polity
For Hannah
My first debt of gratitude must go to Louise Knight at Polity for showing faith in a sketchy idea and guiding the book skilfully along with wonderful patience and enthusiasm. David Winters has also been of valuable assistance during the whole process.
I am thankful to my colleagues within the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, especially those within the Centre for Conflict, Security and Terrorism, who have debated the facets of proxy war with me. The arguments in the book are sharper for their insights.
The Plymouth International Studies Centre was kind enough to give me the opportunity to deliver some of the key ideas in the book at an invitational lecture. The probing questions I faced afterwards helped hone my thinking on many issues.
A special thank you must be extended to the students in my Contemporary Warfare class of 2011/12 at Nottingham, who saw straight through my inclusion of proxy wars as a topic on the syllabus and rigorously engaged with the issues covered in this book. Their intellectual curiosity and insights challenged me to think harder about the dynamics of proxy wars in the modern world.
I am especially grateful to three students of mine for providing valuable research assistance. Will Jackson, Chris Anquist and Vladimir Rauta remained vigilant for useful articles, tracked down obscure references for me, and proved valuable sounding boards for my ideas.
Indebted as I am to all of the above people for their contributions and help, I of course remain solely responsible for any opinions or errors contained in the book.
My final thanks go to my wife, Hannah, to whom this book is dedicated. Her love and support enabled me to face the tyranny of the blank Word document as writing commenced. Her incisive comments helped me mould arguments as the project developed. Her warm encouragement pushed the book towards completion. For this, and so much more, I am forever grateful.
Proxy conflict represents a perennial strand in the history of warfare. The appeal of ‘warfare on the cheap’ has proved an irresistible strategic allure for nations through the centuries. However, proxy wars remain a missing link in contemporary war and security studies. They are historically ubiquitous yet chronically under-analysed. This book attempts to rectify this situation by assessing the dynamics and lineage of proxy warfare from the Cold War to the War on Terror, and analysing them within a conceptual framework to help us explain their appeal. The following chapters will set the international political and strategic background of proxy warfare in the modern world, tracing its development throughout the last century, and posit it as a highly pertinent factor in the character of contemporary conflict. Also addressed are questions of what defines a proxy war; why they appeal; and who fights in them. Furthermore, the book will emphasize why, given the direction of the War on Terror and the prominence now achieved by non-state actors in the Arab Spring, this is an important time to be studying the phenomenon of proxy warfare.
Proxy wars are defined here as the indirect engagement in a conflict by third parties wishing to influence its strategic outcome. As we will see, this prevents confusion with direct intervention or covert action. Theoretically, it will be argued that recourse to proxy war has been a perpetual element of modern warfare, and will continue to be so, because the attainment of a preferred strategic outcome in a certain conflict is outweighed by consequences of direct engagement based on an assessment of interest, ideology and risk. This tendency has been particularly prevalent since 1945, as the shadow of nuclear war ensured more acute selectivity in conflict engagement given the consequences of a potential nuclear exchange. Where state or group survival is not at stake but the augmentation of interest can still be achieved, states and sub-state groups have historically proven to be conspicuous users of proxy methods as a means of securing particular conflict outcomes.
The aim of this book is not to give a potted history of every proxy war fought in the modern world. Instead, it will utilize empirical examples to flesh out the concept of war by proxy and offer up explanations for their causes, conduct and consequences in the past, present and future.
Stand-alone analysis of proxy war has largely been overlooked in security studies scholarship.1 In 1996, K. J. Holsti asserted that ‘war has been the major focus of international relations studies for the past three centuries.’2 Yet this is only strictly true if we take a meaning of war that specifically covers conventionally fought inter-state conflict. The indirect engagement in violence – of both an inter- and intra-state variety – has been distinctly peripheral in discussions on the shape of modern war. A significant portion of the theoretical, causal and quantitative studies of war in the modern world overlook conflict in its proxy form.3 Even substantial works, such as Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War, do not substantially promulgate a conceptual understanding of proxy war despite presenting a narrative of superpower intervention in the Third World during that era.4 Arguably, this is because such conflicts form a major part of the background fabric of Cold War historiography. As a concept, proxy war has not been an adept cross-disciplinary traveller. This book is an effort to take the large, but undiscerning, historical literature on proxy war and lever greater conceptual understanding from it for an international relations and security studies audience.
Clausewitzean strategic thought emphasizes the changing characteristics – or ‘grammar’ – of warfare from era to era. It is this book’s goal to demonstrate how the evolving ‘grammar’ of warfare in the modern world has rendered shifts in the way in which proxy wars have been perceived by states and non-state actors and thus effected their utility as a mode of strategic attainment. In the twentieth century, at the dawn of the era of total war, the mode of proxy intervention took on new resonance as the consequences of engaging in outright war came with heightened risk of high death tolls, infrastructural destruction and political annihilation. The end of the Second World War ushered in the nuclear era, starkly accentuating the risks associated with going to war or challenging the security of a nuclear nation. This nuclear weapon-induced stability/instability paradox arguably caused nations to find alternative outlets for their strategic ambitions, where the consequences were contained yet the rewards tangible. The global reach of the Cold War soon demonstrated, in the mid-twentieth century, that engagement in proxy wars was a convenient means by which the superpower states could exert their influence and attempt to maximize their interests in parts of the Third World, while simultaneously reducing the risk of conflict escalation.
Even after the bipolar system gave way to the New World Order in the 1990s, proxy intervention continued to be a recurrent element in international conflict, as a new age of globalization gave rise to the information revolution and bore witness to the increased prominence of the non-state actor in international relations. During the last decade of the twentieth century, the notion of ‘intervention’ became explicitly tied to the nascent ‘responsibility to protect’ agenda and the debates surrounding humanitarianism.5 This, to a large extent, overshadowed the continued presence of proxy interventions undertaken for reasons entirely alien to the liberal foreign policy agenda of that decade in the West.
The appeal of proxy war is undiminished in the post-9/11 world whereby states ‘with or against’ the United States, in President George W. Bush’s dichotomization of world politics, jostled to secure their own strategic interests as the War on Terror came to dominate the discourse of international relations in the early twenty-first century. As state sponsors of terrorism coalesced to form Bush’s self-proclaimed ‘axis of evil’, the mode by which both the ‘coalition of the willing’ and the constituents of the axis (and, significantly, their allies) could further their strategic aims has manifest itself in large part through the wider employment of proxies.
Yet it is not just superpowers that have shaped the terrain of proxy warfare. Given its lower-cost, often lower-risk, mode of conflict engagement, non-state actors including terrorist groups and more recently private security companies have been utilized as proxies. This book will therefore explore the wide spectrum of actors involved in proxy warfare, historically and contemporaneously, in order to fully analyse not only those states who sponsor proxies in conflicts, but also assess the motivations of those groups who act as the proxies themselves.
So why is proxy war an important issue in the modern world? It is largely because of two major trends in the analysis of war. First, in the words of John Mueller, is the ‘obsolescence of major war’.6 Total warfare, or conventional ‘state versus state’ conflicts between developed countries, is a form of conflict that has diminished given the changing nature of the system of statehood and the international order in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Second, history tells us that any rigorous academic and military focus upon counter-insurgency (as currently witnessed during the War on Terror) is momentary and often lasts only as long as the deployment of troops. The scholarly output surrounding the Vietnam War is prodigious, yet reflections upon the nature and mode of counter-insurgency waned once the US withdrew. As a consequence, the American military (and indeed its academic community) has had to ‘relearn’ counter-insurgency since the degeneration of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq into asymmetric conflict quagmires. Yet, if the pattern of attention granted irregular warfare after the Vietnam pull-out is repeated after combat troops have departed the frontline of the War on Terror, then this will inevitably relegate counter-insurgency once more to the strategic backburner.7 So when combined with the fading of traditional state-based conflict and the searing effect of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on prospective American willingness to deploy troops in large numbers again to fight asymmetric opponents, the future direction of warfare could be heavily influenced by an increased reliance on proxy conflict.
The book will be broken down into analytically focused chapters that seek to deconstruct the essential elements that constitute wars by proxy. Each chapter will provide in-depth case studies to help put some empirical meat on the conceptual bones of the analysis. Chapter 1 will deconstruct what proxy war actually is. It will establish the contours of this particular form of conflict, locating it in the wider picture of modern warfare. This chapter will elaborate upon the definition offered earlier that proxy warfare is the indirect engagement in a conflict by third parties wishing to influence its strategic outcome. Often subsumed into the wider narrative of the history of warfare, this chapter will argue for the need to view this specific strand of war in isolation, constitutive as it is of particular motives, practices and component players. The reader will be encouraged to observe the ubiquity of proxy war in modern conflict history. The question of what proxy war is will be illuminated by highlighting specifically what it is not. Proxy war does not include the overt supply of troops. This constitutes direct third-party intervention, and this delineation will be offered in this chapter in order to adequately define the phenomenon of proxy war itself.
Chapter 2 will address the fundamental question of why proxy intervention appeals to actors in international relations. Based on assessments of self-interest, it will be argued that recourse to proxy involvement is often a way of realizing long-term strategic foreign and security policy goals, either regionally or globally. Proxy intervention crosses the state/ sub-state divide given its proclivity towards furthering strategic goals regardless of unit status, hence the engagement by non-state actors in proxy war also. Although, it must be noted, historically superpowers have preserved a higher propensity for proxy intervention. This chapter will identify the primary reasons, based on assumptions of self-interest, as to why proxy interventions occur, namely, ideological interventions motivated by grand political desires (especially during the Cold War) and interventions prompted by security or strategic designs.
Chapter 3 asks ‘who engages in proxy war?’ It will identify the sources of state-based intervention, but will also unpack assumptions as to the monopoly that states have upon engaging in proxy warfare by accounting for the role that non-state actors can play, such as terrorist groups and militia organizations. This chapter will assess the sources of proxy intervention in conflicts, highlighting prevalent cases of state engagement in proxy war (such as initial American involvement in the Vietnam War), as well as sources of non-state involvement, ranging from terrorist groups (such as Hezbollah’s role during the Israeli war with Lebanon in 2006), and ethnic diasporas (such as Irish-Americans during the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’).
Chapter 4 tackles the question of how proxy wars are fought. It will critically assess the forms of support proxies receive from third parties, such as intelligence assistance, money and logistical provision. This chapter tracks the forms of intervention by which states and non-state actors engage in proxy war. It will disaggregate these modes of involvement into three main categories. The provision or training of manpower, such as co-opted militias or other irregular combatants, has often been the most prevalent way of engaging in proxy war in order for third parties to ensure direct leverage on the existing conflict. The supply of material and money is often a popular recourse to covert involvement by proxy, allowing third parties to act as distant benefactors to their preferred warring faction. Finally, the sharing or dissemination of information is a means of subtly influencing events, for example, by spreading propaganda or utilizing the Internet as a mode of sharing information that would undermine an opponent.
Chapter 5 turns its attention to the future of proxy war, analysing trends in warfare and conceptualizing proxy war as a foreseeably prevalent component of conflict as the twenty-first century unfolds. Superpowers, particularly the United States, have historically harnessed proxy intervention as a mode of achieving a political endgame. American presidents of both parties have not been prepared to forfeit US interests, yet often, as Vietnam demonstrated, and Iraq may yet prove, certain watershed events create the conditions whereby future strategic interests are no longer willing or able to be secured by expensive and comprehensive displays of American military prowess. The so-called ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ saw a nation emerge from a protracted and costly conflict in South East Asia, cowed by its humbling at the hands of a supposedly ill-trained and ill-equipped insurgent force. It would not be until the Gulf War of 1990/91 that the American’s deployed their troops in anything like such numbers again. So if the Americans are unwilling to sacrifice their interests abroad, yet are reluctant to pay the price for doing so, how can it resolve this conundrum? This book posits that the inevitable consequence of the War on Terror on the American purse (with the Iraq War alone estimated to eventually cost $3trillion in the midst of a global financial downturn8 ) and on American national pride (with over 4,000 combat deaths even after President Bush proclaimed ‘mission accomplished’ in May 2003) is that the US will revert to engagement in proxy warfare, to maximize their interests while minimizing their political and military exposure. In short, the signposts of post-Iraq conflict in the world point towards the re-emergence of proxy warfare as a primary mode of intervention, violence and (dis)order.
Yet proxy war is not an American-centric phenomenon. The continuing rise of China as a global superpower raises significant questions as to how it will exert its presence internationally and whether this actually increases the likelihood of it engaging in proxy wars without damaging its trade relations with the West. Ongoing civil wars in Africa have provided a forum for China to exert its power regionally and may represent the beginning of a more assertive Chinese foreign policy in the coming decades.
It must be added that proxy war is not a form of conflict conducted solely by states. It is very important to address the issue of what proxy warfare means in the age of non-state actors and networked terrorism. The establishment of global al-Qaeda ‘franchises’ has distinctly affected the mode by which regional conflicts can be influenced by the proxy involvement of such networked cells, particularly at the behest or with the cooperation of ‘rogue states’. Furthermore, the rise to prevalence in the late 1990s of private military corporations arguably represents another significant signpost for the future direction of proxy warfare, representing a new high-profile vehicle for the undertaking of proxy intervention. Even after the eventual American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US will certainly still wish to exert influence over the security situation in that country and the wider region. The harnessing of proxy actors to do their bidding for them becomes an inevitable consequence, and as such will represent a large plank of the discussion in this forward-looking chapter.
The conclusion will reiterate the way in which proxy warfare has been a perennial element of modern warfare, and is deserving of sustained analysis and critical reflection. Crucially, it will also holistically assess, from the vantage point of history, the outcomes of proxy wars by identifying common determinants of success and failure across the empirical examples highlighted in the chapters. This will help conceive of the whole gamut of dynamics impinging upon proxy wars and enable a thorough deconstruction of the consequences proxy wars have had, not only upon the countries in which they have been waged, but on the landscape of modern warfare as well. In other words, is proxy intervention historically proven to be a viable means of achieving goals and augmenting interest, and if so what can the past tell us about the future direction of proxy war-fighting?
Proxy intervention has been prevalent across the entire spectrum of warfare in the contemporary era, from conventional state-versus-state wars, to the multiplicity of civil wars across continents; from the pockets of insurgencies that now dominate strategic discourse, to the undeclared or limited wars that offer the opportunity of simmering tensions to disguise proxy interference. The conclusion will seek to establish the assessment of proxy war as an identifiable strand of future war studies, particularly given the indications that it is a mode of warfare that we are likely to see more, and not less of, in the coming decades. Proxy wars cut across and between the multiple layers of global security (international, regional, state and sub-state), and as a result a thorough understanding of the issues, threats and conduct of proxy wars upon these different levels will help us think about how to assess the future direction of this integral element of modern conflict.
Proxy wars are the indirect engagement in a conflict by third parties wishing to influence its strategic outcome. They are constitutive of a relationship between a benefactor, who is a state or non-state actor external to the dynamic of an existing conflict, and their chosen proxies who are the conduit for weapons, training and funding from the benefactor. Such arm’s-length interventions are undertaken ostensibly for reasons of maximizing interest, while at the same time minimizing risk. In short, proxy wars are the logical replacement for states seeking to further their own strategic goals yet at the same time avoid engaging in direct, costly and bloody warfare.1
Before we go any further, it is important to place proxy wars in both their international and local context. Often, the two contexts work in partnership to shape the dynamic of the conflict. Historically, states have exploited specific localized events (such as a civil war) to engender a shift in the wider geopolitical environment (such as the stifling of a rival ideology in the broader region). Take, for example, the Thirty Years War (1618–48), where Protestant France and Catholic Spain covertly involved themselves on the sides of their co-religionists within the Holy Roman Empire. Two centuries later, the American Civil War can be seen through the prism of proxy warfare, whereby British weapons sales to the Confederacy was widely interpreted as London attempting to lever long-term political and economic gain from the victory of the secessionist Southern states.2 Likewise, during the Franco– Prussian War of 1870–71, Britain again vicariously influenced events by arming the French military to undermine their common Prussian enemy. Even before the nineteenth century had ended, the Industrial Revolution’s impact upon the weapons of war had increased the scope for Western nations in particular to stake claims in foreign conflicts. The production of more deadly and efficient weapons became bargaining tools for strategic influence over the outcomes of wars.3
Although proxies have been utilized throughout history as means of fulfilling the objectives of third parties, it was only in the twentieth century that war by proxy was transformed into a prolific form of conflict. Despite an official position of neutrality, the United States, through massive arms supplies, used the Triple Entente as a proxy to shape events in Europe from a distance during the opening three years of the First World War. President Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted a similar stance of proxy engagement during the Second World War up to 1941.
Indeed, the adoption of proxy war strategies became so ingrained into the politics of the mid-twentieth century that direct superpower intervention (such as the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan) arguably became the exception rather than the rule of conflict during the Cold War period. Proxy interference from a distance had established itself as the norm. Assertions, such as that from Harold Tillema, that in the late Cold War era ‘foreign overt military intervention directs modern international armed conflict’,4 are blind to the prevalence of foreign covert and indirect military intervention and the ubiquity of proxy wars throughout that century.
Although efforts have been made in the past to explain what proxy wars entail, certain areas of definitional contention still remain. In 1964, Karl Deutsch termed proxy wars ‘an international conflict between two foreign powers, fought out on the soil of a third country; disguised as a conflict over an internal issue of that country; and using some of that country’s manpower, resources and territory as a means for achieving preponderantly foreign goals and foreign strategies’.5 Arguably, though, Deutsch’s definition is too state-centric, as it ignores the role non-state actors can play in proxy wars (as discussed here in chapter 3), and it unnecessarily internationalizes proxy wars (an inevitability, perhaps, of the Cold War context in which this definition was coined) by overlooking the often regional power struggles that they represent.
So perhaps in order to garner a greater understanding of what proxy wars are, it would be useful to first dwell upon what they are not. Proxy wars are not merely regional wars that seemingly mirror broader ideological struggles perpetrated by superpowers. Neither are they exercises in direct military intervention by third parties or necessarily a form of ‘covert action’, as shall be discussed more fully later in this chapter. Proxy wars need not be solely categorized as occurring when, for example, medium regional powers clashed during the Cold War, as such an assumption ignores other forms of conflict in which proxy interventions occur, namely, civil wars.