The use of proxies in warfare is typically understood as a state sponsor’s reliance on military surrogates that are outside the purview of the state’s conventional armed or security forces, and that offer services to their benefactors in exchange for tangible material support. A long-standing feature in the history of armed conflict , the reliance on surrogates has become particularly endemic in the post–World War II era, with important implications for international security. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing “global war on terror,” the use of proxies has sparked renewed attention among academics and policy analysts alike, who have examined its causes, nature, and consequences in local, regional, and international contexts.
A striking constant of past and present discussions about this phenomenon is the prevalence of state-centric frames for understanding and analyzing its defining aspect, namely the relationship between sponsors and proxies. In this conventional view, the role of the sponsor is ascribed to states and that of the proxy to non state actors. Although such state-centric approaches aptly described most sponsor-proxy relationships during the Cold War and the early post–Cold War period, they now obscure a more complex reality. A cursory review of contemporary proxy relationships suggests that, in recent years, an ideologically and geographically diverse set of nonstate actors has adopted sponsorship roles akin to those traditionally held by states. Groups as varied as al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia have served as nonstate sponsors of proxies in their own right. Although not new, this trend is acknowledged in only a small number of studies. More importantly unexplored. To all this gap and offer a more nuanced understanding of these relationships, this study addresses two questions. First, why and how do nonstate actors sponsor proxies? Second, what are the implications of nonstate sponsorship for international security?
Existing studies have shown that the provision of external support to belligerents in civil wars, insurgencies, and other forms of political violence internationalizes these armed conflicts, raises their lethality rate, and increases the likelihood of conflict relapse.
Exploring the evolving role of nonstate actors in this context is of particular importance given their potential to disrupt and destabilize regional and international security, as was most recently visible in the case of the Islamic State. The presence of nonstate actors raises the overall number of belligerents in a conflict theater, with many of them using indirect modes of warfare such as terrorism that confront states with vast military, political, financial, and legal challenges. Finally, many contemporary armed nonstate actors—including those that sponsor proxies—are transnational. Disrupting their efforts requires complex and costly international coordination on diplomatic, legal, military, intelligence, and humanitarian matters.
The study/research suggests that nonstate sponsors employ proxies in ways, and for reasons, that differ from those of traditional state sponsors, and with distinct implications for international security. Conventional insights on proxy relationships and proxy warfare hold that state sponsors employ proxies in an effort to advance their strategic objectives in a cost-effective manner, while minimizing the risk of becoming embroiled in a major military conflict. States utilize proxies to achieve both political and strategic objectives, but they conceive of proxies as an indirect, predominantly military tool to achieve these goals.
To examine how nonstate sponsorship differs from state sponsorship, we must conduct a comparative analysis of three cases of nonstate sponsorship: al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP’s) engagement with Sunni Bedouin tribes in Yemen; the People’s Protection Units’ (YPG’s) sponsorship of proxy groups under the banner of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria; and Hezbollah’s sponsorship of the Lebanese Resistance Brigades in Lebanon. These cases are selected based on variation in the ideology and capacity of the respective sponsors, and in the degree of political support they enjoy in theatre.
Our research findings suggest that like state sponsors, nonstate sponsors employ proxies for both political and military reasons. Whereas state sponsors view their proxies primarily as a military rather than a political medium, however, nonstate sponsors principally employ proxies as political instruments. We argue that nonstate sponsors use proxies as “political ancillaries” whose main value is to advance the nonstate sponsor’s political goals directly. For nonstate sponsors, these political goals often centre around the consolidation of political power, mainly by enhancing their quest for legitimacy. The proxy’s military support is not immaterial in this regard, but its importance is secondary to the proxy’s value as a political asset. In practice, nonstate sponsors will therefore seek out proxies that represent broader segments of the population, and utilize these proxies primarily to augment their political influence. Militarily,
nonstate sponsors typically employ proxies for secondary security and logistical tasks rather than offensive operations.
Theoretically, we argue that state and nonstate actors use different strategies when engaging proxies given the combined effect of endogenous traits and exogenous constraints, which apply differently to the two sponsor types. Endogenous traits include organizational capacity and objectives, whereas exogenous constraints pertain to distinct pressures and limitations that restrict the respective sponsor’s ability to manoeuver.
Compared to nonstate sponsors, states face relatively few capacity problems. They typically employ proxies to attain their regional or global aims, rather than to ensure their survival. At the same time, state sponsors often face domestic challenges to unwanted involvement in foreign wars, while internationally they are constrained by prevailing norms against intervention in foreign conflicts. As a result, state sponsors view and utilize proxies as an instrument to advance their strategic objectives while reducing domestic audience costs and the risk of international penalties. For state sponsors, relying on proxies as an open political instrument would, in most cases, defeat their over-all objectives and exacerbate the constraints they face—hence their tendency to utilize proxies as military surrogates, as such collaborations can be denied more plausibly than relations with highly visible political partners.
Nonstate sponsors, in contrast, are typically plagued by a capacity gap that hampers the attainment of organizational objectives of survival and growth. Often, their quest for self-preservation is further complicated by two key exogenous constraints: a governance deficits and a legitimacy deficits. Nonstate sponsors, we argue, employ proxies to address their organizational shortcomings while seeking to reverse the deficits they face. These strategic requirements and challenges are primarily political, not military. For this reason, nonstate sponsors prefer partnering with local proxies that possess comparative political advantages that they themselves lack.
The findings imply that relationships between most nonstate sponsors and their proxies tend to be more symmetric than those between state sponsor and their surrogates. Not only do most nonstate sponsors face limits in their military capacities, but many also experience ongoing challenges to their organizational survival. For low- and moderate-capacity nonstate sponsors, in particular, the reliance on proxies is based more on need than on interest. This suggests that proxies of nonstate sponsors possess greater leverage over their benefactors than proxies of state sponsors do over theirs. Taken together, therefore, we can expect such arrangements to be more transactional and pragmatic, and less enduring. Broadly speaking, the use of proxies presents risks to their nonstate sponsors—they are more susceptible than state sponsors to pressures and manipulation by their proxies and external actors intent on undetermining these relationships.
Nonstate sponsors such as Hezbollah, which possesses unusually large capacity, are a notable exception. Such high-capacity actors have great leverage over their proxies, and forge relationships that are more asymmetrical, akin to those between most state sponsors and their militant clients. That said, few nonstate actors are as potent a power broker as Hezbollah or the Islamic State at its apex. Hence, the majority of sponsor-proxy relationships involving non-state sponsors are likely to resemble transactional arrangements.
Our study has several limitations. First, it examines a small number of cases—all from the broader Middle East region—and will hence require additional empirical testing before more robust conclusions can be offered. Second, our study endeavours to identify macro trends, which requires us to make generalizations that are broader than would ideally be the case. This limitation applies in particular to our discussion of state sponsors, which are not the main focus in this study and whose behaviour is described in aggregate. Third, our study does not settle many of the conceptual and definitional questions relatedto nonstate sponsorship and sponsor-proxy relations more broadly. Instead, our main hope is to make an initial contribution to understanding core aspectsof nonstate sponsorship—an issue that merits greater analytical attention.