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Civil Wars
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Making Sense of Proxy Wars:

States, Surrogates and the Use
of Force
Vladimir Rauta
a

University of Nottingham , Nottingham , UK

To cite this article: Vladimir Rauta (2013) Making Sense of Proxy Wars:
States, Surrogates and the Use of Force, Civil Wars, 15:2, 253-254, DOI:
10.1080/13698249.2013.817857
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2013.817857

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Civil Wars, 2013

Vol. 15, No. 2, 253259

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Book Reviews

Michael Innes (ed.), Making Sense of Proxy Wars: States, Surrogates and the Use of
Force. Potomac Books, Dulles, VA, 2012. pp. 216. $26.95 (Hb). ISBN 978-159797-230-7
With the fall of communism in eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War, the
study of conflict gradually stepped away from the state-centric discourse and instead
emphasised the role of non-state actors and the asymmetric features of both war and
warfare. The result saw a trade of ideas that sought to answer both ontological and
epistemological questions surrounding the idea of contemporary conflict. The old
wars were being contrasted by new theoretical developments that emphasised the
changes in the nature war and its increasingly irregular character. However, despite
the high dynamism and interdisciplinary nature of the research, an important strand
in war studies remains critically under-analysed, and this is proxy warfare.
Michael A. Innes book addresses this exact topic, and in doing so, it dives into
an analysis of one the most complex forms of conflict whose history is synonymous
with the history of warfare itself. As wars of substitution with very intricate
structures, proxy wars are most often very hard to identify. It is for this reason that
the scholarly debates on conflict have examined wars by proxy not as a self-standing
form of war, but rather in different contexts. This resulted in the emergence of Cold
War and nuclear deterrence studies that touched only tangentially upon the case of
proxy wars. Analysed only sporadically as a serious subject of either academic or
public inquiry (p.xii), the concept of proxy wars remains unclear and defined just
by a wide theoretical gap despite its increasing presence and relevance in
contemporary warfare. Thus, as its title suggests, Making Sense of Proxy Wars:
States, Surrogates and the Use of Force attempts at challenging this exact lack of
literature by clarifying the issue of surrogacy in conflict and by explaining how
states employ this indirect manner of making use of force. However, the book fails
in doing so, as it paints only a still-life portrait of what normally is a dynamic and
permanently changing conflict pattern, while walking the reader through a disjoined
collection of chapters that looks at terrorism, bombing tactics, multinational
corporations and private military and security operators as potential elements of
proxy warfare.
So what is then a proxy war? The book does not answer this intrinsic question.
Using a narrative technique of suspense building, chapter after chapter, the authors
skilfully avoid defining the very concept they aim to makes sense of. What is most
striking is not the fact that the book eludes any definitional commitment, but rather

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254

CIVIL WARS

that the book opens ex abrupto, almost assuming that the brief Preface is
theoretically sufficient. Thus, with no explanation of what wars by proxy are, the
book cuts through the readers confusion and fits in the first case study: terrorism.
The chapter is structurally symmetric in its use of the concept of proxy warfare as it
places it at the beginning and the end of the analysis, having in mind its capacity to
explain why terrorism creates the opportunity for proxy wars. But the chapter,
although being a thoroughly researched inquiry in the idea of terrorism and its
representation in the current international and geopolitical background, does not
detail why a proxy relationship comes into being. Most importantly, it does not give
any account on the structure of a proxy conflict. Normally, this involves three actors
states and non-states entities whose roles are of Benefactor, Proxy Agent and
Target Agent. In this configuration, the relationship between the Benefactor and the
Target Agent is defined through an interest incompatibility over an issue and is
conditioned by the impossibility of direct confrontation. This leads to a situation in
which the Benefactor makes use of a third party, the Proxy Agent, whose main role
is to engage directly with the Target Agent.
In a complementary fashion, the next chapters constitute a perfunctory display of
cases studies which are conceptually confused and, as a result, fail to address the
core strategic implications of a war by proxy. The authors pay no attention to the fact
that this conflict pattern describes a specific mannerism of war that involves the
above-mentioned interplay actors. Neither do they acknowledge that proxy war
makes possible the advancing of strategic interests indirectly and even covertly.
Moreover, the book equates proxy strategy with proxy tactics while claiming
no substantive difference between the levels (the chapter on the bombing tactics of
the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a clear example even though managing to build
a remarkable presentation of terrorist bombing campaigns). The same problem
arises in the treatment of multinational companies and private military and security
contractors as proxy agents. With a clear military function, private contractors are
indeed actors that outsource strategy. However, the military capacity is regulated
economically and contractually, making the delivery of their service direct, rather
than indirect and covert, as is the case for proxy agents.
Michael Innes book is an effort that aligns itself to the methodology of the very
few existing studies on proxy wars: examining the topic through the lens of other
related issues. The several comprehensive analyses of contemporary issues that
constrain the security realm in todays globalised world make this book an
interesting read, but its approach to the phenomenon of proxy warfare lacks novelty,
coordination and depth.
VLADIMIR RAUTA q 2013
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
E-mail: ldxvr5@nottingham.ac.uk
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2013.817857