Cyberspace’s Role in International Relations: Understanding its Impact as a Structural Modifier

The evolution of cyberspace has significantly influenced international relations, raising critical questions about its exact role and impact in international relations. Does it represent a new domain of statecraft that actors leverage against other actors? Is it an independent system of rules and behaviours? Offensive cyber operations’ pervasiveness and economic damage render these questions increasingly salient. Cyber scholarship has been developing as a distinct field. Early debates about integrating cyberspace into broader international relations discussions are moving from the periphery to the core of the discipline. In a new article, Michiel Foulon and Gustav Meibauer explore how conceptualizing cyberspace as a structural modifier can provide a shared language with the broader field of International  Relations. This may aid scholars and policy-makers to better understand the causal role and effects of cyberspace and pave the way for thinking conceptually about other emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, outer space technology, or lethal autonomous weapons.

Cyberspace in International Relations: Domain vs. Structure

Conventional views of cyberspace in international relations focus on cyberspace as a domain where actors conduct cyber operations. One group of scholars argues that cyberspace is a domain that revolutionizes international relations: it alters military tactics and state interactions. Another group remains sceptical about cyberspace’s transformative potential, emphasizing its limitations and the barriers states face in developing cyber capabilities. However, this debate about cyberspace as a domain is challenged by scholars who view cyberspace as a systemic factor that shapes the behavior across multiple dimensions of international relations. This perspective suggests that focusing solely on cyber operations risks ignoring how cyberspace interacts with other international political dynamics. Cyberspace influences military intelligence, conflict performance, and strategic environments, and may affect wider-ranging processes from trade to diplomacy, from democratization and autocratic backlash to climate change and migration. This highlights the need for a more integrated conceptualization.

Conceptualizing Cyberspace as a Structural Modifier

To address some of the limitations of current cyber scholarship, we introduce cyberspace as a structural modifier. In international relations research, structure refers to the macro-social arrangements that govern international relations. It is conventionally understood as characterized by anarchy, and, therefore, the distribution of material power among states.

Structural modifiers are systemic properties that modify how states are likely to experience the effects of structure. In other words, structural modifiers do not change the structure itself but alter and specify how structure is likely to causally affect state behavior. For example, geographic features and nuclear weapons may be viewed as structural modifiers that enable or constrain state behavior across international relations. This in turn influences the types and intensities of interactions among actors that are likely and seen as desirable. It is in this way, that cyberspace, too, can be viewed as a structural modifier with system-wide implications for states.

The Impact of Cyberspace as a Structural Modifier

Viewing cyberspace as a structural modifier offers several advantages for international relations scholarship and policy-making:

  1. Integrating Disconnected Cyber Scholarship: Cyber theories often remain isolated, focusing on specific aspects such as deterrence or foreign policy without considering their collective implications. A structural modifier framework encourages a holistic view, examining how cyberspace’s effects on various areas of international relations interact and produce larger-scale impacts.
  2. Linking Cyber Scholarship with International Relations Theory: By conceptualizing cyberspace as a structural modifier, cyber scholarship can engage more meaningfully with broader International Relations theories. This integration can consider cyberspace’s broader implications and lead to the development of more comprehensive theories that reflect emerging empirical realities.
  3. Providing Policy Guidance: Policy-makers can benefit from understanding cyberspace as a structural modifier: it cautions them against viewing cyberspace in isolation of other foreign policy domains. And it cautions them against viewing cyberspace or as a driver of revolutionary change in international relations. Instead, it emphasizes the need to consider cyberspace’s interaction with existing statecraft domains and tools, promoting more balanced and informed decision-making.

Empirical Examples and Future Research

To illustrate the concept of cyberspace as a structural modifier, we consider cyberspace’s effects across a variety of international relations dynamics, including in the following empirical examples.

Deterrence: Cyberspace complicates conventional deterrence strategies. As states struggle to attribute offensive cyber operations makes to its perpetrators, they find it difficult to uphold the deterrent threat of potential retaliation. States may have to adapt by focusing on persistent engagement rather than one-off retaliatory actions, or by adjusting their cost-benefit analyses in response to adversarial actions in cyberspace.

Foreign Policy Tools: The introduction of cyber capabilities has transformed how decision-makers think about which foreign policy tools they should employ. Initially hesitant due to uncertainties surrounding cyber operations’ collateral impacts, states are now increasingly incorporating cyber tools into their strategic planning. This shift reflects a broader normalization and integration of cyber operations alongside conventional military, economic, and diplomatic tools.

Uncertainty: Cyberspace exacerbates but also mitigates uncertainty in international relations. It allows actors to gather and disseminate rapidly information. This can reduce uncertainty. However, it also presents challenges such as information overload and reliance on potentially flawed data, which complicates decision-making and strategic planning.

Interaction with Non-State Actors: Cyberspace blurs the lines between state and non-state actors. Private companies, hackers, and other non-state entities play pivotal roles in cyberspace, often cooperating or competing with states. This dynamic expands the range of influential actors and introduces new complexities in international interactions.

Future research may operationalize the concept of cyberspace as a structural modifier to uncover insights across key areas of international relations. This approach may extend to other emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence or outer space technology. It broadens the scope of IR scholarship and provides new avenues for theoretical and empirical exploration.

Conclusion

How can we understand cyberspace’s role in international relations? Conceptualizing cyberspace as a structural modifier offers a framework for integrating cyber scholarship with broader international relations theories and concepts. It helps address some of the limitations of current debates between domain-focused and systemic approaches, as well as between proponents and sceptics of cyberspace-induced revolutionary change. It shows a pathway for the study of cyberspace to move beyond its original community, thereby benefitting the discipline more widely. By emphasizing the systemic role of cyberspace, this conceptualization provides valuable insights for both academic research and policy-making. This aids promoting a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of cyberspace’s impact on global politics. As cyberspace continues to evolve, adopting this conceptual lens will be crucial for analysing its implications and guiding effective strategies in the digital age

From reluctance to reassurance: Explaining the shift in Germans’ support for measures of common defense following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Germany has shifted the focus of its defense policy back to collective defense. A new article by Timo Graf, Markus Steinbrecher & Heiko Biehl shows that public opinion on collective defense has also shifted: from a marked reluctance to support NATO’s eastern members to a much greater willingness to contribute military resources to reassure those members in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine. Against the background of the war, how do we explain that shift in the alliance solidarity of the German people? Which factors are driving this change and how lasting is it going to be? The answer is complex and involves the public image of Russia, the willingness to follow US leadership, and strategic culture.

For decades, both Western and Eastern NATO partners have criticized Germany for not spending enough on (collective) defense and its growing dependency on energy imports from Russia. Economic interests and a free-riding mentality aside, a driving force behind close relations with Russia was public opinion. Significant parts of German society were Russia-friendly and showed little support for strengthening NATO’s eastern flank.

Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2022 forced a historic shift in Germany’s defense policy and in its relations towards Russia – a Zeitenwende (epochal turning point) as it is now referred to in the German debate. Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared the contributions of the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) to NATO’s territorial defense of Europe as their top priority, because “[t]he crucial role for Germany at this moment is to step up as one of the main providers of security in Europe […] beefing up our military presence on NATO’s eastern flank.” The Zeitenwende in defense policy has been mirrored by a major shift of public opinion in Germany on collective defense: Reluctance towards the defense of NATO’s eastern flank has given way to majority support for military efforts to reassure NATO’s eastern members in the face of Russian aggression. German chancellor Olaf Scholz interprets this shift of public opinion as being indicative of “a new mindset in German society.”

Our article seeks to answer two pressing questions: Against the background of the war, which factors are driving this shift in peoples’ alliance solidarity? And are there any early indications on how lasting this change is going to be? These questions are addressed on the basis of multivariate analyses of representative population surveys from 2021 and 2022. The results show that the perception of Russia as a threat to national security is a key factor, yet it is only part of a more complex explanation involving strategic postures and the subjective level of information about collective defense as well. By contrast, the often cited free-riding mentality of the Germans proves largely irrelevant. The empirical findings shine light on Germany’s reaction to Russia’s war against Ukraine and add to our understanding of the societal foundations of alliance solidarity in Germany and other countries.

First, the increased perception of Russia as a strategic threat to Germany is a key driver for public support for measures of collective defense. The largely absent public threat perception kept support for alliance solidarity low until 2021. In 2022, however, the perception of Russia changed fundamentally. A majority of Germans has lost its naïve view on Russia, recognizing Russia as a threat to German security instead, which contributes to a greater willingness to support national contributions to NATO missions on the Eastern flank.

These insights are also of relevance beyond Germany, because just like the German people the citizens of other major western European countries such as Italy, Spain, and France had a very ambivalent view of Russia prior to the war. Since 2022, Russia is seen very unfavorably by majorities all across Europe. How long that pan-European consensus will last very much depends on the duration and the course of the war. As the war continues and as the initial shock of the invasion eventually wears off, it becomes increasingly important to establish the current recognition of Russia as the greatest threat to European security as the point of departure for all joint and national strategies.

Second, the growing public knowledge and media coverage of these missions has also contributed to the change of public opinion. Before 2022, Bundeswehr engagements – like the one in Lithuania – were rarely mentioned in the media and hardly present on the public agenda or in political debates. As we could show this has changed – at least to a certain degree. Still most Germans just know some basic facts or even nothing at all about the Bundeswehr’s deployments in Eastern and Central Europe. Moreover, reporting is bound to decline as the “newsworthiness” of war in Ukraine decreases with every day that it drags on and as it has to “compete for attention” with other global flashpoints.

Third, another force for the change in public opinion has been a renewed orientation towards the United States. In times of crisis, most Germans, like their government, look to the other side of the Atlantic for guidance. They trust in the United States as the protective power of the Western world and want Germany to participate in the common defense efforts. This revitalized transatlantic orientation is an important driver of Germans’ readiness to support NATO’s measures of reassurance.

If a (new) U.S. administration were to signal a reduction in military aid to Europe as the war in Ukraine continues, the willingness of the German and other European people to contribute to the collective defense of NATO’s eastern flank might be at risk. Hence, the Germans do not seem to be ready to act as the military leader of Europe – others being even more improbable candidates. Instead, they look to the U.S.’ military leadership in guaranteeing Europe’s security, which could put the premature debate about Europe’s strategic sovereignty on hold – at least as long as Russia wages war in Europe and the U.S. do not exit NATO.

Fourth, our analyses show that the strategic culture of the German society has not suddenly and fundamentally changed. The basic preferences of the population on security and defense policies are largely stable: Most Germans still favor multilateral approaches in international affairs, show transatlantic orientations, and prefer civilian over military means. Consequently, the substantial increase in support for alliance defense measures looks more like an ad hoc reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than a fundamental reorientation in strategic postures.

Our results provide some implications for policy makers not least because they suggest that the underlying preferences of Germany’s public – its strategic culture – have not changed (yet). So, chancellor’s Scholz statement of “a new mindset in German society” might have been a bit premature. But how to stabilize Germany’s willingness to reassure its Eastern partners and how to avoid a return to reluctance in common defense efforts? Our analyses suggest that the perception of threat is largely determined by Russia’s course of action in Ukraine and beyond. The level of Atlanticism depends for the most part on the continued and visible military support of the U.S. to Europe (as well as the political agenda of its President). And the public’s level of information about the Bundeswehr’s efforts to help NATO secure the eastern flank can be influenced – to a modest extent – by the public communication and information efforts of the German ministry of defense and the government. Consequently, all actors involved in the conflict between NATO and Russia in the context of the war in Ukraine can shape the alliance solidarity of the German people – for better or worse.

Read the article “From reluctance to reassurance: Explaining the shift in the Germans’ NATO alliance solidarity following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” here

Promoting the “Rules-Based Order” through strategic narratives

In a new article, Rebecca Strating studies strategic narratives around the “Rules-Based Order” (RBO) in Asia-Specific. She studies three asymmetrical bilateral maritime disputes that involve the UK, India and Australia, and finds that RBO narratives constrained the behaviours of the states that adopt the term.

In November 2022 the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly announced that the UK would open negotiations with the Republic of Mauritius on the sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago, a small group of atolls claimed by both states in the Indian Ocean.

This announcement indicated a reversal of UK policy. London had previously rejected Mauritian sovereignty claims and expressing its commitment to ceding sovereignty only when the Chagos islands were no longer required for its defence purposes. In 1966, the UK leased the biggest island – Diego Garcia – to the United States, where it set up its key military base in the Indian Ocean that was subsequently used in major US military operations. As the Indian Ocean is increasingly subject to strategic contestation, both the UK and US has viewed UK’s continuing sovereignty of Chagos Archipelago as important to countering the regional presence of the People’s Republic of China.

Given the strategic value of Diego Garcia to the UK and its relationship with the US, what explains the new government’s approach?

Mauritius and its supporters have engaged in a campaign based on strategic litigation and public diplomacy to put reputational pressure on the UK both domestically and internationally. This campaign has emphasised how the UK – by refusing to deal with the legacy of colonialisation in the Indian Ocean – was actively undermining the international ‘rules-based order’ (RBO) that it has sought to defend in its own strategic narratives.

This campaign has been long-running. In 2010, Mauritius initiated an arbitration under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) protesting the UK’s declaration of a Marine Protected Area around Chagos islands. The UK initially responded by disputing the tribunal’s jurisdiction to hear the case. When the ruling largely fell in Mauritius’ favour, the UK interpreted its newly-defined legal responsibilities in a minimalist way.

In 2019, Mauritius asked the UN General Assembly to request an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on Chagos sovereignty in 2019, which UK narratives cast Mauritius as inappropriately ‘internationalising’ the bilateral dispute. The resultant ICJ advisory opinion rejected UK sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago on the grounds that Mauritius’ decolonisation was not lawfully completed. The same year, the UN General Assembly voted in favour of strongly condemning British occupation of Chagos Islands, calling for complete decolonisation. In 2021, a Special Chamber in the Mauritius-Maldives maritime boundary dispute re-affirmed the ICJ’s advisory opinion as having legal effect.

Cumulatively, these legal rulings and the associated discourses around them has made it more difficult for the UK to defend its sovereign and maritime claims around the Chagos archipelago to an international audience, especially in light of its own RBO narratives.

This article uses the Chagos example as one case study to demonstrate how states can become ensnared in their own strategic narratives that are designed to compel emerging great powers to abide by existing norms and international law.

In the context of dramatic power shifts in Asia, regional allies and partners of the US such as the UK, Australia, Japan, and India, have adopted new ‘Indo-Pacific’ strategic narratives to stabilise, promote and defend their preferred vision of an RBO, one in which ostensibly all states – even global and authoritarian powers – comply with existing and commonly agreed upon standards of behaviour.

‘Indo-Pacific powers’ are particularly concerned about the revisionist intentions of China. Beijing’s maritime assertions in the South China Sea are the key example used to argue that China desires to ‘re-order the region’ by ‘bullying’ its smaller neighbours in maritime disputes and pursuing ‘unilateral changes to the status quo’ through coercive activities that violate or ignoring UNCLOS. Beijing’s rejection of the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal ruling in the case initiated by Philippines – which found China’s ‘historic rights’ claim in the South China Sea inconsistent with international law – as a challenge to the prevailing RBO.

Yet, as these states encourage emerging powers to abide by the ‘rules’ in their strategic narratives, they can be held to the same standard in their own asymmetrical disputes. RBO narratives can promote greater state compliance with international law and norms, but this tends to be among states who adopt the narrative rather than its targets: emerging revisionist powers who violate, ignore, or seek to re-write international law.

The article compares the rhetoric and actions of three Indo-Pacific powers in asymmetrical bilateral maritime disputes: the Timor Sea United Nations Compulsory Conciliation between Australia and Timor-Leste, the Bay of Bengal Maritime Boundary Arbitration between India and Bangladesh, and the Chagos Island Marine Protected Area Arbitration between the UK and Mauritius.

In each case study, there is evidence that reputational concerns became as important – if not more so – than material considerations, although this played out in different ways across the case studies.

The bigger powers – Australia, India and the UK – came to interpret the disputes in the context of their overarching strategic interests and concerns about great power revisionism, particularly in maritime domains.

Ultimately, RBO narratives constrained the behaviours of the states that adopt the term. Adopters were compelled to take different approaches in their own maritime disputes with smaller powers to reduce the perceived inconsistencies between their RBO rhetoric and their actions. For states, this suggests that there are risks involved in invoking the RBO in their strategic narratives. In an increasingly contested region, reputation and credibility can play an important role in regional diplomacy as Indo-Pacific powers seek to persuade other states that the existing order is preferable to authoritarian alternatives. This produces positive affects for the legitimacy of international regimes such as UNCLOS even though it is not necessarily the intended outcome of Indo-Pacific states’ rhetorical strategies. The RBO, however, is less effective in changing the approaches of the primary disrupters, including authoritarian powers such as China and Russia.

Rebecca Strating is the author of “The rules-based order as rhetorical entrapment: Comparing maritime dispute resolution in the Indo-Pacific”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

Public Use of Intelligence in Strategic Perspective

In a new article, Ofek Riemer and Daniel Sobelman study how the public use of intelligence increasingly serves strategic purposes. Disclosing intelligence poses a number of risks, which makes this trend all the more remarkable.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has been the systematic intelligence revelations of otherwise highly classified intelligence regarding Moscow’s military plans. Both in the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and in the months that followed, Western intelligence revelations have been unusual in their frequency, quantity and quality.

Thus, nearly two decades after the historic intelligence debacle in Iraq, the United States and Britain have been accurate in their intelligence assessments and data regarding Russia’s designs for Ukraine. The two countries have been remarkably open and specific in their intelligence revelations. These recent intelligence revelations received considerable international attention, in large part because unlike in Iraq, they actually proved to be accurate. While the scope and granularity of these intelligence revelations may have been unprecedented, the publicization of classified intelligence data is appears to be increasingly prevalent in international affairs.

This fact notwithstanding, the authorized disclosure of solid intelligence for strategic ends—as opposed to unauthorized leaks, the use of dubious intelligence, or intelligence revelation in the service of domestic-political purposes—remains understudied. The stream of Western intelligence exposures regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine is an opportunity to cast light on the “legitimate” employment of genuine and solid intelligence as a strategic instrument in international relations. When governments reveal, or threaten to reveal, intelligence in a purposeful effort to change the strategic calculations of other actors and make them act contrary to their original preferences, they engage in a strategy that we define and conceptualize as “coercive disclosure.”

The revelation of intelligence is counter-intuitive and often resented by intelligence practitioners. After all, intelligence is intuitively perceived as an asset that must be carefully guarded to provide its possessor with a comparative advantage if conflict breaks out. To make matters worse, intelligence disclosure runs the risk of compromising one’s resources and methods, potentially placing it at a disadvantage if conflict indeed breaks out. Yet intelligence disclosure is prevalent in international politics. For instance, for over a decade now, Israel has been almost systematically revealing top secret intelligence information about Hezbollah’s deployment in Lebanon. This would have been unthinkable in the past, but in today’s hyper-mediatized environment, the rules of the game seem to have changed.

The strategic use of intelligence ultimately represents actors’ perennial quest for leverage in international politics. In this respect, intelligence is essentially analogous to more traditional resources and assets that states employ to impact the strategic calculations of other actors. In other words, similar to the way in which a state can be vulnerable to another actor’s superior military or economic prowess, one can find itself vulnerable to another actor’s superior intelligence capabilities and penetration, and hence to strategic manipulation.

In this regard, it bears remembering that all actors have secrets: international politics entail compromises between one’s public image, commitments, and stated ideology, on the one hand, and one’s political interests and constraints, on the other hand. This basic feature of international politics renders actors vulnerable to manipulation. On top of that, some actors secretly engage in particularly egregious acts whose revelation could land them in serious trouble. In such cases, governments that have gained unique visibility into their opponents’ secrets can harness their intelligence in the service of influence and coercion.

Flowing from this, we argue that states can, and do, employ genuinely credible intelligence—as opposed to distorted, dubious, and erroneous intelligence—as a coercive weapon. That is, states employ their intelligence and visibility into others’ secrets in a deliberate effort to reshape their strategic calculations and constraints, without having to resort to armed force. Additionally, intelligence disclosure can be used to mobilize domestic and international audiences and make others align with a certain narrative and alter their policies accordingly. Put differently, the public revelation of intelligence could result in third-party pressure on the target of coercion.

Thus, intelligence disclosures carry the potential of preventing opponents from realizing strategic and operational goals, by disrupting their operations and by otherwise forcing them to divert resources and adjust to the fact that their secrets had been openly exposed. It can also bring indirect pressure on targets by mobilizing domestic constituencies, and it could enable the discloser to shape a coherent narrative and frame its opponents’ behavior in a certain manner.

To demonstrate the workings of coercive disclosure we investigated two recent cases in which governments purposefully leveraged solid intelligence in order to coerce opponents into shifting their policies. The first case was Saudi Arabia’s gruesome assassination of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi’s assassination made international headlines not because a journalist had been murdered in a premeditated fashion, but because the Turkish authorities possessed incriminating graphic intelligence, which, among other things, linked the Saudi Royal Court to the assassination. Such undeniable intelligence included visual evidence and audio recording of the preparations and actual implementation of the killing.

Absent such intelligence, Riyadh would have likely adhered to its initial claim that Khashoggi had left the consulate building unharmed—a claim that U.S. President Donald Trump seemed eager to accept. Leveraging its evidence, Ankara gradually coerced Saudi Arabia and President Trump to acknowledge (most of) the truth. By constantly signaling that it held further intelligence in reserve, Ankara gradually and repeatedly forced Riyadh to abandon its initial denials. Rather than simply revealing its intelligence, it turned it into coercive leverage, thereby bringing pressure on Saudi Arabia directly, but also indirectly through the United States, whose president sought to bring the affair to a quick closure.

The second episode involving coercive disclosure pertains to Israel’s still-ongoing efforts, which began in 2017, to force Hezbollah to abandon its efforts to manufacture precision-guided missiles in Lebanon. To bring international, but especially domestic pressure on Hezbollah, Israel repeatedly resorted to the publicization of high-resolution intelligence on the deployment of Hezbollah’s “precision project.” Israel used high-profile international forums, such as the United Nations General Assembly, to disclose the whereabouts of secret workshops and facilities, in an effort to bring third-party pressure on the group and disrupt its operations.

Ofek Riemer and Daniel Sobelman are the authors of “Coercive disclosure: The weaponization of public intelligence revelation in international relations”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

Strategic narratives in the Sino-American COVID-19 “blame game”

In a recent article, Linus Hagström and Karl Gustafsson analyze the Sino-American narrative struggle over the meaning of COVID-19. They argue that the limited success of Chinese and U.S. efforts to gain support for their strategic narratives about the pandemic illustrates the limitations of strategic narratives as both concept and political practice.

“Strategic narratives” has become a popular concept in International Relations research and foreign policy practice alike. Scholars and practitioners have increasingly accepted that narratives matter and can affect world politics by attracting or even fooling global audiences into acquiring a particular understanding of reality. Many states currently spend huge resources on projecting their own stories to the world. Hence, much like discussions on “disinformation,” “propaganda,” “information warfare,” “sharp power,” and “fake news,” current commentary often seems to assume that international actors are able to control narratives and use them strategically.

One issue over which much ink has recently been spilled is the COVID-19 pandemic. After the pandemic hit the world in the spring of 2020, it did not take long until scholars and pundits began to comment on how the world’s two most powerful states—the United States and China—were seeking to construct and propagate strategic narratives about events as they were unfolding. They suggested that the narrative power struggle over the meaning of the pandemic could have implications for the future of world order and the ostensibly ongoing power shift from the United States to China. Some suggested that China’s strategic narratives were superior to that of the United States, and that this could even be a harbinger of China’s emergence as a global leader.

In our article, we examined the construction, dissemination and reception of Sino-American strategic narratives about the pandemic, as well as whether or how they invoked more deeply institutionalized, pre-existing master narratives and with what effects. We also explored to what extent and how those narratives were referenced and reproduced by decision makers in Australia, India, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—five regional states seen as vital to the future of the current U.S.-led world order.

We found that both China and the United States sought to use narratives strategically. The United States projected two main strategic narratives: (1) COVID-19 originated in China, the country tried its best to hide the outbreak and refused to cooperate with investigations, and China duped the WHO, which is pro-China; and (2) the United States has taken a proactive approach to COVID-19 that is better than anywhere else in the world and the Trump administration has been highly successful.

China also promoted two main narratives: (1) China is the champion of the international system because its domestic crisis management is resolute and effective, and because internationally it is based on multilateralism and assisting other countries by providing medical aid; and (2) the United States engages in politicization and stigmatization, such as the Wuhan lab conspiracy theory, which is more dangerous than COVID-19 itself, and it wasted the time that Chinese sacrifice had given it.

However, we found that all of these narrative were largely unsuccessful. While elements of the U.S. narratives were referenced and reproduced in Australia and to some extent in the United Kingdom, the number of such references was very limited. Indian, South Korean, and Turkish statements praised cooperation with the United States, but did not reproduce U.S. narrative content. Similarly, key elements of the Chinese narratives appeared in statements from all five states, but China was only explicitly mentioned when cooperation with the country was praised. China did not figure at all when support for multilateralism, international cooperation and the WHO was discussed, or when stigmatization of Asians was criticized. Officials in Australia, India, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom primarily emphasized their own efforts and successes in fighting COVID-19, seeking to present themselves in a positive light. Instead of supporting either the United States or China, they had their own agendas and agency.

Based on our findings, we argue that there is reason for caution about the usefulness of strategic narratives as a policy tool. In addition, we argue that the analysis and use of strategic narratives cannot just take narratives about specific issues, such as COVID-19, into account, but must also pay attention to more deeply institutionalized, pre-existing master narratives. Not all Chinese narrative elements originated in China, and some of them—especially the emphasis on multilateralism and international cooperation—were quite general.

Hence, to the extent that Chinese narratives gained some international traction, they did not do so by spreading falsehoods, but rather by appealing to master narratives that are widely shared throughout the world. This demonstrates the limitations strategic narratives, as China’s narrative entrepreneurship around COVID-19 both appealed to and seemed constrained by pre-existing master narratives integral to the current U.S.-led world order.

Our findings suggest that the most significant narrative power resides not with particular states, but with influential master narratives. Therefore, when exploring the possibilities for changing global narrative power dynamics, we should analyze not only the diffusion and reception of strategic narratives, or even just changing master narratives, but also how key actors situate themselves in relation to existing master narratives. With the Biden administration more intent than the previous Trump administration on upholding and strengthening the current U.S.-led liberal world order with its emphasis on multilateralism and international cooperation, it may become more difficult for China, or any other state, to take control of or use these global master narratives for their own strategic purposes.

Linus Hagström is a Professor of Political Science at the Swedish Defence University. Karl Gustafsson is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Stockholm University. He tweets at @KarlGustafsson5. They are the authors of the article “The limitations of strategic narratives: The Sino-American struggle over the meaning of COVID-19,” Contemporary Security Policy, forthcoming, which can be accessed here.

Global Britain in the grey zone

In a recent article, Vladimir Rauta and Sean Monaghan analyze the new UK Integrated Review to understand how the United Kingdom attempts to grapple with its hybrid policy. They argue that this presents a good blueprint for thinking about some of the questions grey zone poses, not just for the UK but for all Western allies.

Over the past decade, trans-Atlantic and European security and defense policy have tried to make sense of the grey zone challenge. It framed this debate using a range of monikers: hybrid warfare/threats/interference, sub-threshold/hostile/malign activity, subversion and political warfare. What started with a discussion on combined modes of operations by supposedly weaker non-state armed actors such as Hezbollah took a life of its own in the aftermath of the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.

On the one hand, with it came supposed Russian doctrines and repetitive claims that war and peace have merged into some strategic blur. On the other hand, it raised serious questions on security and defense policy, capability, and directions of military transformation and adaptation.

One such recent example is the United Kingdom’s (UK) review of national security, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (Integrated Review), published alongside a new Integrated Operating Concept 2025 (IOpC25) and the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) own contribution to the review, Defence in a Competitive Age. The review and its accompanying documents are part of a multi-level, multi-stakeholder conversation about how the UK should view and deal with the present and future security landscape, which for the Ministry of Defence will determine the shape of military capabilities and how they are employed in the years to come.

In our new article, we argue that this presents a good blueprint for thinking about some of the questions grey zone poses, especially as the UK has not the only nation to take a “hybrid-turn” in its security and defense policy in recent years. In fact, both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) have a strategy for countering hybrid threats—not to mention a dedicated institution in the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (NATO, 2017). Similarly, recent strategy documents published in the United States, Australia, France and Germany, all cite forms of hybrid or grey zone conflict as a primary challenge in the coming years.

Our argument invites scholars and policymakers alike to find utility in a simplified conceptual discussion based on distinguishing between threats and warfare. For better or worse, they are established policy terms which not only cement the idea that hybridity is a pervasive and constant feature of statecraft and warfare, but can help spark professional debates and public dialogue about evolving security threats in which both parties might play a part: Whether directly (e.g., cyber-security, disinformation, democratic interference, business resilience) or indirectly (e.g., in supporting government investment and the role of the Armed Forces in new security interventions, from NATO deployments to homeland resilience). Examples of the threat-warfare distinction currently in play include NATO’s policy and Counter Hybrid Threat Strategy, the EU’s “playbook” for countering hybrid threats, and the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats.

Against this background, we use the example of the UK’s attempts to grapple with its own hybrid policy as a national case study in closing the gap between rhetoric and practice which we call the stagecraft versus statecraft problem. There are two issues worth noting here. The first is the inconsistent and opaque language used by the UK government to describe a wide array of threats. The second problem is the need for concrete action to—in the words of Boris Johnson— “tackle hybrid warfare.”

The UK’s previous commitment to adapt to new hybrid realities also looked anemic when compared to the efforts of its allies and partners during the same period. Central European, Nordic, and Baltic nations revitalized Cold War “total defence” style strategies—complemented by highly visible strategic communications campaigns—while the United States Marine Corps spent a year experimenting to develop their new role in countering gray zone strategies and the Australian 2020 Defence Strategic Update and Force Structure Plan offer significant detail on the changes to strategy, force structure, and capability.

In contrast to previous efforts, the Integrated Review sets out a clear strategic approach towards hybrid threats through “a force structure that principally deters through ‘persistent engagement’ below the threshold of war”. It also backs this up with a wide array of measures to deliver and enhance the capability required to deliver this vision. In doing so it builds on the UK’s conventional prowess as one of only two NATO allies capable of wielding nuclear, offensive cyber, precision strike weapons and fifth-generation strike aircraft—plus a carrier strike group and “Tier 1” Special Forces. These forces underpin existing contributions to NATO operations in the Baltics, high readiness forces and major multinational exercises—including framework nation leadership through the Joint Expeditionary Force, a multinational force comprising the UK, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, which “offers these countries flexible options for managing sub-threshold competition”.

These are much-welcomed developments on which we draw to outline some avenues—informally, through a series of questions, puzzles and lessons—designed to help international policy and research communities align their efforts to address their own stagecraft-statecraft dichotomies. In doing so, we hope to support international efforts to discover just what the fundamental transformation advocated by the UK establishment really means in practice. For hybrid threats, we highlight three key questions or puzzles that are raised through the UK’s review, but not quite answered: Tolerance, going beyond deterrence, and the role of defense. Taken together they are useful for those wishing to further develop policy and scholarship on countering hybrid threats.

For hybrid warfare, we argue the policy agenda has to be reset and reconfigured in three ways. First and foremost, around conventional war/warfare, understood primarily through the lens of inter-state war. Second, to conceptualize and engage with the “combination” problem: That future adversaries are likely to mix and match forms and modes of warfare to offset conventional battlefield strength. Third, to avoid “Next-War-itis” and instead seek to be prepared for a range of contingencies across conflict and actor spectra.

As such, our article has focused on two related—but distinct—challenges that emanate from this environment: hybrid threats and hybrid warfare. It used the UK’s review to reveal lessons and insights for international policymakers and scholars also grappling with these challenges, forming these into policy and research guidance for both. Yet a closer look reveals a series of lessons, questions, and puzzles on tackling hybrid challenges to which the UK does not provide such convincing answers. These were used to draw a tentative way forward for international scholars and policymakers, using our threats-warfare distinction to provide some structure.

Taken together, this series of questions left hanging by the UK’s review form a loose research agenda for those in the international community developing policy and scholarship on countering hybrid threats and dealing with hybrid warfare—and in so doing, take further steps on their own journeys from stagecraft to statecraft.

Vladimir Rauta and Sean Monaghan are the authors of the article “Global Britain in the grey zone: Between stagecraft and statecraft”, Contemporary Security Policy, forthcoming, which can be accessed here

Ambiguity of hybrid warfare

Understanding what hybrid warfare means to political and military representatives allows us to correctly interpret country’s policies and countermeasures. In a recent article, Silvie Janičatová and Petra Mlejnková analyze the British political-military discourse on Russia’s hostile activities, and the role of defense policy in countering it. This gives us a bottom up understanding of hybrid warfare.

“Hybrid warfare” and “Russia” have become connectively used words in political, military, academic, or even public spheres almost on daily basis since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Still, there is a fair amount of ambiguity in describing what hybrid warfare means, let alone the correct use of the term itself, which is further reinforced by conflicting arguments about the novelty of this concept. Such lack of clarity raises the question of how a particular country and its leaders understand hybrid warfare, which has important implications for formulating respective policies and countermeasures.

This article focuses on the British political-military discourse on hybrid warfare in the context of Russia’s hostile activities and the role of defense policy in the period 2014-2019. However, rather than examining this issue solely by applying the concept itself, as compared to other studies, a bottom-up approach, qualitative content analysis with quantitative aspects in particular, is used to obtain results from 68 primary sources of various actors relevant to British defense. The analysis itself aims at three areas: terms used to describe Russia’s hostile activities; Russia’s hostile activities abroad and their perception including corresponding tools and methods; and UK’s response to Russia’s hostile activities.

The results provide number of interesting insights and allow to indicate further implications. For example, the representatives not only used a wide range of different terms to describe Russia’s hostile activities, which corresponds with the overall ambiguity of hybrid warfare and its conceptualization and which tends to approach this issue in a further context, but the quantitative perspective further showed that they highlighted information and cyber warfare more often in comparison to other particular components of hybrid warfare definitions.

In the context of the UK, this calls for a more unified understanding of the issue, whether it could be in the form of adopting NATO’s approach to hybrid threats or formulating UK’s own perspective, for example, within the MCDC Countering Hybrid Warfare Project which the UK is a member of. And since there is naturally a risk of creating more ambiguity than there already is, it is crucial to base such an approach on facts and proper understanding of Russia’s aims, tools and methods, since it would have additional implications for response measures.

Similarly, while keeping in mind the limits of generalization of one case study, these results also deserve some attention in regard to the hybrid warfare debate since they raise the question whether hybrid warfare is not really just a label primarily used for political purposes and it is really more suitable to research the particular components – an approach already held in academic circles.

Another example is the role of defense policy in countering hybrid warfare in the context of Russia, which was undoubtedly recognized in the British political-military discourse, although its engagement was considered being ultimately dependent on the nature of a particular hybrid threat that Russia poses. The results and their analysis may represent a helping tool in interpreting British strategic documents (including the potential differences between the political-military discourse and the documents), decisions made in relation to defense (such as preferences in development of particular capabilities or support of certain propositions at NATO level), or related countermeasures. And if additional data and governmental actors were added to the analysis, this approach could also be adopted towards other British policies which are impacted by the same threat.

Last but not least, the article shows that focusing on hybrid warfare within a particular discourse can provide interesting insights into particular country’s understanding of the concept as well as respective policies and countermeasures. The case study of the UK could thus serve as an example for researching political-military discourses in other countries/institutions that also have to deal with such a threat, in order to generate more data and even provide some comparisons, and the applied bottom-up approach, which proved its usefulness in analyzing such discourse, may represent a way how to achieve it.

Silvie Janičatová and Petra Mlejková are researchers at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, the Czech Republic. They are the authors of “The Ambiguity of Hybrid Warfare: A Qualitative Content Analysis of the United Kingdom’s Political-Military Discourse on Russia’s Hostile Activities and the Role of Defense”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

 

 

Private Sector Contribution to National Strategies of Cyber Deterrence

More often than not, the delegation of national security responsibilities to private actors has generated controversy. Notable cases include the United States’ reliance on private military contractors in the recent conflicts of Afghanistan and Iraq. Hence, it may come as a surprise that the current debate around private sector contribution to national strategies of cyber deterrence has been largely exempt from such controversies.

On the contrary, a steady consensus has grown around the idea that national strategies of cyber deterrence would benefit significantly from the direct participation of actors in the private sector. In particular, there have been repeated calls for tech companies, cyber-security firms, and owners and operators of critical infrastructure to bring their vast resources to the table in order to boost governments’ ability to fend off malicious cyber activity.

Without dismissing the opportunities originating from the contributions of the private sector, a new article written by Eugenio Lilli highlights how such private contributions could also pose significant security, legal, and moral challenges.

The first step to assess the desirability or not of private sector contribution to national strategies of cyber deterrence is to define the concept of deterrence in cyber space. As it is the case with many neologisms containing the prefix “cyber”, cyber deterrence also lacks a universally agreed upon definition. In the article, cyber deterrence is defined as the deterrence of malicious activity occurring within or through cyber space. It is also argued that deterrence in cyber space should be

  •  Restrictive. It should seek to shape and limit the overall frequency and severity of malicious activity rather than aiming at dissuading all attacks from occurring at all times.
  • Comprehensive. It should encompass deterrence by denial, punishment, entanglement, and norms; it should rely on deterrent measures taken in the other operational domains of land, sea, air, and space; it should include the whole range of instruments of national power including diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement (aka DIMEFIL) instruments.
  • Dynamic. In response to rapid technological innovation, it should constantly monitor systems and networks, update defenses, improve intelligence sharing, patch vulnerabilities, and renew contingency plans; in response to change in cyber norms, it should implement measures aimed at actively shaping the evolution of norms in cyber space.
  • Complemental. It should not be expected to work best as a separate tool in an actor’s toolbox but rather, as complemental to other forms of coercive and non-coercive strategic interaction.

By relying on the RCDC (Restrictive, Comprehensive, Dynamic, Complemental) conceptualization of cyber deterrence, the article identifies specific areas where private sector contribution can be especially beneficial to national strategies of cyber deterrence. For example, there is evidence to support the argument that private actors can be instrumental to hardening cyber defenses and enhancing resilience, to sharing information, to imposing costs to adversaries, to attributing cyber incidents, to creating strategic interdependencies, and to advancing norms of appropriate behavior in cyber space.

Some important benefits of private sector contribution appear to be common to all areas. To begin with, the private sector can offer unique state-of-art-technologies, highly skilled human capital, and critical funding to compensate for a national government’s limited resources. Moreover, while government authority is often geographically limited, private actors’ visibility and reach can extend beyond national borders. In addition, compared to the somewhat cumbersome processes of policymaking characteristic of state bureaucracies, private sector processes of policymaking give these actors more flexibility and speed; key abilities given the fast-changing nature of threats in cyber space.

Given the above, it is not surprising that the number of those people calling for more private participation in national cyber deterrence is steadily increasing. However, as it is often the case, the devil is in the details. The opportunities originating from private sector contributions are apparent, yet these same contributions also have the potential to raise serious security, legal, and moral challenges that need to be thoroughly understood.

For example, contracting a private company to host classified military information can give fast-track access to the latest technologies but it could also endanger national security if the private company is successfully breached by a hostile actor. Similarly, private companies, especially big tech companies, usually employ people from the world over. Where would these employees’ loyalty lie in case of heighten international tensions or an open confrontation? With the country which contracted them or with their country of origin?

Moreover, legal considerations could limit the willingness of the private sector to contribute to activities of intelligence sharing and active cyber defense. In the context of the United States both types of deterrence activities, while beneficial, may in some cases violate domestic law.

There are also instances of contributions which raise moral issues. For example, private sector’s access to government’s sensitive information could lead to the abuse of such information for private gain. Private companies are ultimately responsible to shareholders rather than to the citizenry. How can they be held accountable to the nation’s interest? With regard to attribution of cyber incidents, commercial interests could make private actors somewhat biased in their public attributions. In particular, they could refrain from publicly attributing incidents to specific governments because they do not want to jeopardize their access to these countries’ profitable contracts and markets.

To conclude, these few examples show the need for starting a more nuanced debate on the nature and desirability of private sector contribution to national strategies of cyber deterrence which is not limited to highlighting the opportunities deriving from it but that also considers the related challenges.

Eugenio Lilli is a lecturer at University College Dublin. He is the author of “Redefining deterrence in cyberspace: Private sector contribution to national strategies of cyber deterrence”, Contemporary Security Policy, which is available here.

Unity among al-Qaeda groups in the Sahel

In September 2017, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda declared that the unity of effort of al-Qaeda groups in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger was as “an example, worthy of emulation, for … Mujahid brothers and Muslims the world over.” Despite many centrifugal forces, the al-Qaeda groups have since then maintained alliance cohesion. As argued by Troels Burchall Henningsen in a recent article, this is largely the outcome of the multi-pronged strategy of the al-Qaeda affiliated groups that shapes local communities and reduces the tension created by communal cleavages. In order to avoid a quagmire, international counter-terrorism and peacekeeping missions need to break the ties among the al-Qaeda groups and their ties to the local population.

In 2017, al-Qaeda affiliated groups in the Sahel region formed a new alliance under the name Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM). Afterwards JNIM has often reached international headlines through a spectacular and brutal use of violence. Behind the headlines lies a multi-dimensional irregular strategy that often gets lost in the policy debate when groups are labelled as terrorists. The strategy makes it possible for JNIM to retain alliance cohesion among groups that recruit from different ethnic and social powerbases. The alliance’s political and informational campaigns promote a common Islamist framework for understanding conflicts and social changes. To this end, JNIM draws on an international repertoire of symbols and narratives developed by al-Qaeda. JNIM is at once a conservative alliance firmly placed in traditional social networks and a revolutionary force that transcends established social boundaries.

The comprehensive campaigns to establish alternative governance may appear rudimentary, but must be compared to the low standards of governance in the impoverished and marginalized regions of Burkina Faso and Mali. Hospitals, Sharia courts, or enforcement of land rights contribute to the everyday welfare and safety of local communities. The fact that militant Islamists live among the local community give them an understanding and motivation to deal with local governance issues. Violence and information campaigns contribute to the establishment of alternative governance. Attacks on security forces and assassinations of state officials and local dignitaries go hand in hand with subtle influencing and intimidation of those responsible for everyday governance, such as schoolteachers or mayors. As a result, diverse communities now gets a more homogeneous governance structure, although it might be covert and violent.

Normally, cohesion among insurgent groups is associated with strong organizations, patient indoctrination of rank-and-file members, or the prospect of winning a war. None of these factors reinforces unity within JNIM. Moreover, the implementation of JNIM’s comprehensive strategy has not been a neat and linear process. Burkina Faso and Mali have witnessed a sharp increase in self-defense militias and criminal groups, many of those challenging JNIM’s bid to govern marginalized regions. In 2020, fights with Islamic State affiliates added to the woes of JNIM. However, the strategy of JNIM situates them at the grass root level of local politics. Their ability to influence or coerce local power brokers across ethnic communities sets them apart from other militant groups, and provides them with a unifying approach.

Now the international military interventions in Mali and the wider Sahel face a familiar, but unsettling situation. The French counter-terrorism operation Barkhane has killed a number of the senior al-Qaeda commanders. The EU training missions have trained an impressive number of soldiers and paramilitary forces. Yet, JNIM maintains a high operational tempo and escalates violence. The first problem is well known from other counter-insurgency operations, namely that JNIM operatives live among the people in marginalized areas, whereas national and international security forces are most often strangers in these regions. The second problem is a lack of consensus about how to tackle JNIM. The military coup in Mali in August 2020 was the culmination of a simmering disaffection with the government, including its inability to curb militant Islamism. However, the political elites in Mali disagree on whether (parts) of JNIM should be included in a reconciliation process. International powers view JNIM in the lens of international Jihadist terrorism and oppose dialogue.

To break the deadlock, one policy approach would be to target the alliance cohesion of JNIM. Many of the current efforts aim at breaking the links between JNIM groups and the local population. Reconciliation initiatives or reforms of local state institutions aim to build the legitimacy of the state, or at least improve its cooperation with local elites who resist JNIM presence. These initiatives are steps in the right direction, but the poor security situation means that military solutions play an outsized role. A comprehensive civilian effort that takes into account local and national political interests would improve this line of effort. A second, more controversial, line of effort is to break the leadership cohesion within JNIM by including parts of the alliance in a national dialogue. Both JNIM and prominent opposition politicians have expressed interest in negotiations. This would be akin to the peace process in Afghanistan, where Taliban formally had to break with al-Qaeda before the negotiations. Maybe the current unity of JNIM requires that international interveners discuss whether al-Qaeda affiliated groups can be part of a political process.

Troels Burchall Henningsen is an assistant professor at the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen. He is the author of “The crafting of alliance cohesion among insurgents: The case of al-Qaeda affiliated groups in the Sahel region”, Contemporary Security Policy, which is available here.

Three generations of proxy war research

In a recent article, Vladimir Rauta evaluates the progress of the proxy wars debate. He finds that there are three different generations of scholars: the founders, framers, and reformers. This conceptualization is helpful in thinking how to take research on proxy wars forward.

In the first half of 2020, the Syrian civil war entered its tenth year, while the Libyan civil war became the Middle East’s most important proxy war. Iraq is turning into a battleground for foreigners once again, still scarred by its civil war and the international efforts against ISIS. At the same time, the latter’s factions are quickly adapting to regional proxy games, with the Islamic State in Yemen, for example, transforming into an entity resembling a proxy or a tool in a broader conflict between regional players.

What is more, the renewed prospect of ethnic strife in Ethiopia comes only a year after the momentous awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to its Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed. The award was in recognition of Ahmed’s efforts to normalize its relationship with neighbouring Eritrea, ending a decades-long cycle of proxy wars. That Ethiopia faces the prospects of proxy wars once more is testimony to the enduring appeal of wars on the cheap and the frailty of agreements designed to end them. As such, proxy wars are neither new nor rare, and the same can be said about their study.

Over the last decade, proxy war research has matured in recognition of the multiple problems proxy wars pose to the international system. This presents an opportunity to take stock of the proxy war debate in order to understand its past, present, and future. Two questions are relevant here: First, how has proxy war literature evolved? And, second, how has proxy wars research added up? 

In answering the first question, we can think about the debate as evolving across three “generations”: (1) founders, (2) framers, and (3) reformers. The founders refers to a generation of scholarship emerging during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. This identifies the pioneering work on proxy wars as a point of reference to theoretical and conceptual accounts emerging in the distinct socio-political context of the Cold War and its aftermath.

The framers contributed to the scholarship emerging in the aftermath of 9/11 and around the time of the Arab Spring. Not only did they register the absence of a debate on proxy wars, but they set out the trajectory for their future study in a programmatic shift that drew on creativity, intuition, and intellectual vigor.

Finally, the reformers captured the rise of proxy wars as the Syrian, Yemeni, and Libyan civil wars collapsed under the external pressures of proxy dynamics. The Russian annexation of Crimea, the ensuing proxy war in the South-East of Ukraine, and the transformation of the so-called Obama Doctrine into a set of strategic responses through proxies added empirical weight.

Thinking about the debate through the lens of “generations” serves to show how much we actually know, how diverse research is (in terms of discipline, sub-fields, and methodologies and theories), and helps set a benchmark for where research might go.

The second question invites us to reconsider the assumptions informing each generation’s innovative research. One the one hand, the three generations show that we have come to know a lot about proxy wars. On the other hand, this is undermined by the debate’s insistence that proxy wars are still “under-analyzed”, “under-conceptualized”, or “under-theorised”.

To assess the tension between framing the debate as “under-researched” and its actual advancements, we should consider, first, the enhancement and expansion of the historical basis of proxy wars research, and, second, the development of theoretically rich accounts of the strategic interactions behind proxy relationships.

In short, we should assess the role of both history and strategy for the future development of proxy war research. Because proxy wars invite a narrow reading of history which locates them at the centre of the Cold War superpower competition, future research should consider a historiography of the idea of “proxy war”.

What we need a long term perspective that rethinks proxy war beyond the confines of the Cold War to show the trans-historical character of considerations and constraints over decisions to go wage war by proxy. A reappraisal proxy war against a wider historical background has the potential to minimize myth-making, errors in analogy, and provide insights serving as more than sources of data.

Similarly, strategy helps understand why proxy wars are now seen, as General Sir Richard Barrons put it, the most successful kind of political war being waged of our generation. The basic intellectual structure of strategy–ends, ways, means, and assumptions –serves because proxy wars are a set of choices: over whom, by whom, against whom, to what end, to what advantage to wage indirect war.

Strategy and strategic interaction are a productive framework allowing policy and scholarly debate to move forward by shifting the focus on strategic bargaining between actors. Through this, we can then appreciate the extent to which proxies are invested in warfighting, how other states might respond to proxy strategic environment, and how to balance escalation with inaction or retreat. 

Vladimir Rauta is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. He is the author of “Framers, founders, and reformers: Three generations of proxy war research”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here