has often been overlooked. This article explores the role of external states and suggests when and how their involvement is likely to affect the probability of renewed warfare. The main argument is that the legacy of outside support creates an external support structure that affects the previous combatants’ willingness as well as their opportunities to remobilize. This means that armed conflicts with external state support will experience a greater likelihood of recurrence compared to other conflicts which did not see external support. The theory is tested using Cox proportional hazards models on global data of intrastate armed conflicts 1975–2009. The findings suggest that external support to rebels increases the risk of conflict recurrence in the short term as groups receive or anticipate renewed assistance. The results also indicate that it is more important for rebel groups to have had enduring support over the years in the previous conflict rather than access to multiple state sponsors. External support provided to governments is not associated with conflict recurrence.
Why do some states terminate their sponsorship of rebel movements while others are persistent in their provision of support? In the past, most research on external support to insurgents has focused on why states choose to sponsor rebel groups and particularly how this affects conflict duration. However, we know little about the termination of such support. This is surprising given that support has been shown to make armed conflicts more intractable and tremendous efforts are made in condemning and sanctioning such behavior. This study constitutes the first large-N analysis of support termination, employing survival analysis on global data of state support to rebel movements between 1975–2009. Surprisingly, the findings indicate that only some of the factors that explain support provision can offer insights into its termination. In particular, support is more likely to be terminated when no ethnic kinship bonds exist between the rebel movement and the government of the supporting state. Many decisions to withdraw support also seem to coincide with the transition from the Cold War. Threats and sanctions from other states appear largely ineffective. The study contributes to our understanding of the international dimensions of civil war and the role and motives of third parties.
This paper argues that current academic definitions of civil war are largely inadequate for international relations practitioners. While these casualty-based standards have the methodological consistency needed for quantitative research, they do not capture the dynamics most important to policymakers, including the degree of threat to national interests, the level of disruption to the international system, and the political implications of labelling a conflict a civil war. This paper explains how academics and practitioners use civil war definitions in different ways, creating the need for an additional but non-exclusive practitioner-centric definition of civil war. Its purpose is not to replace the existing academic standard, but rather to provide an additional tool for policymakers tailored to their specific needs – identifying when a civil war has emerged in order to implement a policy response.
Civil wars often feature insurgent groups with external sponsors. Yet, we know little about the impact of such sponsorship on insurgent cohesion. Indeed, researchers disagree about the conditions under which state sponsorship encourages or discourages organizational splits. This article presents a theory that reconciles these disagreements. I focus on how the allocation of external resources affects the intra-group distribution of power between rebel leaders and their internal rivals. Sponsors that help maintain an imbalance of power in favor of the leader foster cohesion; those that help flip the imbalance in favor of a rival increase the likelihood of an internal coup within the group. Only when sponsors contribute to a shift from an imbalance of power to balanced power is the rebel group more likely to split into competing organizations. I further argue that sponsors reallocate their resources in favor of a rebel leader’s internal rival in order to punish the leader for undesired behavior. Case studies of two major insurgent groups—the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army and the Lebanese Hezbollah—illustrate the explanatory power of my argument.
Despite their catastrophic proportions, the Congo Wars have received little attention from international relations scholars. At the heart of these conflicts were alliances between rebel groups and neighboring rulers. What are the origins of such transnational alliances, which have been a major feature of nearly all civil wars in post–Cold War Africa? Recent scholarship on external support for rebel groups does not offer a clear answer, either providing long lists of the goals that state sponsors may have or avoiding the question of motives altogether. A focus on political survival reveals that African rulers form alliances with rebels in nearby states to reduce the threats of rebellions and military coups that the rulers themselves face at home. Transnational alliances serve either to weaken a ruler's domestic enemies by undermining their foreign sponsors or to ensure the continued allegiance of key domestic supporters by providing them with opportunities for enrichment. Case studies of the alliance decisions made in the two Congo Wars by the rulers of Angola, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe show that their struggles for political survival account for why they sided either with their Congolese counterparts or with Congolese rebels.
Proxy warfare is a consistent element in international warfare. However, it is unclear why proxy relationships form in cases where states have multiple options of groups to support. Existing research identifies the presence of transnational constituencies, shared interstate rivalries, and moderate relative strength of militant groups as highly influential on the development of a proxy relationship. This study examines the presence of these variables within the context of the Lebanese Civil War. The results of this demonstrate that each state places greater importance on some variables and ignores others when choosing a proxy. Additionally, this study further demonstrates the presence of new variables that are key to the development of proxy relationships.
The structure of the emergent global system – a volatile ‘polyarchy’ of state and non-state actors – accentuates temptations to employ military proxies, but also multiplies the risks when the priorities of the patron states and their proxies diverge. The motivations of proxies and the interests of the countries employing them are hardly ever sufficiently close, and the command-and-control arrangements sufficiently tight, to ensure that the battlefield behavior of proxies will not distort the military strategies and political objectives of their patrons. This article offers guidelines for reducing the risks and minimizing the consequences of such loss of control.
This article interrogates the role of non-state armed actors in the Ukrainian civil conflict. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it seeks to identify the differences between the patterns of military intervention in Crimea (direct, covert intervention), and those in the South-East (mixed direct and indirect – proxy – intervention). It does so by assessing the extent of Russian troop involvement and that of external sponsorship to non-state actors. Second, it puts forward a tentative theoretical framework that allows distinguishing between the different outcomes the two patterns of intervention generate. Here, the focus is on the role of non-state actors in the two interventionist scenarios. The core argument is that the use of non-state actors is aimed at sovereign defection. The article introduces the concept of sovereign defection and defines it as a break-away from an existing state. To capture the differences between the outcomes of the interventions in Crimea and South-East, sovereign defection is classified into two categories: inward and outward. Outward sovereign defection is equated to the territorial seizure of the Crimean Peninsula by Russian Special Forces, aided by existing criminal gangs acting in an auxiliary capacity. Inward sovereign defection refers to the external sponsorship of the secessionist rebels in South-East Ukraine and their use as proxy forces with the purpose of creating a political buffer-zone in the shape of a frozen conflict. To demonstrate these claims, the article analyses the configuration of the dynamics of violence in both regions. It effectively argues that, in pursuing sovereign defection, the auxiliary and proxy forces operate under two competing dynamics of violence, delegative and non-delegative, with distinct implications to the course and future of the conflict.
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring the Middle East has plunged into a state of instability. The United States has responded to these rising insecurities in a region of strategic importance with hesitation or half-hearted commitments. The Obama administration, plagued by the increasingly difficult decision of defining America's role in an apolar world while managing the political and economic legacy of the Bush administration, has relied on a policy of delegation. Obama neither refrained from military options nor showed any willingness to commit American ground troops to one of the strategically and operationally most complex environments of the world. Instead, Obama's preferred way of war is one relying on surrogates—both human and technological—that allow the United States to externalize, partially or wholly, the strategic, operational and tactical burden of warfare. Unlike any other previous US administration surrogate warfare has become the principal means of protecting US interests in the Middle East that are perceived to be all but vital. The need for deniability and legitimacy, cost–benefit considerations as well as the lack of capability have made warfare by surrogate a preferred option in the Middle East. The consequences for US policy in the region are profound, as the lack of control and oversight have empowered surrogates whose long-term interests are not compatible with those of the United States. More severely, the US might have jeopardized its standing as the traditional guarantor of security in the Middle East— something that partners and adversaries alike have exploited.
The siege of the northern Syrian town of Kobane was lifted in January 2015. The Kurdish defenders there had triumphed against Islamic State (IS). The conflict then moved on. It moved on, though, with the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western powers having adopted, almost by default, the Kurds as proxy fighters in this conflict. The Kurds, however, are a divided and fractious nation spread across three states and historically famous for fighting among themselves. In employing the Kurds as proxies against IS, as this article shows, these Western powers must be aware of the unintended consequences that can result.
Western analysis perceives Russian approaches to issues of humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as running counter to western-inspired international norms. This debate has surfaced with some vigour over Russia's policy in the Syria conflict where, in order to protect its strategic interests in Syria, an obstructionist Moscow has been accused of ignoring humanitarian considerations and allowing time for the Assad regime to crush the opposition by vetoing a resolution threatening to impose sanctions. While Russian approaches are undoubtedly explained by a desire to maximize its growing political influence and trade advantages to serve its legitimate foreign policy interests, and while Moscow's attitudes to intervention and R2P exhibit important differences from those of the major western liberal democracies, its arguments are in fact framed within a largely rational argument rooted in ‘traditional’ state-centred international law. This article first highlights key arguments in the scholarly literature on intervention and R2P before going on to examine the evolution of Russian views on these issues. The analysis then focuses on the extent to which Moscow's arguments impact on international legal debates on the Libya and Syria conflicts. The article then seeks to explore how Russian approaches to intervention/R2P reflect fundamental trends in its foreign policy thinking and its quest for legitimacy in a negotiated international order. Finally, it attempts to raise some important questions regarding Russia's role in the future direction of the intervention/R2P debates.
If the West wants to contain or rout the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, it will have to rely on local allies in some way. The history of modern war suggests three ways in which such cooperation has previously been problematic.
Research on militias portrays them as subservient proxies of governments used to achieve tactical goals. The conventional wisdom, however, ignores the diversity of state-militia relations. This article outlines four distinct strategies that states can pursue toward militias, ranging from incorporation to suppression. It then argues that regime ideology shapes how governments perceive and deal with militias. A new theory of armed group political roles brings politics back into the study of militias. Comparative evidence from India and Pakistan shows that varying regime ideological projects contribute to different patterns of militia-state relations. These findings suggest that political ideas ought to be central to the study of political violence, militias should be studied in direct dialog with other armed groups, and a traditional focus on civil war should be replaced by the broader study of “armed politics.”
Why do regimes delegate authority over a territory to nonstate militias, in effect voluntarily sacrificing their monopoly over the use of violence? This article argues that two factors increase the probability of states delegating control to a proxy militia, namely, military purges and armed conflict. Military purges disrupt intelligence-gathering structures and the organizational capacity of the military. To counteract this disruption, military leaders subcontract the task of control and repression to allied militias that have the local intelligence skills necessary to manage the civilian population. This argument is conditioned by whether the state faces an armed insurgency in a given region since intelligence, control, and repression are needed most where the state is being challenged. This hypothesis is tested on unique data for all subnational regions within Myanmar during the period 1962 to 2010 and finds that proxy militias are more likely to be raised in conflict areas after military purges.
Militias are an empirical phenomenon that has been overlooked by current research on civil war. Yet, it is a phenomenon that is crucial for understanding political violence, civil war, post-conflict politics, and authoritarianism. Militias or paramilitaries are armed groups that operate alongside regular security forces or work independently of the state to shield the local population from insurgents. We review existing uses of the term, explore the range of empirical manifestations of militias, and highlight recent findings, including those supplied by the articles in this special issue. We focus on areas where the recognition of the importance of militias challenges and complements current theories of civil war. We conclude by introducing a research agenda advocating the integrated study of militias and rebel groups.
Nonstate armed groups are often involved in electoral violence, but we know little about the origins or fates of these groups. This article develops an interactive theory of relations between governments and electoral armed groups. Governments assign different political roles to armed groups that reflect their ideological position and electoral value. State strategies flow from these political roles, but groups’ organizational capacity can allow them to resist government efforts to control, destroy, or incorporate them. The interaction of regime political interests and armed group autonomy leads to five distinct government-armed group trajectories, ranging from incorporation to violent conflict. I use comparative evidence from militarized elections in Karachi to illustrate the validity of the concepts and assess the power of the theory, while also exploring its limits and the need for future research. My argument and findings matter for our understanding of the linkages between democracy, civil conflict, and state power.
Nowhere in the broad and heterogeneous work on concept formation has the question of conceptual utility been satisfactorily addressed. Goodness in concept formation, I argue, cannot be reduced to 'clarity,' to empirical or theoretical relevance, to a set of rules, or to the methodology particular to a given study. Rather, I argue that conceptual adequacy should be perceived as an attempt to respond to a standard set of criteria, whose demands are felt in the formation and use of all social science concepts: (1) familiarity, (2) resonance, (3) parsimony, (4) coherence, (5) differentiation, (6) depth, (7) theoretical utility, and (8) field utility. The significance of this study is to be found not simply in answering this important question, but also in providing a complete and reasonably concise framework for explaining the process of concept formation within the social sciences. Rather than conceiving of concept formation as a method (with a fixed set of rules and a definite outcome), I view it as a highly variable process involving trade-offs among these eight demands.
Few issues are more important to scholars of security studies than understanding the impact of state sponsorship on the capabilities of non-state armed actors. The subject of our study—Lebanon's Hezbollah—was selected based on its reputation amongst scholars and policymakers alike as an exceptionally capable organization. In our inquiry, we seek to answer the following questions about Hezbollah's rapid emergence during the 1980s as one of the world's premier armed non-state actors: (a) how did Iranian sponsorship contribute to Hezbollah's effectiveness?; and (b) to what extent did Hezbollah's success depend on characteristics endogenous to the organization itself? To preview our conclusions, state sponsorship can contribute markedly to non-state actors' capabilities by providing resources and sanctuary. However, the ultimate effectiveness of non-state armed groups depends heavily on such internal characteristics as their decision-making processes and members' backgrounds. Thus, while state support may be necessary for non-state actors to achieve their goals, it is insufficient as a guarantee of their effectiveness.
This article assesses Iran's strategy in dealing with the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It examines the implications of the rise of ISIS in Iran's immediate neighbourhood for Tehran's policies in Syria and Iraq and investigates how each of these countries affects Iranian national interests. It provides an overview of the major events marking Iran and Iraq's relations in the past few decades and discusses the strategic importance of Iraq for Iran, by looking at the two countries' energy, economic and religious ties. It also considers Iran's involvement in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. The article sheds light on the unilateral action taken by Tehran to counter ISIS, the adjustments it may have to make to its involvement in Syria, and the potential areas for tactical cooperation between Iran and the United States, as well as other key regional states such as Saudi Arabia. The article investigates three likely scenarios affecting the developments in Iraq and Iran's possible response to them as the events in the Middle East unfold.
This article argues that, while there have always been good reasons for striving for a universally agreed definition of terrorism, there are further reasons for doing so in the post 9/11 environment, notwithstanding the formidable challenges that confront such an endeavour. Arguing that the essence of terrorism lies in its intent to generate a psychological impact beyond the immediate victims, it will propose three preliminary assumptions: that there is no such thing as an act of violence that is in and of itself inherently terrorist, that terrorism is best conceptualized as a particular method of political violence rather than defined as inherent to any particular ideology or perpetrator, and that non-civilians and combatants can also be victims of terrorism. It will then outline the implications that these assumptions have for the definitional debate.
As Obama begins his second term, this article takes stock of his foreign policy approach towards the Middle East. It lays out four big arguments. First, Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East has demonstrated more continuity with the past than real change. While shifting his approach significantly from Bush's, Obama has adopted a centrist—realist approach towards the region, consistent with the dominant US foreign policy orientation. Second, from Palestinian—Israeli peace to Afghanistan, Obama's conduct testifies to the structural—institutional continuity of US foreign policy. More than in any other region in the world, presidential policy in the Middle East is hampered by institutional, bureaucratic and domestic politics. America's dysfunctional political culture has imposed severe constraints on Obama's ability to pursue an even-handed approach towards the enduring and preeminent Palestine question. Third, despite Obama's lofty rhetoric about a new start in relations between the United States and Muslim countries, the Middle East does not rank very high on his agenda. Putting America's fiscal house in order and renewing its long-term economic strength have been Obama's priorities. From the outset, Obama has been shifting US foreign policy priorities away from the Middle East to the Pacific and Asia where he and his aides believe that America's future lies. Finally, the article argues that the US finds itself in a similar position to that of Great Britain after the Second World War, at the beginning of the end of its hegemonic moment in the Middle East. The end of American hegemony in the region stems from internal and external causes, including an awakened public opinion in the Middle East, the emergence of geostrategic and geo-economic regional powers with assertive foreign policies, America's relative economic decline and the high costs of war, and the shift in US foreign policy priorities to the Asia—Pacific region.
The empirical literature on civil war has seen tremendous growth because of the compilation of quantitative data sets, but there is no consensus on the measurement of civil war. This increases the risk of making inferences from unstable empirical results. Without ad hoc rules to code its start and end and differentiate it from other violence, it is difficult, if not impossible, to define and measure civil war. A wide range of variation in parameter estimates makes accurate predictions of war onset difficult, and differences in empirical results are greater with respect to war continuation.
Military intervention in civil wars by smaller states has often been interpreted as a sign of the increasing importance of indirect intervention as a means of foreign policy: the smaller intervening states are seen to have acted as the proxy of a major power. The Angola conflict in particular has been cited in this connection, and Cuba is often said to have intervened on behalf of the Soviet Union. Other examples have also been mentioned. However, it is not always clear what characterizes a proxy in this sense. This article tries to identify relevant criteria, and argues that a reasonable definition of a proxy relationship must be formulated in terms of power. Some of the instances of intervention by proxy mentioned in the literature are then examined in the light of this definition. In none of these is it possible to demonstrate that the intervening state actually acted as proxy for another. This conclusion may be the result of defective instruments of analysis, but it may also reflect the fact that interventions by proxy have not actually taken place.
This article examines the ways and means in which states employ irregular and indigenous personnel in a counter-insurgency (COIN) or counter-terrorist (CT) campaign, in the historical and contemporary context. The authors clarify the terminology surrounding this neglected area of COIN/CT theory, and identify four types of indigenous assistance – individual actors (trackers, interpreters, informers and agents); home guards and militias; counter-gangs; and pseudo-gangs. This article concludes that while the use of such indigenous irregulars has its advantages for the state and its armed/security forces (particularly as far as intelligence, local knowledge and undermining the insurgent's cause is concerned), it can also have serious practical and ethical implications for a COIN/CT campaign, and can have unexpected and unwelcome consequences including violations of laws of armed conflict, the undermining of governmental authority and the prospects of endemic internal strife and state collapse.
Existing research has related civil war primarily to country-specific factors or processes that take place within individual states experiencing conflict. Many contemporary civil wars, however, display a trans- national character, where actors, resources, and events span national boundaries. This article challenges the 'closed polity' approach to the study of civil war, where individual states are treated as independent entities, and posits that transnational factors and linkages between states can exert strong influences on the risk of violent civil conflict. Previous research has shown that conflicts in a state's regional context can increase the risk of conflict, but the research has not distinguished between different varieties of transnational linkages that may underlie geographic contagion, and it has failed to consider the poten- tial influences of domestic attributes. The article develops and evaluates a series of hypotheses on how transnational factors can influence the risk of conflict and the prospects for maintaining peace in a con- ditional autologistic model, including country-specific factors often associated with civil wars. The results suggest that transnational linkages between states and regional factors strongly influence the risk of civil conflict. This, in turn, implies that the risk of civil war is not determined just by a country's internal or domestic characteristics, but differs fundamentally, depending on a country's linkages to other states.
This introductory paper identifies some of the core background themes and theories through which the ‘politics of naming' and other forms of discourse conflict can be examined. The focus is on the nature, power, role and function of names, with a final section examining the ethics of naming and examining terrorism. The central unifying theme is the contested relationship between the actual nature of a movement and the name applied, particularly in terms of the attempt to identify the essence or true nature of a movement and how this relates to other dissenting or surrounding factors. Once assigned, the power of a name is such that the process by which the name was selected generally disappears and a series of normative associations, motives and characteristics are attached to the named subject. Indeed, the long historical relationship between the naming of opponents, empire and colonialism, as well as the manner in which the global media frame armed conflict, only provide further reason to doubt the truthfulness of the names assigned, and their ability to address the micro-realities involved in these conflicts and movements.
Syria and Hizballah are intertwined, but addressing the challenges they pose requires differentiated approaches. Hoping that Syria is the key to Hizballah ignores the reality that, although Syria retains some influence, Hizballah has gained leverage over and independence from its former patron.
Because they are chiefly domestic conflicts, civil wars have been studied primarily from a perspective stressing domestic factors. We ask, instead, whether (and how) the international system shapes civil wars; we find that it does shape the way in which they are fought—their “technology of rebellion.” After disaggregating civil wars into irregular wars (or insurgencies), conventional wars, and symmetric nonconventional wars, we report a striking decline of irregular wars following the end of the Cold War, a remarkable transformation of internal conflict. Our analysis brings the international system back into the study of internal conflict. It specifies the connection between system polarity and the Cold War on the one hand and domestic warfare on the other hand. It also demonstrates that irregular war is not the paradigmatic mode of civil war as widely believed, but rather is closely associated with the structural characteristics of the Cold War.
Our work Is our words, but our words do not work any more. They have not worked for some time. We can obviously start with the misleading label??International Politics??which is given to our subject. As a result of this problem, I have wanted to use increasing numbers of inverted commas; but most have never seen the light of day because copy-editors have regarded them as an over-indulgence. Even so, the very temptation of these little scratches indicates that words at the heart of the subject are i n trouble:
Redefining ‘security’ has recently become something of a cottage industry. 2 Most such efforts, however, are more concerned with redefining the policy agendas of nation-states than with the concept of security itself. Often, this takes the form of proposals for giving high priority to such issues as human rights, economics, the environment, drug traffic, epidemics, crime, or social injustice, in addition to the traditional concern with security from external military threats. Such proposals are usually buttressed with a mixture of normative arguments about which values of which people or groups of people should be protected, and empirical arguments as to the nature and magnitude of threats to those values. Relatively little attention is devoted to conceptual issues as such. This article seeks to disentangle the concept of security from these normative and empirical concerns, however legitimate they may be.
Constructivists have distanced themselves from questions of language in order to engage the “positivist” mainstream in dialogue. Yet language has played a central role in one important strand of positivism. Current debates in international relations assume a question about whether language is important. This article asks how or why language is important to the study of IR by exploring two distinct phases of the linguistic turn. The first phase, associated with logical positivism, approaches language as a picture of the logic of reality; the second, at the roots of a range of alternative approaches, approaches language use as analogous to making moves in a game. In constructing a link between two phases of the linguistic turn, the abyss separating “positivists,” who aren’t concerned with language, and “poststructuralists,” who are, is replaced with a spectrum of different approaches to language and logic in international relations. The significance of these differences is illustrated in a variety of theoretical and empirical examples.