In 2006 the U.S national security establishment “re-discovered” counter-insurgency, as General David Petraeus fresh from having published the Army/Marine COIN doctrine – set about implementing a COIN strategy in Iraq and his fellow-travellers in the State Department like David Kilcullen pushed for a COIN handbook to change the strategic way the US government does COIN.
Now it’s time for another re-discovery – namely of the proxy war. Proxy wars were common in the Cold War, and proxies were used in conflicts in Greece, Angola, Korea, and Vietnam.
But these wars have now come back. In the Caucasus NATO’s fighting Russia through Georgia, in Iraq the U.S is really taking on Iran, while Israel aims at Tehran but shoots at Hezbollah in Lebanon. In Asia Pakistan uses the Taliban inside Afghanistan to hit at India.
Meanwhile, conflict in the Horn of Africa is escalating rapidly as power struggles within Somalia are exacerbated by the military support that both Ethiopia and Eritrea give to the opposing parties there.
The West used to be good at these proxy wars. First, because of the “soft” power of democratic capitalism, which drew people to a cause not just a country. But in the new world where the enemies are often Salafist Islamists does the U.S and its allies have the necessary universal language and universal appeal?
Second, successful proxy wars depended on the proxies being authentic representatives of at least parts of their societies. Where they were not, they failed. Today, does an alliance with the U.S automatically exclude one as a legitimate representative?
As proxy wars look likely to be one of the predominant modes of warfare in the 21st century, the U.S will need to find answers to these questions and, as with the development of its COIN capabilities, gear its diplomatic, military and economic instruments to deal with the new challenge.
