No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Framers, founders, and reformers: Three generations of proxy war research
Abstract
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.
... I hope to encourage greater terminological clarity and theoretical integration between the strands of literature introduced by Karlén and Rauta at the start of the forum. This move is premised on the remarkable expansion of proxy war literature into something that can in the future become the subfield of proxy war studies (Rauta 2020). 3 On the one hand, this allows to take stock of new research into proxy wars and great power conflict (de Soysa 2017; Jenne, Popovic, and Siroky in this forum), counterterrorism (Larsdotter 2014;Cragin 2015Cragin , 2020, cyber war (Borghard and Lonergan 2016), and conflict mediation and management (Hellmüller 2021;Irrera 2021). ...
... Research in subsequent years has done little to persuade me to revise that argument. The lack of cross-(or even inter-or multi-) disciplinarity in the study of proxy wars has led to the creation of methodological silos, which in turn has created alternative terminological discourses across different subfields (Rauta 2018). This terminological déjà vu is the product of major disciplinary and methodological challenges facing the study of proxy war. ...
... As a phenomenon, proxy wars are empirically ubiquitous yet still thought of as conceptually obscure. A recent article evaluated the analytical merits of proxy war starting from the paradoxical rejection of the concept in the absence of proper conceptual analysis (Rauta 2021b). What remains to be asked is: when is a proxy war not a proxy war? ...
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.
... Scholars such as Mumford have made a significant effort to introduce proxy warfare as an "identifiable strand of future war studies" (Mumford 2013a, 9). Similarly, Rauta talks about "generations of proxy war research" (Rauta 2020a) and "proxy war studies" as a subfield of international security and strategic studies (Rauta 2021, 3). Although proxy wars have been studied mainly from the prisms of the Cold War and civil war studies in the past (Salehyan 2007;Gleditsch, Salehyan, and Schultz 2008;Mumford 2013a;Groh 2019), a growing body of scholarship deals with proxy war as a separate research Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isr/article/23/4/1835/6395251 by 81695661, OUP on 29 December 2021 topic in contemporary war, security, and strategic studies (Mumford 2013b;Rauta 2020a). ...
... Similarly, Rauta talks about "generations of proxy war research" (Rauta 2020a) and "proxy war studies" as a subfield of international security and strategic studies (Rauta 2021, 3). Although proxy wars have been studied mainly from the prisms of the Cold War and civil war studies in the past (Salehyan 2007;Gleditsch, Salehyan, and Schultz 2008;Mumford 2013a;Groh 2019), a growing body of scholarship deals with proxy war as a separate research Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isr/article/23/4/1835/6395251 by 81695661, OUP on 29 December 2021 topic in contemporary war, security, and strategic studies (Mumford 2013b;Rauta 2020a). Therefore, one can consider "proxy war studies" as the subfield of international security and strategic studies that needs further theorization and conceptual clarity. ...
... These labels are used to indicate the subordination of proxy actors to great powers to show how the former are used as "instruments" for the latter's political purposes. Supporting actors are labeled as "activator" and "patron" (Bar-Siman-Tov 1984), "principal" actor (Salehyan, Siroky, and Wood 2014), "benefactor" (Mumford 2013a), and "beneficiary" (Rauta 2018). These attributes demonstrate a principal-centric and onesided conceptualization rather than considering the generative mechanism behind the proxy alignment. ...
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.
... This expansion of research provided insights into a serious international security problem (Rauta and Mumford, in Dover et al. 2017). Developed across multiple research clusters (Rauta 2020a), the debate has largely coalesced around two cores: international security and strategic studies (Hughes 2012, Innes 2012, Mumford 2013, Borghard 2014, Brown 2016, Marshall 2016, Rauta 2016, Sozer 2016, Groh 2019, Moghadam and Wyss 2020; and the study of external support to factions in civil war as both 'delegation' and, more recently, 'indirect governance' (Salehyan 2010, Salehyan et al. 2011, Sawyer et al. 2017, Karlén 2017a, 2017b, Popovic 2019Anderson 2019, Petrova 2019, Roberts 2019, Abbott et al. 2020. 1 Karlén (2016) has provided an overview of the latter's development, and a recent paper categorised the former's growth into three generations: founders, framers, and reformers (Rauta 2020b). Notwithstanding its generational development, the debate has shared some of the problems of emerging research areas, including conceptual and definitional 'battles', theoretical disagreements, operationalisation differences, and methodological preferences (Kalyvas, in Chenoweth et al. 2019, pp. ...
... As Barkawi observed, the state-centrism complaint has permitted 'proxy war' to be obscured by the image of major war and the horizontal world of sovereign states it presupposes (2016, p. 206). Disengagement with the concept in light of its Cold War links has produced a sceptical view of 'proxy war' as a mere 'moniker' of the Cold War superpower interventionism (Kalyvas, in Chenoweth et al. 2019, p. 16), in spite of recent research pushing for the widening of the historical background against which we research proxy wars (Rauta 2020b). This conceptual rejection does not identify a deficit with the notion itself, rather deeper epistemological and ontological processes of knowledge production. ...
... First, it is a first step away from idiosyncrasy. Instead of contingent definitions, a minimal definitional structure allows the debate to think more productively about the phenomenon in a trans-historical and crosscontextual away (Rauta 2020b). This allows the development of a longue durée perspective in the study of proxy wars as continuum: from the Roman's support of the Mamertines against Carthage (Pfaff 2017, p. 305), to Queen Elizabeth I using 'covert meanes' to influence the Dutch Protestant revolt against Spain (Cormac 2018, p. 2), to Richelieu's waging of war 'via a constellation of proxies' (Rehman 2019), and to T. E. Lawrence's transformation of the Arab Revolt during World War I into a proxy war (Oxnevad 2020). ...
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.
... This type of war has always been seen as a way to gain advantages, to achieve political and military objectives without direct military intervention, by using an armed force willing to do anything to satisfy the needs and interests of the power that supports and directs the intervention, which cannot be held accountable most of the time because it does not represent a state entity. The support from the powerful state can be direct and visible or indirect, invisible, difficult or impossible to attribute to someone and therefore it can be a preferred form of intervention to promote some interests, some objectives, to reduce the influence of a potential adversary, to cause damage etc. Proxy warfare is not something new on the international scene, it has been used since ancient times, but it returned to the attention of researchers during the Cold War [1], when the great powers, faced with the risk of a total, nuclear war, sought new forms of confrontation, repressing tensions, promoting ideologies, obtaining or maintaining spheres of influence, etc. Thus proxy war became the main form of confrontation on the international stage, with great powers choosing to support DOI smaller states or even armed groups that were involved in regional, local conflicts or civil wars. ...
Proxy wars are a form of confrontation whose origins are lost in the mists of history. In the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century, this type of war experienced a sharp development due to the changes that took place on the international scene. Due to the fact that the great powers avoided direct confrontation during the Cold War, for fear that this confrontation would degenerate into a new conventional or even nuclear world war, they chose to use proxy warfare as a pressure relief valve, a way to put the opponent in difficulty, to gain influence or even economic, political or other benefits. Proxy wars can take place both between states and between groups within a state, or between a terrorist group, paramilitary organisation, etc. and a state, and the common element is given by the fact that one or both of the parties benefit from external support, especially in the form of armaments, ammunitions, intelligence, expertise, advice from a sponsor of which it becomes an agent. In exchange for the sponsor's support, the agent offers him a series of advantages, influence, etc. The sponsor obtains strategic advantages without direct involvement, without exposing himself and without settling national and international image costs, while the agent is actively involved in combat operations, it is he who must ensure the achievement of objectives to satisfy both his own expectations and those of the sponsor.
... Among others, this concerns the principal-agent and proxy warfare frameworks (see, e.g. Ahram, 2011;Bar-Siman-Tov, 1984;Karlén et al., 2021;Mumford, 2013;Rauta, 2021aRauta, , 2021bSalehyan, 2009;Salehyan et al., 2014). They are relatively interrelated with the patron-client concept, and, as such, they are likely to provide additional valuable insights. ...
De facto states need external support to advance their national interests. Many of them depend on their patron’s assistance, thus becoming their clients. In turn, patronless de facto states derive certain benefits from engaging with various external actors. This study proposes including a new category of actors in this group, namely quasi-patrons, whose relations with de facto states resemble the patron—client relationship. This means that patronless de facto states can enjoy greater external support than the literature suggests. To illustrate the relationship between client de facto states and quasi-patrons, the case of Somaliland and Ethiopia is explored.
... 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.
... In this context, it is relevant to understand proxy war as "a violent armed interaction resulting from the polarisation of competing political goals" between two rivals in which at least one engages the other indirectly through a third party, the proxy (Rauta, 2018, p. 467). Moreover, policymakers should think about assessing how different actors might employ proxies (Moghadam & Wyss, 2020;Rauta, 2020b), as well as the existence of different proxy logics or modalities (Fox, 2020), by considering insights derived from understanding proxy wars both as a global problem, but also one with decisively specific regional characteristics (Rauta, 2021a). ...
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.
Do more weapons in the hands of rebel groups escalate civil wars? We address this question using a recently published dataset on the armaments of 270 non-state actors. We provide a comprehensive overview of their arsenals and utilize this information in a dyadic analysis that also considers the effects of governments’ weapons stock. We show that better-armed rebel groups are involved in higher-intensity conflicts only if they receive no external support. Moreover, conventional warfare is related to higher casualty numbers and the impact of arms provision to governments is conditional on the relative military strength of the opposing rebels.
Traditional explanations for why states ask others to fight on their behalf tend to focus on why the state does not wish to fight. States employ proxies, under these explanations, when they feel constrained from acting more directly, for example fearing escalation of the conflict, or possible domestic backlash. In the immediate post-9/11 era, the US seemed to have very few constraints in attacking Al Qaeda directly: they were responding to a terrorist attack, there was no risk of escalation, and international and domestic support for action was high. Yet in December 2001, possessing convincing intelligence that Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leadership had fled to their stronghold at Tora Bora, the US entrusted key aspects of their attack to a loose coalition of Afghan militias hurriedly assembled in the previous weeks. While many Al Qaeda fighters died in the fight, bin Laden escaped, in large part due to incompetence or collusion by the proxies the US had employed. This dissertation considers why the US chose this course of action, when the usual drivers of proxy warfare suggested by theory were not obviously applicable. By reconstructing the events of the battle and its planning and considering the strategic context of the battle within the wider war in Afghanistan, constraints are identified and their relative impacts considered. The evidence suggests that time was the key constraint perceived by US planners. The twin pressures of the urgency of the mission and the time it would take to put American boots on the ground drove them to use proxies in Tora Bora. This finding offers support for models of proxy war that consider it to be a component of modern hybrid warfare. It is also an important result for policymakers and military commanders making war planning decisions under time pressure.
Precision-strike warfare from a distance is frequently presented as a particularly democratic way of war. Governments of democratic states avoid boots on the ground, as they fear not getting re-elected should a war result in many casualties and high economic costs. From the perspective of ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman 2000), where power is uncoupled from the control of territory, liquid warfare, a way of war that eschews territorial confinement and related responsibilities for order-building, should be a tempting option for autocratic states and non-state armed groups (NSAGs), too – if they have the technological means at their disposal. Based on socio-spatial concepts from political geography, this article develops a typology of liquid and solid warfare and probes, whether and how the proliferation of precision-strike technology to Saudi Arabia and the Houthis has influenced the socio-spatial dimension of their warfare in the internationalised Yemeni civil war. The findings suggest that liquid warfare is not necessarily confined to Western, democratic conduct of war, posing the question whether these labels do fit anymore.
Scholars argue that we are facing a ‘memeification’ of global politics. Diplomatic use of memes in
strategic communication is an emerging practice. Studies predominantly focus on Russia’s
deployment of memes to deflect critique, yet researchers do not assess the practical effectiveness of
such campaigns, limiting the robustness of conclusions. In 2022, following almost a decade of hybrid
warfare, Russia invaded Ukraine. Before and after the war began, Ukraine embarked on a memetic
informational digital campaign, providing the opportunity to interrogate diplomatic memetic
communication. This paper uses thematic analysis to analyse how the official Ukrainian Twitter
account used digital memes to craft a distinct nation brand and administer informational digital
diplomacy aims before and after the 2022 Russian invasion. Moreover, through thematic analysis of
audience responses, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of Ukraine’s memetic communication
through three measures: engagement with Russian and Ukrainian narratives; evaluations of
Ukraine’s nation brand; how foreign audiences evaluate the legitimacy of Ukraine’s foreign policies.
In doing so, this paper evaluates memetic communication as a public diplomacy strategy, finding
that, like citizen memetic communication, memes constitute effective identity-building, solidarityforming, ideological vehicles through which diplomats can foster the conditions necessary for
advantageous diplomatic relations and effective informational warfare.
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.
This introductory chapter attempts to make a theoretical contribution and frame the role of Non-State Actors (NSAs) in International Relations (IR) discipline as an under-examined subject-matter. The study situates its argument within the current debate of the increasing power of NSAs in international relations (ir) and what this means for the theory. Building on previous work, it offers a conceptualisation of the non-state entities and provides the ground for the book’s rationale. In specific, the chapter offers a definition as to what non-state actorsNon-state actors (NSAs) are based on a systematic and coherent analysis and creates a typologyTypology (of the nature) of NSAsNon-state actors (NSAs). A table on NSAsNon-state actors (NSAs)’ modus operandi illustrates why this is important but not a criterion of distinction among them. Considering the continuum of NSAsNon-state actors (NSAs), the mainstream literature has mainly separated them according to cases in point. Even though different types of NSAsNon-state actors (NSAs) have been analysed separately, a frame that brings them together is lacking. Therefore, the chapter’s primary objective is to classify them as actors on their own right and justify their existence as intrinsic part of the IR’s ontologyOntology.
Contemporary civil conflicts are increasingly inter- and trans-nationalized: distinctive conflict dynamics extend beyond the boundaries of the respective states and are exposed to foreign involvement, in different forms. Within this trend stands the often mentioned but yet to be fully grasped role of non-state actors, referred to as, among others, proxies, mercenaries, militias (pro-government or not), or insurgents. The article revises the debate on sponsor-proxy relations from a twofold standpoint. First, it connects sponsor-proxy dynamics with current systemic changes by treating the MENA region as an example of a decentered multipolar system. Second, it examines sponsor-proxy dynamics by engaging in a conversation with scholarship on (armed) non-state actors. To do so, the article applies the sponsor-proxy analytical framework to the case studies of the relationship between Iran and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq, and between Turkey and the Syrian National Army (SNA) in Syria. The main argument is that the two cases show a peculiar pattern of sponsor-proxy dynamics, one that is influenced by proxy plurality and competitiveness, on the one hand, and by the political relevance of proxies besides their military role.
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.”
Recent years have seen a significant growth in studies of “remote” and “distanced” forms of military intervention. At present however, few analyses have sought to explore the remote character of interventions beyond Western (especially US&UK) cases despite the fact that regional powers in other parts of the world are increasingly militarily active, particularly in the Middle East. This article seeks to look beyond US and UK cases of remote warfare and explore the remote character of the interventions of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates in Yemen (2015-to date). Using the notion of “practices” that emphasizes both change and continuity in the performance of remote warfare across different contexts, the article shows how Saudi and UAE remote warfare practices show variation both from the US and UK examples and from each other in terms of strategic logics, tactics and the benefits of remoteness. This focus on practices allows us to move beyond debates about what remote warfare is, and who uses it, and permits a broader discussion about change and continuity in the way remote warfare is implemented.
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.
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.
Iran has pursued a highly contradictory policy towards Afghanistan. On the one hand, it became a significant beneficiary of the overthrow of the Taliban regime by the US-led military intervention in 2001 in Afghanistan. The new Afghan government established cordial ties with Iran, allowing it to expand its political, economic and cultural influence in the country. Yet Iran has also provided significant support to the Taliban in its campaign to violently upend the political, social and economic processes in the country. This article examines the underlying domestic and regional security dynamics that contribute to this contradictory behaviour. It offers an assessment of how tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic, as well as Tehran’s growing threat perception following the rise of the Islamic State – Khorasan in 2014, impact on Iran’s policy towards the Taliban. The paper argues that Tehran views the Taliban as an instrument to disrupt the influence of other actors in Afghanistan. The instrumentalisation of the Taliban, however, is likely to be counterproductive for Iranian security in the long run as it contributes to Afghanistan’s instability and insecurity and undermines Iran’s own long-term interests.
Post-uprisings Middle East politics is frequently described as a ‘regional cold war’ involving proxy warfare that emphasises the role of shared identities linking external and local actors. But does the ‘content’ of identities impact proxy war dynamics? This article considers the present ‘battle for Syria’, a local conflict that became a theatre for multiple proxy wars involving actors emphasising identities on various levels, most notably national, religious/ sect and ethnic. It suggests that identity content does matter, with global powers more reluctant than regional players to back groups identifying at sub-national level, while foreign non-state actors are enthusiastic backers of sub-national identity.
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 contribution reflects on the state of strategic studies today and the criticism it has received in recent years, as being outdated and irrelevant. The authors formulate some premises for reinvigorating this field of inquiry by widening its scope and research agenda to do more justice to the wide variety of actors, perspectives and practices observable in the enterprise of strategy in our contemporary globalised world. © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
The alarming upward trend since 2012 in the number of fatalities incurred by organized violence did not continue in 2015. Indeed, 2014 saw more than 130,000 people killed in organized violence while in 2015 this figure was close to 118,000. This is still an unusually high number, the third-worst year in the post-Cold War period. The number of conflicts continued to increase from 41 in 2014 to 50 in 2015. This increase was by and large driven by the expansion of the Islamic State. Most of the fatalities, over 97,000, incurred in state-based conflicts. Non-state conflicts also increased, from 61 in 2014 to 70 in 2015, the highest number recorded in the 1989–2015 period. No non-state conflict passed the threshold of 1,000 battle-related deaths, but 11 state-based conflicts did – a decrease by one from 2014. Seven of the ten most violent state-based conflicts in 2014 became less violent. Twenty-six actors were registered in one-sided violence just as in 2014, while the number of fatalities decreased from over 13,500 to 9,500.
For years, mounting instability had led many to predict the imminent collapse of Yemen. These forecasts became reality in 2014 as the country spiralled into civil war. The conflict pits an alliance of the Houthis, a northern socio-political movement that had been fighting the central government since 2004, alongside troops loyal to a former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, against supporters and allies of the government overthrown by the Houthis in early 2015. The war became regionalized in March 2015 when a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of ten mostly Arab states launched a campaign of air strikes against the Houthis. According to Saudi Arabia, the Houthis are an Iranian proxy; they therefore frame the war as an effort to counter Iranian influence. This article will argue, however, that the Houthis are not Iranian proxies; Tehran's influence in Yemen is marginal. Iran's support for the Houthis has increased in recent years, but it remains low and is far from enough to significantly impact the balance of internal forces in Yemen. Looking ahead, it is unlikely that Iran will emerge as an important player in Yemeni affairs. Iran's interests in Yemen are limited, while the constraints on its ability to project power in the country are unlikely to be lifted. Tehran saw with the rise of the Houthis a low cost opportunity to gain some leverage in Yemen. It is unwilling, however, to invest larger amounts of resources. There is, as a result, only limited potential for Iran to further penetrate Yemen.
Proxy warfare will shape the conflicts of the twenty-first century for the foreseeable future. Yet the popular understanding of proxy wars remains largely shaped by the experience of the Cold War. In reality, in the Greater Middle East and its periphery today, the growing power of regional states and non-state actors, combined with the proliferation of new technology, has reshaped proxy conflicts, in an increasingly multipolar and interconnected environment. In this collected volume, a range of researchers examine what constitutes proxy warfare and provide new insight into how these wars are waged, in contexts stretching from Ukraine to North Africa and Syria to Afghanistan. The volume draws upon research, surveys and interviews conducted in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine, as well as examining the propaganda output of those involved in these countries' wars. In doing so, Understanding the New Proxy Wars helps reveal both the continuities and the differences between recent conflicts and those of times past.
Proxy warfare will shape the conflicts of the twenty-first century for the foreseeable future. Yet the popular understanding of proxy wars remains largely shaped by the experience of the Cold War. In reality, in the Greater Middle East and its periphery today, the growing power of regional states and non-state actors, combined with the proliferation of new technology, has reshaped proxy conflicts, in an increasingly multipolar and interconnected environment. In this collected volume, a range of researchers examine what constitutes proxy warfare and provide new insight into how these wars are waged, in contexts stretching from Ukraine to North Africa and Syria to Afghanistan. The volume draws upon research, surveys and interviews conducted in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine, as well as examining the propaganda output of those involved in these countries' wars. In doing so, Understanding the New Proxy Wars helps reveal both the continuities and the differences between recent conflicts and those of times past.
Yoweri Museveni’s rebels seized power in Uganda in 1986, with Rwandan refugees making up roughly a quarter of his troops. These refugees then took power in Rwanda in 1994 with support from Museveni’s regime. Subsequently, between 1999 and 2000, the Rwandan and Ugandan comrades-in-arms turned on each other in a series of deadly clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country they had invaded together only one year earlier. What explains these fratricidal clashes? This article contends that a social–psychological perspective focused on status competition between the Rwandan and Ugandan ruling elites provides the most compelling answer. Long treated as ‘boys’, the new Rwandan rulers strove to enhance their social status vis-à-vis the Ugandans, seeking first equality and then regional superiority. Economic disputes over Congo’s natural resources at times complemented this struggle for status but cannot explain all of its phases. The article draws on interviews with senior Rwandan, Ugandan, and former Congolese rebel officials, and triangulates them with statements given to national and regional newspapers at the time of the clashes. More broadly, it builds on the recently revitalized study of status competition in world politics and makes a case for integrating research on inter-African relations.
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.
While proxy wars have been around since time immemorial, the last decade of conflict has seen a rise in their strategic appeal. In the same way that sub-state violence captured the attention of policymakers and academics at the end of the Cold War, proxy wars are now a core feature of the contemporary and future strategic and security environment. Vladimir Rauta argues for a relocation of proxy wars by conceptualising them as strategic bargains waged on more complex grounds than risk avoidance, cost efficiency and deniability. He identifies two types of strategic goals sought through the employment of proxies: coercing and coping with an adversary, the differences of which are presented by contrasting the rationale for the US decision to support Syrian rebels against President Bashar Al-Assad with the Iranian strategy of proxy war in Syria.
The work of TE Lawrence is traditionally included among theories of insurgency and irregular warfare. However, such a reading of Lawrence’s work disregards the political theory of state creation underpinning his strategic understanding of insurgency. This article comprises a historically driven analysis of Lawrence’s writing and action in order to discern his military theory and return the Arab Revolt to its context of proxy warfare. This article argues that Lawrence’s work is strategic and political as opposed to tactical. Rather than a simple theory of insurgency, Lawrence’s military theory is one of proxy war that envisions state creation as a strategic goal.
Civilian victimization, whether deliberate or collateral, is a common occurrence in civil war. This study investigates patterns of civilian victimization during the 5-year Battle of Aleppo, a major campaign of the Syrian Civil War in which there were 24,462 documented civilian fatalities. We argue that the primary belligerents and their external patrons respond to shifts in the conflict’s strategic balance of power, employing more indiscriminate force when their opponent is gaining advantage, resulting in higher civilian fatalities. A quantitative analysis of the Battle of Aleppo models weekly civilian fatalities as a function of belligerents’ conflict initiation interacted with regime and rebel offensives aimed at shifting the status quo. While regime-initiated conflict events appear to be the primary determinant of civilian fatalities, our analysis finds that conflict events initiated by the opposition forces during periods of rebel offensive gains are associated with fewer civilian casualties, while pro-government external intervention during rebel offensives is associated with elevated civilian fatalities. We expand on these findings through a focused case study of third party intervention during the final year of the battle, with emphasis on the Russian intervention on behalf of the Syrian Regime that broke the opposition’s final counteroffensive.
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.
State outsourcing of violence to nonstate actors is a global practice that challenges our notions of legitimate warfare, statehood, and citizenship. It matters for counterinsurgency, civil war outcomes, the humane treatment of civilians and former combatants, and the prospects of post-conflict peace. In South Asia, the use of nonstate proxies is deeply entwined with questions of state fragility, the postcolonial social contract, and the rivalry between two nuclear powers. This book explains the origins of state-nonstate alliances in times of civil war. A new balance-of-interests framework is generated through systematic fine-grained analyses of violence outsourcing by Pakistan and India in Kashmir, East Pakistan/Bangladesh, and their respective tribal belts. Central to this framework are the distribution of power inside the theater of war and varied interests of both the state and the nonstate actors. The cases drawn from Pakistan and India demonstrate how different configurations of local power and actors’ priorities result in distinct alliance patterns. The potential applicability of the balance-of-interests approach beyond South Asia is then demonstrated with analyses of Russia’s counterinsurgencies in Chechnya and Turkey’s operations against Kurdish rebels. The book builds on and contributes to the existing scholarship on civil war and counterinsurgency, in particular the burgeoning literature on militias, alliances, and South Asian security.
It was the original forever war, which went on interminably, fueled by religious fanaticism, personal ambition, fear of hegemony, and communal suspicion. It dragged in all the neighboring powers. It was punctuated by repeated failed ceasefires. It inflicted suffering beyond belief and generated waves of refugees. No, this is not Syria today, but the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), which turned Germany and much of central Europe into a disaster zone. The Thirty Years' War is often cited as a parallel in discussions of the Middle East. The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the conflict in 1648, has featured strongly in such discussions, usually with the observation that recent events in some parts of the region have seen the collapse of ideas of state sovereignty--ideas that supposedly originated with the 1648 settlement. Axworthy, Milton and Simms argue that the Westphalian treaties, far from enshrining state sovereignty, in fact reconfigured and strengthened a structure for legal resolution of disputes, and provided for intervention by outside guarantor powers to uphold the peace settlement. This book argues that the history of Westphalia may hold the key to resolving the new long wars in the Middle East today.
‘The Story So Far’ is the conclusion of the first centenary Special Issue of the journal International Relations. The issue marks 100 years since the birth of the academic discipline of International Relations (IR), whose institutional moment was the endowment establishing the Department of International Politics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, at the end of 1918, and its subsequent opening in April 1919. The collection of articles marking this unique event consists of reflections by a group of leading scholars on themes of continuity and change at the international level of world politics in that century. The present article considers these reflections in the context of problematising our attempts to understand the long history and complex dynamics of international relations.
State support for foreign rebel groups has become more salient, yet it remains unclear how this affects armed conflict. This paper therefore analyses the effect of foreign government assistance and does so in the typical case of the Angolan War (1975–1991). It argues that South African and United States support greatly helped the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) wage a large and sustained insurgency campaign but was ultimately insufficient to overthrow the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government because it enabled the incumbent government to obtain similar foreign assistance and because the level of aid awarded to UNITA fluctuated strongly, preventing it from engaging in meaningful long-term planning.
During the 1980s, the United States spent substantial political and economic capital supporting the Nicaraguan Contras. How effective was this in helping the rebels take on the Sandinista government? This article explores this topic by extending the application of principal-agent theory. It finds that, as expected, the effect of U.S. assistance was undermined by adverse selection and agency losses. However, the most important factor that undermined support effectiveness was the great inconsistency of the level of U.S. aid awarded to the insurgents. Reductions of official U.S. government support led to insurgency campaign collapse and meant that, in the end, the U.S. support program was only partially effective in helping the Contra struggle.
Iran has been a critical player in the Syrian war since 2011, crafting a complex foreign policy and military strategy to preserve its Syrian ally. What have been the drivers of Iranian decision-making in this conflict? And how has Iranian strategy evolved over the course of the war? This article argues that the logic of deterrence has been fundamental not just for shaping the contours of Iran–Syria relations since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but also for determining the overall trajectory of Iranian strategy in the Syrian war. The authors outline Iran's decision-making calculus and divide the country's strategy on Syria after the Arab Spring into four primary phases: 1) a ‘Basij’ strategy to establish local militias in Syria; 2) a regionalization strategy to incorporate transnational fighters and militias in the war effort; 3) an internationalization strategy to incorporate Russia and balance the United States; and 4) a post-ISIS deterrence strategy to balance against the United States, Turkey and Israel. Iran's Syria strategy progressively escalated in response to the possible defeat of its ally and the deterioration of its forward deterrence capacities against the United States and Israel. Today, the potential for direct inter-state conflict is rising as proxy warfare declines and Iran attempts to maintain the credibility of its forward deterrence.
If states are not to go to war, what should they do instead? In The Alternatives to War, James Pattison considers the case for the alternatives to military action to address mass atrocities and aggression. The volume examines the normative issues raised by measures ranging from comprehensive economic sanctions, diplomacy, and positive incentives, to criminal prosecutions, nonviolent resistance, accepting refugees, and arming rebels. For instance, given the indiscriminateness of many sanctions regimes, are sanctions any better than war? Should states avoid 'megaphone diplomacy' and adopt more subtle measures? What, if anything, can nonviolent methods such as civilian defence and civilian peacekeeping do in the face of a ruthless opponent? Is it a serious concern that positive incentives can appear to reward aggressors? Overall, Pattison provides a comprehensive account of the ethics of the alternatives to war. In doing so, he argues that the case for war is weaker and the case for many of the alternatives is stronger than commonly thought. The upshot is that, when reacting to mass atrocities and aggression, states are generally required to pursue the alternatives to war rather than military action. The volume concludes that this has significant implications for pacifism, just war theory, and the responsibility to protect doctrine.
Iran has steadily expanded its strategic influence across the Middle East in large part due to its cultivation of a network of foreign co-religionist militant clients. Those clients have enabled Iran to fight adversaries by proxy in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran's growing regional influence is often credited to the shared religious ties and loyalties of its clients. This article challenges that notion by examining Iran's post-1979 track record of developing clients and argues that, although Iran's successes—such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iraq's Badr—are well known, its failures to develop or retain the loyalty of clients have received much less attention. This article finds that Iran's relations with its clients are strongest when three conditions exist: first, those clients share Iran's theocratic interpretation of Shi'a Islam; second, Iran is the sole patron or the leading outside source of support to the client; and third, the client either shares or does not oppose Iran's ambitions in its country and agenda in the region. In cases when all those factors are present, Iran has been successful at preserving strong ties with clients over time. However, if one of those conditions is absent, then Iran's ties to a client can be susceptible to weakening and outside competition. These findings have important implications for the future of Iranian influence in the region and the Middle East more broadly.
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
The world is mired in history again, as historical modes of competition return and historical grievances fuel the policies of multiple revisionist actors. If the end of history has ended, then it follows that the time is ripe for an engagement with history’s wisdom. We argue that the making of American statecraft—the deliberate, coordinated use of national power to achieve important objectives—can be significantly enhanced by a better understanding of the past. This essay, which draws on the extensive literature on history and statecraft, U.S. foreign policy, and the author’s own research and experiences, offers a defense of the use of history to improve statecraft, as well as a typology of ten distinct ways in which an understanding of history can improve government policy.
Critical security advocates commonly portray strategic studies as crippled by its narrow focus on Cold War-era military issues, as state-centric and as Western-centric. I argue that this conception of the scope of strategy is flawed and I offer a comprehensive rebuttal by working out the logic of the theories advanced by Carl von Clausewitz and Thomas Schelling. The proponents of critical security overlook the striking expansion of strategy during the Cold War, its longstanding inclusion of competing political actors not just states, as well as its capacity to put Western and non-Western actors in a common analytic frame. By breaking out of the conceptual jails in which strategy has been incarcerated, I seek to reconnect International Relations to strategic thought from which it has become increasingly estranged.
States use proxies to project power through cyberspace, some capable of causing significant harm. In recent years, media outlets have published reports about proxies using Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) from Northeast Asia to India, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Two of the landmark documents providing insight into how the international community thinks about rules of the road for cyberspace explicitly reference the term ‘proxies’. However, neither report defines ‘proxy’, nor does the term easily translate into non-English languages. This article therefore reviews what this term means and how it has been used in various contexts. It focuses on the subset of proxies that are non-state actors used by a state actor, analysing the different logical distinctions and levels of detachment between a state and a non-state actor’s activity. The goal is 2-fold: first, to provide a framework to think about the diverse array of existing proxy definitions; second, to conceptualise the relationships between a state and non-state proxies that can offer a guide for political decision-makers and a roadmap for future research on proxy actors and cyberspace.
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.
This article contends that states that employ cyber proxies are confronted with twin dilemmas. First, governments risk a Promethean dilemma when they equip cyber proxies with tools that could be turned against them. Second, governments risk a dilemma of inadvertent crisis escalation by empowering proxies with more expansive, or less restrained, political agendas that may exceed their mandates. The essay explores how states can manage the risks associated with these dilemmas and the conditions under which they are likely to backfire.
Collaboration with native auxiliaries in wars in the peripheries of the international system is an age-old practice, the relevance of which is likely to increase in the twenty-first century. Yet, the parameters of such collaboration are understudied. This article aims to contribute to the nascent yet fragmentary scholarship on the use of native auxiliaries. It identifies three intellectual templates of the collaboration between Western regular forces and native auxiliaries: the eighteenth-century model of auxiliary ‘partisans’ as tactical complements to regular armed forces; the nineteenth-century transformation of the ‘partisan’ into the irregular guerrilla fighter and the concomitant rise of the ‘martial races’ discourse; and, finally, the post-1945 model of the loyalist auxiliary as a symbol of the political legitimacy of the counter-insurgent side in wars of decolonisation and post-colonial insurgencies. The article focuses on the rise of loyalism after 1945 in particular, a phenomenon that it seeks to understand within the broader context of irregular warfare and the moral reappraisal of irregular fighters after the Second World War.
What would it mean to decolonise the concept of war? ‘Decolonising’ means critiquing the ways in which Eurocentric ideas and historiographies have informed the basic categories of social and political thought. Dominant understandings of the concept of war derive from histories and sociologies of nation-state formation in the West. Accordingly, I critique this Eurocentric concept of war from the perspective of Small War in the colonies, that is, from the perspective of different histories and geographies of war and society than were assumed to exist in the West. I do so in order to outline a postcolonial concept of war and to identify some of the principles of inquiry that would inform a postcolonial war studies. These include conceiving force as an ordinary dimension of politics; situating force and war in transnational context, amid international hierarchies; and attending to the co-constitutive character of war and society relations in world politics.
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.
The use of surrogate or ‘proxy’ actors within the context of ‘irregular’ or guerrilla conflict within or between states constitutes a phenomenon spanning nearly the whole of recorded human military history. Yet it is a phenomenon that has also acquired urgent contemporary relevance in the light of the general evolution of conflict in Ukraine and the current Middle East. This introduction to a special issue on the theme investigates some potentially important new avenues to studying the phenomenon in the light of these trends.
How does the understanding of time and temporality in international relations (IR) shape the study of international politics? IR is centrally concerned with the study of issues such as armed conflict, but wars are events – a series of occurrences that only come into being through their relationship across time. The concept of time at work in the understanding of this event thus plays an inextricable role in the scholarship produced. IR shares an understanding of time that pervades (traditional) social science and is based on the Western notion of clock-time. This conception of time encourages a spatiotemporal model of the past that epistemologically privileges temporal understandings that value generalizable, time-invariant theory and discount temporal fluidity and context. These temporal commitments operate at a deep level, informing and shaping theory construction in important ways and de-emphasizing alternative approaches that may more accurately reflect the contingency of international events, discontinuities in political practice, and the radical shifts in international structures, which are often most in need of scholarly analysis. This article concludes that by treating temporality as a stand-alone issue, IR can better model and predict international political practices.
On 4 February 2014, Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan (aka Al Qaeda Central) repudiated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Ayman al-Zawahiri declared that al-Baghdadi and his newly formed Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were no longer part of Al Qaeda's organization and Al Qaeda Central could not be held responsible for ISIL's behavior. It represents the first time that Al Qaeda Central has renounced an affiliate publicly. The announcement was driven by months of fighting between ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra, another Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. In fact, in Syria, Al Qaeda fighters are competing against each other for influence, as well as against other opposition groups, the Syrian regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iraqi militiamen, and Lebanese Hezbollah. This chaotic, semi-proxy war is unlike any previous problem encountered, made even more challenging by the limited U.S. presence on-the-ground. More worrisome, this semi-proxy war also has spread beyond Syria. Similar dynamics have emerged in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon to a certain extent. This article argues that these dynamics necessitate a twist in U.S. counterterrorism strategy.