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'Proxy War' -A Reconceptualisation
Abstract
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.
... Sartori's technique of a "semantic field" is especially useful for helping scholars refine, specify, and articulate a concept's sub-types (Masullo 2021), including more critical scholars (see Herborth 2022). Identifying a concept's semantic field helps us identify the attributes of the initial concept and contrasting concepts (Rauta 2021). Hence, we can determine where the boundary lies, for example, between 'peace' (initial concept) and 'war' or 'conflict' (contrasting concepts). ...
In collecting data, analyzing data, or writing-up, researchers can find that the concepts they had decided to use and the available concepts in the literature are mismatched with what they seek to explore and/or explain. This misalignment between concepts and observations can create analytical and theoretical blind spots, foreclosing the opportunity to delve deeper into and articulate the specificities and complexities of what they observe. Researchers experiencing such misalignment of concepts need strategies to help them reconceptualize existing concepts, which we hope to provide here to help researchers develop more nuanced and better-adapted concepts that provide more analytical, theoretical, and empirical leverage. This article suggests a four-step process of reconceptualization, a method for developing and iterating the concepts we employ in designing, conducting, and writing-up research. This method of reconceptualization addresses a gap in the existing literature on concepts by providing a new, practical, accessible, and pedagogically-oriented solution for this problem of misaligned concepts. We illustrate how to implement recon-ceptualization by working with the concept of 'local' and offer two examples of how we reconceptualized this concept in two projects in Dominica and Moldova. We show how, by reconceptualizing an initial concept, we can move forward in developing new and recon-ceptualized concepts. Hence, this article also offers two concepts: 'local-international' and 'internationalized local', that are more attuned to what we observe and richer in their empirical and analytical potential.
... However, recent scholarship has provided a more nuanced analysis of how proxy war is connected with external support in conflicts. Rauta (2021), as one of the leading scholars on proxy war, claims that indirect and direct intervention belong to the same concept using Sartori's work on the concept to argue for the "inclusion of a sub-type" to military intervention, that is, proxy war. One attribute that all proxy war scholars agree on is delegation. ...
The conflict in Syria quickly escalated into a complex and prolonged civil war where states outside the conflict fueled rebel groups to fight. The onset of multiple proxy wars befell Syria. Proxy war happens when a ruler of a state devises and facilitates the provision of support to a rebel group that is engaged in carrying out violent activities in another state. Thus, an external state can influence the outcome of a civil war without having to bear the heavy costs of sending its army forces. States that wage proxy wars risk a potential conflict escalation, and gamble with provoking retaliation by either the offending state or its allies. Furthermore, inadvertent conse quences of backing rebel forces are also possible such as international condemnation. So, why does a state choose to form a relationship with a proxy group, instead of intervening directly? Why invest money and military power in a third party that could lead to a prolonged conflict? The analysis highlights that the political survival of regimes in the Middle East caused leaders to support rebel groups in Syria. I present a causal mechanism that is based on transnational threats to explain the phenomenon of proxy war in the Syrian civil war. Keywords: Syria, proxy war, Middle East, qualitative analysis, foreign policy.
... While the US headed multiple alliances namely NATO, CENTO and SEATO, the USSR headed alliance named as Warsaw Pact containing countries in Eurasian landmass. Both proxy wars and alliances were built to limit the political and economic ideologies (Rauta, 2021). Both these nations were also involved in Arms Race in the field of Land, Air, Sea, Subsea and Space. ...
Aim: The concept of National Security has undergone paradigm shift in the period of Cold War and after it. In the paper, an attempt was made to understand the concept of national Security from the perspective of various authors and establish fundamental differences between them Methodology: National security has been defined in various ways by different authors. Some common elements in these definitions include the concepts of freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity. One author who has defined national security extensively is Zbigniew Brzezinski. In his book. Results: These concepts were further elaborated with analysis of relations between USSR during the cold war era and between US and China in post-Cold War era. Conclusions: Understanding of concepts of National Security has undergone paradigm shift in the period of Cold War and after it. While during the cold war the national security was primarily viewed from the lens of military capabilities, in the post-Cold War era, National Security has come to encompass various other forms such as economic security, human security, political security etc. Originality/ Value:This Study was conducted to understand the concepts of National Security. during the cold war the national security.
... 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
... 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.
... We begin by setting the conceptual and definitional baseline for our analysis given that conceptual clarification stands 'to correct theoretical and methodological ambivalences' (Rauta, 2018: 449). Central to this chapter is the belief that fundamentalism is not a static concept or state of mind, nor it is solely related to religion: in short, it exists within a complex semantic field and what falls under its defining properties is not just time and context variable, but also intellectually contingent to theoretical and empirical choices (Rauta, 2021a). This seemingly automatic association can be seen through the definitions in leading dictionaries. ...
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.
... On the one hand, there is no substantive difference between hybrid or grey zone war or warfare, but merely a question of which is the term du jour. On the other hand, the debate has been reluctant to engage in proper concept analysis, of whatever intellectual tradition, in order to understand how these concepts sit next to each other in the wider semantic field of irregular warfare (Rauta, 2021b). 2. It also suggests institutional change has not followed the hybrid threat, chiefly because the threat has not been properly acknowledged to date (Intelligence and Security Committee, 2020). ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the past six years, proxy wars have subtly assumed a position of dominance in contemporary war. Yet, as proxy wars have voraciously marched into the future it has become apparent that they are not well understood, which is the byproduct of insufficient strategic theory on the subject.
Within this dynamic, five basic relationship models exist – exploitative, transactional, cultural, coerced, and contractual. Proxy wars will remain relevant for years to come. Understanding the contours of strategic relationships amongst partners is important for the policymaker and practitioner because it allows them to better navigate the waters of proxy war. Understanding the type of relationship that exists between a proxy and its partner is the first step.
In recent years, the U.S. Army has routinely found itself in wars being waged through
intermediaries, or proxy forces. At the same time, the Army does not speak frankly about these proxy wars but instead speaks indirectly about the character of these environments and its relationship with its partnered force. It does so by arguing that those environments are one in which it operates by, with and through partners in a security force assistance capacity in pursuit of common objectives. While this approach softens the coarseness of proxy warfare, it also degrades understanding of proxy warfare by not speaking frankly about its environmental and relational character. In examining proxy warfare, one finds that it is dominated by a principal-actor dynamic, power relationships and the tyranny of time. Taking those ideas a step further, this examination yields two models of proxy warfare—the transactional model and the exploitative model. The goal of setting forth this theory of proxy warfare is to generate better conceptual understanding, allowing the U.S. Army to more effectively manipulate proxy environments toward its own ends.
Drawing the dividing line between civil and interstate war can be a difficult task. This task is made even more difficult by a gap in the current typology of armed conflict. The conflict studies literature in general and the coding rules of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program in particular acknowledge that internal conflict can involve external actors but ignore that interstate conflict can be disguised as internal rebellion. This creates an unnecessary risk of categorization errors and a risk of neglecting the potential complexity of interstate conflict in the modern world. This article uses Idean Salehyan's distinction between intervention and delegation, the Nicaragua Judgement of the International Court of Justice, and the debate on the causes of the war in eastern Ukraine to illustrate this point. On the basis of this discussion, it proposes the introduction of a new category – delegated interstate conflict – to create a more coherent and symmetrical typology.
What strategies does the United States pursue when it no longer perceives overt military intervention as politically viable or desirable but the problems or issues for which it was formerly undertaken remain? This analysis identifies three such periods in American foreign policy since the United States became a World Power and draws from the work of Peter Hall to develop a typology of strategies according to the magnitude of policy change. These range from adjustment in the settings of interventionism – persistence; the substitution of alternative instruments of foreign policy – ameliorism; and the principled rejection of interventionism in conjunction with a more systematic critique of prevailing foreign policy assumptions – transformationalism. Yet each approach is beset by certain structural limits and contradictions arising from the domestic politics and constitutional-institutional system of the United States that are important in understandiing and appreciating more fully the challenges – and opportunities – of the period ‘after interventionism’.
This article reports on trends in organized violence and peace agreements collected by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). The number of fatalities in organized violence decreased for the fourth consecutive year, to reach the lowest level since 2012. In 2018, UCDP recorded almost 76,000 deaths: a decrease of 20% compared to 2017, and 43% compared to the latest peak in 2014. State-based armed conflict drives this downward trend in organized violence, with Syria accounting for much of the change. The number of civilians killed in one-sided violence also dropped in 2018, reaching its lowest level since 2012. In contrast, non-state conflict remained on a high level. The general decline in fatalities from organized violence does not correspond with the trend in the number of active conflicts. In fact, the world has seen a new peak in the number of conflicts after 2014, matched only by the number of conflicts in the early 1990s. In 1991, the peak in the number of armed conflicts corresponded with a similar peak in the number of signed peace agreements. This was followed by a decrease in the number of conflicts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, the most recent rise in armed conflicts has not been matched by a similar rise in the number of peace agreements. Two circumstances that characterize the recent rise in conflicts have also been found to make conflicts harder to solve: explicit religious claims and high levels of internationalization.
Most governance is indirect, carried out through intermediaries. Governments work through executive agencies, independent regulators, independent central banks and courts; enlist professional associations; contract out public functions; and carry out foreign policy through international organizations, client states and foreign rebel groups; while international organizations engage NGOs to implement projects and monitor state compliance. Principal-agent (PA) theory views indirect governance primarily as a problem of information: the intermediary (agent) has an informational advantage over the governor (principal), which it can exploit for shirking, slacking or otherwise evading the governor’s control. But indirect governance creates an even more fundamental problem of power. Competent intermediaries with the expertise, credibility, legitimacy and/or operational capacity to achieve the governor’s goals are inherently difficult to control, even with complete information, because the policy benefits they can create (or the trouble they can cause) give them leverage over the governor. Conversely, tight governor control constrains these intermediary competencies. The governor thus faces a dilemma: if it emphasizes control, it limits intermediary competence and risks policy failure; if it emphasizes intermediary competence, it risks control failure. This “governor’s dilemma” helps explain important and puzzling features of indirect governance arrangements: why such arrangements are not limited to PA delegation, but take multiple forms; why particular governors choose forms of indirect governance that appear counter-productive in an informational perspective; and why indirect governance arrangements are frequently unstable, subject to repeated tinkering and changes of form.
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.
Airpower, drones and cyber-weapons are employed by states in conjunction with local armed non-state actors in an effort to coercively intervene in the crises of the twenty-first century. While the externalization of the burden of warfare is a return to pre-modern war, it is the change in the underlying socio-political relations between the state and its military agent that is a novel phenomenon in surrogate warfare. This article demonstrates that in a post-Westphalian era characterized by non-state violence, globalized conflicts, a prioritization of risk management in a mediatized environment, the state has to explore new ways to remain relevant as the primary communal security provider. Thereby, the organization of violence has departed from the employment of the state’s soldier as the primary bearer of the burden of warfare to a mode of war where technological and human surrogates enable the state to manage the risks of post-modern conflict remotely. In this article, we conceptually explore surrogate warfare as a socio-political phenomenon within the context of globalized, privatized, securitized and mediatized war.
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.
While broad scholarly attention has been devoted to the securitization of migration in the ′EU’s relations with neighboring countries, less attention has been given to the ways in which the EU is partnering with third countries to fight other central ′‘unconventional security threats′’, such as terrorism and drug trafficking. This article traces the evolution of EU cooperation on these two issues with countries along the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe, i.e. Latin America and the Caribbean and West Africa. A mapping of EU initiatives and cooperation reveals that not only can a securitization of EU cooperation be observed in both regions, but various ′‘unconventional security threats′’, perceived in geopolitical terms, seem increasingly to serve as drivers for EU external action. The modalities of EU support – through international and regional organizations as well as third countries’ own counter-crime and counter-terrorism capabilities – suggest that the Union is fighting drug trafficking and terrorism ′‘by proxy′’. The article discusses whether the ′‘indirect′’ EU approach is a strategy of efficient engagement, or rather a way of avoiding commitment while portraying itself as a ′‘global crime fighter′’. Lastly, more analytical attention to third country interests, agency, and opposition is suggested in order for analyses to transcend the one-directional understanding of power seemingly underpinning the proxy concept.
The chapter surveys the extremely varied and fragmented landscape of research on political violence and proposes a way to unify the study of its various manifestations in a way that is tractable, consistent, and analytically fruitful. Drawing on research that has focused on distinct types of political violence, it identifies eleven basic types. Classification is based on two key dimensions: whether the perpetrator of violence is a state or a non-state actor and whether the target of violence is a state or a non-state entity. The chapter briefly discusses key research findings associated with each type of political violence and explores how they are linked with each other by pointing to four connecting logics: hierarchy, instrumentality, escalation, and substitution. It concludes by drawing the implications.
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.
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.
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 U.S. government list of state sponsors of terrorism is dated, politicized, analytically muddy, and in general not useful for distinguishing which states truly sponsor terrorism and how aggressively they do so. A better list and process would identify different criteria that go into sponsoring terrorism and, in so doing, create multiple de facto lists. Lists would distinguish important factors such as the use of terrorism in war and the problematic criterion of states using their own clandestine agents for terrorism-like violence. Different forms of passive support would also be assessed, particularly because state passivity is often vital for jihadists and white supremacists, two of the greatest terrorism dangers today. The political and analytically flawed nature of the state sponsor list and process, however, is as much by design as it is by accident, and change is especially difficult as a result.
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.
This article draws a distinction between external support which primarily serves to enhance rebel capacity to offensively target vital state interests and support which primarily increases rebel capacity to defensively resist state repression. Targeting support increases a rebel group’s incentive to behave aggressively, and is found to be associated with a shorter conflict duration when given to strong groups and a higher probability of a decisive conflict outcome. Resistance support increases a rebel group’s incentive to prioritise survival, and is found to be associated with a longer conflict duration.
This article develops a theory of competitive intervention in civil war to explain variation in the global prevalence of intrastate conflict. I describe the distortionary effects competitive interventions have on domestic bargaining processes and explain the unique strategic dilemmas they entail for third-party interveners. The theory uncovers the conditional nature of intervention under the shadow of inadvertent escalation and moves beyond popular anecdotes about “proxy wars” by deriving theoretically grounded propositions about the strategic logics motivating intervener behaviors. I then link temporal variation in patterns of competitive intervention to recent decreases in the prevalence and average duration of internal conflicts. The theory is tested with a quantitative analysis of all civil wars fought between 1975 and 2009 and a qualitative case study of the Angolan civil war (1975–1991). My results underscore the importance of a generalizable account of competitive intervention that not only explains past conflicts, but also informs contemporary policy.
Militant groups are usually committed to violent tactics to pursue their goals. Yet, in certain cases, militants adopt nonviolent tactics and desist from violence. As internal conflict rarely remains isolated from outside influence, I argue that external supporters affect militant groups’ tactical considerations. I expect that different external benefactors will have different effects on the probability of switching to nonviolent tactics. The focus here is on diaspora and foreign states as external supporters, and I conduct a large-N analysis with violent group-level data. I find that external support from diaspora is positively associated with rebels’ adoption of nonviolent tactics, while support from foreign states is not. In fact, foreign states as supporters are not as effective influencers as diaspora. These findings shed light on the important role of nonstate actors in conflict dynamics and present evidence that challenges the notion that diaspora’s involvement prolongs internal conflicts.
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 actual closing of the Strait of Hormuz is only the most extreme on a spectrum of Iranian military options, which could interfere with the security of oil shipments.
Even though al-Qaeda has largely failed to take advantage of the Syrian war, there could be opportunities for a resurgence among Salafi jihadists in Syria.
Recent scholarship has established several key dynamics in civil wars: since the nineteenth century, rebel victories have increased in likelihood; external support is one of the most significant predictors of rebel victory; and rebel groups have become increasingly likely to receive foreign backing. What is missing is an explanation of why patterns of third-party aid to rebels changed over time. Data on foreign assistance to rebels over the last two centuries reveals the odds of groups receiving aid increased from about one in five to about four in five. The nature of the patron also altered significantly, from great powers, to lesser states, and then nonstate actors. We explain these patterns using three variables: (1) great-power competition; (2) norms of national self-determination; and (3) globalization. This paper explores this theory with a case study of aid to rebel groups in Algeria since the 1830s.
The chapter is structured as follows: first, attention is be paid to the issue of theorising proxy wars. The chapter defines proxy wars by observing how they differ from cases of third-party military intervention. Here, the focus is on differentiating the Proxy Agent from third parties such as mediators or auxiliaries. Second, the chapter addresses the question of ‘Why do states engage in proxy wars?’, and attempts an examination of contenting and competing explanations. These two aims are then put to the empirical test. By using two recent and ongoing cases of proxy wars, the theoretical discussion is brought into the empirical realm. The chosen cases are, first, the situation in Ukraine emerging from the 2013 protests and culminating with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and, second, the collapse of the Syrian state and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Because proxy wars have generally been linked to the Cold War period and, thus, came to be associated with a superpower practice of avoiding direct interaction, the chapter moves away from discussing classic proxy wars such as the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état, the civil war in Angola (1975–2002), or the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia (1977–1978). A view from a post-Cold War security standpoint significantly expands our understanding of this ever-present security problem.
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.
The author argues that the United States faces a strategic paradox where values conflict with the ability to develop and implement coherent strategies in the complex and dynamic world of today and the future. Special Operations Forces’ ability to be effective in the contexts of foreign environments may mean future reliance on proxy forces that offer plausible deniability for U.S policy makers. However, such opportunities come with a potential of heightened strategic risk that must be carefully managed and judged. The author provides examples of historical cases of effective use of third-party proxies, which may become a template for partner nations and Special Operations Forces to effectively meet future challenges while coping with the strategic paradox that currently limits capabilities.
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.
Insecurity, poor governance, and a long-running humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) present a range of challenges for U.S. policymakers, including the U.S. Congress. Chronic instability in eastern DRC, an area rich in minerals and other natural resources, has caused widespread human suffering and inhibited private sector investment throughout the Great Lakes region-which includes DRC and its neighbors to the east. Donors, including the United States, have recently increased their diplomatic engagement in DRC, but prospects for the future remain uncertain. Congolese political actors have often displayed limited capacity and will to improve security and government accountability, while several of DRC's neighbors have reportedly provided cyclical support to nonstate armed groups within DRC. In recent months, DRC and its neighbors have signed a regional peace framework; the United Nations (U.N.) and the Obama Administration have appointed special envoys to the region; and the U.N. Security Council has authorized an "Intervention Brigade" within the existing U.N. peacekeeping operation in DRC (MONUSCO) to conduct operations against armed groups in the east. These developments have raised hopes of progress, although similar efforts in the past have proven unable to bring lasting peace. While the Obama Administration has recently suggested that it will devote high-level attention to DRC and the region, U.S. leverage may be constrained by available resources, limited DRC capacity and commitment, and the challenge of coordinating with and influencing other key players, including European donors, China, and regional actors such as Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, and South Africa. U.S. policymakers, including in Congress, continue to debate the relative effectiveness of various policy tools in DRC, such as aid, diplomacy, and other forms of engagement. The United States has a long history of diplomatic, economic, and security engagements in DRC and neighboring states. It has facilitated past regional peace accords and provided billions of dollars in bilateral and multilateral aid over the past decade. Annual bilateral aid to DRC has totaled 300 million in recent years, in addition to roughly 150 million annually in emergency humanitarian aid and 600 million in annual contributions to MONUSCO. Under an executive order in place since 2006, the United States has imposed targeted sanctions against persons responsible for arms trafficking and human rights violations in DRC. As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, the United States also shapes the authorization of MONUSCO and U.N. sanctions, and it wields influence within the international financial institutions that provide crucial funding and technical support to the DRC government. Congress has used a range of tools to shape U.S. policy toward DRC and the region, including hearings, legislation, and oversight activities. Congress authorizes, appropriates, and oversees U.S. foreign aid funding for DRC and neighboring states. In DRC, such funding supports programs seeking to address health and humanitarian needs, advance democratic governance, encourage economic growth and development, support military professionalization, and end the regional trade in "conflict minerals," among other goals. Congress also appropriates funding in support of U.S. assessed contributions to MONUSCO's budget, to which the United States is the largest donor. Based on long-standing human rights concerns, Congress has placed legal restrictions on certain types of U.S. aid to DRC, and has conditioned the provision of certain types of military aid to Rwanda and Uganda on their noninterference in eastern DRC. Two DRC- related resolutions have been introduced during the 113th Congress: H.Res. 131 and S.Res. 144.
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.
Over the last decade (and indeed ever since the Cold War), the rise of insurgents and non-state actors in war, and their readiness to use terror and other irregular methods of fighting, have led commentators to speak of ‘new wars’. They have assumed that the ‘old wars’ were waged solely between states, and were accordingly fought between comparable and ‘symmetrical’ armed forces. Much of this commentary has lacked context or sophistication. It has been bounded by norms and theories more than the messiness of reality. Fed by the impact of the 9/11 attacks, it has privileged some wars and certain trends over others. Most obviously it has been historically unaware. But it has also failed to consider many of the other dimensions which help us to define what war is — legal, ethical, religious, and social. This book draws together all these themes in order to distinguish between what is really changing about war and what only seems to be changing. Self-evidently, as the product of its own times, the character of each war is always changing. But if war’s character is in flux, its underlying nature contains its own internal consistency. Each war is an adversarial business, capable of generating its own dynamic, and therefore of spiralling in directions that are never totally predictable. War is both utilitarian, the tool of policy, and dysfunctional.
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.
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.
This article studies civil wars. Kalyvas defines a civil war as armed combat taking place within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties that are subject to a common authority at the outset of the hostilities. The article starts by determining why a study of civil war is important. This is followed by a section on the various macro findings and debates on civil war. The issue of the relation between a country's rural dimension and civil war is discussed, in order to help illustrate some of the complexities in figuring and sorting out competing causal mechanisms. The article ends with discussions of the types of civil war and the possible future research agendas.
This book presents a general explanation of how states develop their foreign policy. The theory stands in contrast to most approaches--which assume that states want to maximize security--by assuming that states pursue two things, or goods, through their foreign policy: change and maintenance. States, in other words, try both to change aspects of the international status quo that they don't like and maintain those aspects they do like. A state's ability to do so is largely a function of its relative capability, and since national capability is finite, a state must make trade-offs between policies designed to achieve change or maintenance. Glenn Palmer and Clifton Morgan apply their theory to cases ranging from American foreign policy since World War II to Chinese foreign policy since 1949 to the Suez Canal Crisis. The many implications bear upon specific policies such as conflict initiation, foreign aid allocation, military spending, and alliance formation. Particularly useful are the implications for foreign policy substitutability. The authors also undertake statistical analyses of a wide range of behaviors, and these generally support the theory. A Theory of Foreign Policy represents a major advance over traditional analyses of international relations. Not only do its empirical implications speak to a broader range of policies but, more importantly, the book illuminates the trade-offs decision makers face in selecting among policies to maximize utility, given a state's goals.
Many studies highlight the role that international intervention can play in prolonging civil wars. Yet, direct military intervention is just one way that external actors become involved in civil conflicts. In this article, a model is developed and analyzed that shows that when the government is unsure about how external support to the rebels will help rebel war-making capacity, it is the government that will continue fighting rather than settle the dispute. Different types of external support to rebels influence their fighting capacity differently, and some types of support create uncertainty about how new resources will translate into war-making ability. Specifically, more fungible sources of support (such as direct financial support) generate the most uncertainty for states as they attempt to estimate the effect of support to rebels on the conflict. Increased uncertainty inhibits bargained settlement, and disputes characterized by fungible external support are less likely to end than those where rebels receive different kinds of support. Empirical analyses demonstrate strong support for this argument; rebels that receive highly fungible external support (money and guns) are less likely to see conflict termination than rebels that do not.
A proxy war is a conflict in which one party fights its adversary via another party rather than engaging that party in direct conflict. This article discusses two examples: the Sudan-Ugandan proxy war of the 1990s and the Sudan-Chad proxy war that has fed the conflict in Darfur. In these cases, the states aimed to alter regional power structures through cross-border rebel support. This support generated a perpetual Prisoners’ Dilemma whereby the patron governments refused to end proxy support unless the other side did as well, but had little reason to trust that the other side would do so. The Sudan-Uganda and Sudan-Chad peace processes succeeded in reaching agreement, but failed in implementation. Permanent resolution of such complex, persistent, and deadly conflicts requires conflict analyses that take a regional view; conflict mediation that seeks to alter the underlying conflict dynamics through addressing the motivations of both patrons and proxies; and implementation agreements backed by strong guarantees.
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.