![]() And, in a world in which US primacy is on the decline, it is worth considering how those rules stand to benefit us as well. If we use proxies who break rules that we would ourselves not want to be known for breaking, the effect is to undermine those rules. Plausible deniability may seem like an attractive benefit of proxies, but few secrets stay hidden. Abuses carried out by our proxies also make us morally indistinguishable from our adversaries, thus undermining our key comparative advantage. It applied what came to be known as the “Jakarta Method,” mass killings, abductions, and, more broadly, repression of left-leaning civilians through close collaboration with anticommunist military and paramilitary forces, as well as civilian groups.Īhistorical treatment of proxy warfare, which ignores its role in political repression and genocidal violence, risks repeating the darker chapters of our history and legitimizing similar behaviors by other counties. ![]() New work is shedding important light on the ways in which the United States cultivated and worked with friendly military officers in developing countries to marginalize anti-colonial forces. Proxy warfare figured prominently during the Cold War. Operation Condor received support from the United States, but it went into overdrive particularly when the Latin American authoritarian regimes suspected Washington of going soft on communism under the newly elected president, Jimmy Carter.įinally, there has been inadequate debate and reflection about the way the United States has used proxies in the past. This was the case with Operation Condor, when Brazilian military and political elites, in collaboration with their regional allies, took it upon themselves to prosecute a cross-border program of repression against suspected communist, socialist, or even merely left-wing critics of each other’s authoritarian regimes. They can, for example, take it upon themselves to go above and beyond the mission’s objectives. Proxies are difficult to control even when their motives align with those of their sponsors. disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful”-can apply to any group that has its own motives, especially when those motives include profit. ![]() What Machiavelli observed about mercenaries and auxiliaries-that they are “dangerous . . . The outsourcing of military operations to state or nonstate proxies presents a host of tactical, logistical, strategic, political, legal, and ethical challenges. Despite these incentives to control proxy behavior, committing the resources required to do so seemingly counters the benefits that proxies provide in terms of cost savings and plausible deniability. This dilemma is particularly acute for the United States and our allies, which tend to care more about international law, human rights, and war crimes than some of our adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran. In addition, states can suffer reputational damage at home and abroad if proxies start committing human rights violations. If states fail to rein in proxy behavior, the results can be costly and lead to the commitment of more resources to a deepened or expanded conflict. While they may offer deniability and a way to pass the burden of conflict to a third party, states must invest more in terms of money and soldiers if they want to ensure that proxies pursue state goals rather than their own. Proxies present a difficult dilemma for the state sponsor. Those smaller-scale missions are sustainable militarily, economically, and politically, and they advance the national interest. There is a big difference between large-scale, open-ended deployments of tens of thousands of American combat troops, which must end, and using a few hundred Special Forces soldiers and intelligence assets to support local partners against a common enemy. We can be strong and smart at the same time. Prior to becoming the forty-sixth president of the United States, Joe Biden opined that: The perceived Russian and Iranian savvy with proxies and our own success using them against ISIS have given policymakers rose-colored glasses when it comes to outsourcing military operations more extensively. There is a certain allure to what President Dwight Eisenhower once called “ the cheapest insurance in the world”-that is, the idea that we can use proxies to fight our wars without spending a lot of blood or treasure in the process. From Ukraine to Syria to the South China Sea, great and regional powers alike are using proxies to achieve their national interests abroad.
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