Proxies and Operational Control

Good stuff at SWJ. In my opinion, this also depends a great deal on how much the patron’s aims are served by varying degrees of control and autonomy.

The US strategy of selecting reliable proxies against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) based on their ideological leanings is proving to be disastrous. The latest headlines about US-trained Syrian rebels handing over military equipment to al-Qaeda-linked fighters highlight the serious and enduring problems of outsourcing war.[1] Recruitment of proxies based on their ideology has taken more time and resources than anticipated — it is hard to measure one’s commitment to a set of ideas when the bullets are flying. The approach has also shown to be misguided. Without effective operational control, the “moderate” rebels are unlikely to bring victory against ISIS. …….

In 1982, Communist Party elder Chen Yun compared the relationship between China’s economy and central planning to that between a bird and its cage: “You mustn’t hold the bird in your hands too tightly or it would be strangled. You have to turn it loose, but only within the confines of a cage. Otherwise it would fly away.”[6] Chen’s birdcage analogy can be applied to the delicate and dangerous relationship between states and their proxies. In order for the proxies to be effective, states must keep them under control while simultaneously turning them loose. They must construct a kind of a “birdcage” that would allow proxies to be both useful and manageable.

The violence states typically outsource to proxies ranges from mostly defensive (e.g. guarding installations) to offensive (e.g. targeted killings). Proxies have been widely viewed as a Cold War relic: the United States and the Soviet Union used them to wage wars across the Third World without succumbing to direct, apocalyptic confrontation. Ultimately, the victory of the former was facilitated by US-supplied rebels waging an “anti-Soviet jihad” in Afghanistan during the 1980s.[7]

The practice of employing third parties for war-making is millennia-old. Egypt used mercenaries, including the Nubians, for seven centuries starting in 1479 BCE. So did the Israelites around 1250 BCE “so that local citizens would be free to maintain the economic output necessary to support both the kingdom and the army.”[8] In the 18th century, all the major European armies relied heavily on foreign fighters, while privateering played an important role in naval warfare.[9]