Today Assad Raza hosts Pawel Bernat, Juneyt Gurer, and Cyprian Kozera, authors of Proxy Wars From a Global Perspective: Non-State Actors and Armed Conflicts: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/proxy-wars-from-a-global-perspective-9781350369283/
----
One CA is a product of the civil affairs association
and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.
We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.
To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com
or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org
----
Special thanks to Rajhesh Vaidhya and Bengaluru Ganesh Utsava for the audio sample. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_iVM-6z2j4
-----
Credits
Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association
Host: Assad Raza
Showrunner / editor: Jack Gaines
---
00:00:00 Introduction
A quick note, the guests on today's show represent themselves and their book and no other organization. Enjoy the show. Welcome to the 1CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.
00:00:45 ASSAD RAZA
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. I'm your host, Assad Raza, and our guests today are Pavel Bernat, Junaid Guerrero, and Saiprin Cozada, authors of The Proxy Wars from a Global Perspective. First, congratulations, and thank you for taking the time to talk about your book with our audience today. Thank you, Asad. Thank you, Asad. So, what motivated you to write a book on proxy wars and non -state actors in armed conflicts? Who'd like to start? Cyprian? Yeah.
00:01:10 CYPRIAN KOZERA
It pays back to some gloomy January. Syvasa Center organized a great meeting. Cyprian said, hey, let's do something about that. Because this obviously merits deeper attention. And we started working. We got so inspired. We issued an academic special issue devoted to proxy forces. And then it was yet not enough. We still had more ideas. There were more people interested in the topic. After this academic general special issue, we decided, okay, we have to go on. And then we started to work on a book, starting with theory and history, and then goes into case studies in the last decade.
00:01:50 ASSAD RAZA
Thank you, Cyprian. Before we started recording this, we had talked about... You guys noticed that there was a gap within the literature and focused on some of the contemporary proxy wars versus some of the historical ones that had been written about years ago. Pawel, I know you wanted to talk about the evolution of proxy warfare. So there are so many people interested in proxy warfare,
00:02:09 PAWEL BERNAT
are so many people interested in proxy warfare, trying to understand and define what it actually means. We find ourselves in this very special time. On the one hand, we've got this interesting and needed concept of proxy warfare, but we have observed this gap of understanding what it is. And on the margin, we have to remember that it is very important not only to understand from this academic point of view, but this is crucial for policymakers. A theoretical material does not really provide proper answers to the current proxy warfare. Those traditional old definitions, they were coined during the Cold War era. Basically, you've got armed conflict, two superpowers. So, you know, NATO and Warsaw Pact. And they fight against each other indirectly. So using the territory of the third state, like Korea, Afghanistan. And then in 1991, things changed. The Soviet Union collapsed. And this very significant... geopolitical alteration started. So traditional old Cold War definitions did not provide enough exemplary power. So this is the theoretical background behind the book. What we wanted to do, we have invited specialists on different areas on the globe to provide the field data. So we, with the book, provide enough end -of -row material for future researchers and policymakers understanding proxy warfare.
00:03:52 ASSAD RAZA
Funny that you say that because I think the average person wouldn't put in consideration these shifts within the geopolitical aspect and the way it impacts the operational environment. So on that point to Juneyt, how is proxy warfare in the context of international relations?
00:04:08 JUNEYT GURER
The key thing for us today is to understand the changes in the strategic element. International relations perspective is the state objectives basically are critical, but other non -state actors matter, which means the proxy group may have something to say in that interaction. So let's look at this issue from a different perspective to give us some more explanation.
00:04:35 ASSAD RAZA
Thank you, Jeanette. Having the different perspectives contributes to the conversation and the academic rigor to understand these complex problems. specifically in proxy wars. Let's shift now to talking about the current situations. How do contemporary proxy wars and the participation of non -state actors contribute to global strategic competition? So I'll shift to Powell.
00:04:59 PAWEL BERNAT
So what I'm going to talk about is the Russo -Granian war from the proxy perspective, or how the proxies were created and used by the both sides. The first thing we should do here is actually to divide the time of the conflict. So you have this first stage between 2014 and February of 2022, and then the full -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. So in 2014, the Russian Federation annexed Crimea and started the occupation. There was some betrayal involved and the action was actually really well prepared. Russian troops in the skies were present there. This is a great example of efficient use of hybrid warfare because the level of disinformation was just enormous. This traditional fog of war, we had basically no idea what was going on. When we look to the Donbass region in 2014, this is actually very interesting because the Russian Federation created their own proxies. So obviously, before 2014, there had been many people living in Lugansk that were pro -Russian. So what Russians did, they created units from those regions and paid them to organize and to fight. So the proxies there, that actually were created by the sponsor state, the Russian Federation. The indigenous people were not the only ones involved. There were many Cossacks from Russia, there were some other ethnic groups from Ural, but there were also straightforward criminals invited and organized to conduct the basic fighting against the Ukrainian forces. But when we look at this from this global strategic perspective, obviously proxies are used by the sponsored state when the state doesn't want to take full responsibility. This direct involvement in the conflict, you use proxies to fight this fight indirectly. So with the use of intermediaries. And you can either use the existing forces or you can create them.
00:07:24 ASSAD RAZA
Pavel, thank you. One question when you were talking about Crimea and Russia's support to the proxy for the occupation or annexation, you were saying at the strategic level, state sponsors usually don't want to take full responsibility. So some of that responsibility shift to the proxy forces and how is that looked upon within the area that they're operating in?
00:07:45 PAWEL BERNAT
Sure. From the strategic perspective, that's very important to explain to the Russian society why this war is being fought. So the main argument that is actually being repeated by the Russian state propaganda over and over again has been these are our Russian -speaking people and we will engage. in order to protect them because the Ukrainian regime treats them badly. And to support this argument, you create the indigenous units who fight beside you for their freedom. So having proxies in the Donbass region, that strengthened this explanation and Russia behind this strategic move of actually going to war.
00:08:34 ASSAD RAZA
Thank you. So we'll shift now to talk about Russia's proxies in Africa. So type in.
00:09:03 CYPRIAN KOZERA
You don't need to involve a lot of resources to win with actors. And here I mean dislocating the Western powers, France, the US, from the Sahel and Central African Republic. So Russia not being able to counter the influence, use proxy forces to the point that the West still doesn't know what to do with that, how to respond. And is it warfare? That's a question I would like to raise here, because as Pablo started in this discussion, he introduced this issue of odd theories. The classic proxy warfare theories not really sit here nowadays, because in the classic theory, armed conflict, and then proxies. What happens now if you have hybrid warfare? Is it the fifth generation of warfare? It's so hard to define. Is it a complex or not? Are we waging war with Russia? Some sabotage is happening. And then with some assassination ordered by Russia in the Western countries, the West supporting Ukraine providing weapons. It's very hard to say. So even if we don't use the term proxy warfare, it's happening. Proxy forces are being used in Africa by Russia and strategic gains. So definitely proxy warfare. It's very efficient. in Central African Republic since 2008. In Mali, 2022. Burkina Faso, 2023. Niger, last month, when the Russian mercenaries arrived to Myanmar. And it was two days ago when we learned that the Russians moved into the very same base in Myanmar and standing outside the U .S. soldiers. The U .S. troops are not any more welcome in Niger. They're moving out. moved out from Burkina Faso, French from Mali, with a hundred, a couple hundred, three hundred mercenaries, they entirely dislodged the Western forces. And with that, the influence. And now we are facing a U .S. troop leaving Chad, and we don't know where Chad will go in the next elections, which is on the 6th of May in two days. What about Senegal? the new president speaking of emancipation deals with anyone willing to enter the deal. So, looking from this perspective of the Sahel and the Sub -Saharan Africa, we see that there's plenty of proxy hybrid warfare, which brings enormous gains for a very little expense. Russia is the winner there, and we still don't know how to react.
00:11:50 ASSAD RAZA
Thank you so much. That was a really good description of how proxy war is used in global competition. Before we move on, I wanted to ask Junet if he has any thoughts on the role of proxy forces in global strategic competition.
00:12:04 JUNEYT GURER
The other thing about the strategic competition is this is a competition between US and China, and now China and Russia international order. But what happens, interestingly, after the conflicts? I think we will see a lot of organized criminal groups in this new era of strategic competition.
00:12:26 ASSAD RAZA
But I want to ask you, what are your thoughts about the intersection with such terms like insurgency or counterterrorism or terrorism? I am not an expert in that field,
00:12:36 JUNEYT GURER
that field, but I have some experience actually working with my colleagues here at the Marshall Center. Interesting topic. What I would basically say, if we consider the new... international security domain that will shape around the strategic competition. We have to look at those definitions of groups or tactics from that perspective. It is a critical time right now, and we all agree after Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, now we are in a new international security era. So that era requires us to focus on the outcomes. I think those should be the real questions.
00:13:18 ASSAD RAZA
So earlier in the conversation, we talked a little bit about ethical considerations. So what are some of the ethical considerations surrounding the use of proxy forces in armed conflicts? There is a plethora of issues that could be addressed here.
00:13:29 PAWEL BERNAT
is a plethora of issues that could be addressed here. But very briefly and generally speaking, we have observed certain negativity linked to proxy warfare. So there is this pejorative undertone to it. And I think it actually stems from this Cold War era understanding. So basically you had two superpowers fighting against one another on the territory of another country, using this country for their struggle in order to avoid mutual assured destruction. You used the country, but also the people living in it. So this is my hypothesis. That's why this pejorative undertone linked to proxy warfare comes from. If you want to be academically honest, proxy war, it is not the case where the sponsor state uses some proxies to do their dirty work and the state does not want to break international law. So they use some forces to do that for them in order to achieve those strategic goals. But proxy warfare in itself is not. a negative thing so this is neutral okay but it also could be positive so this is something that i'd like the circle of the people working on it but also the republic to understand and remember we've seen not only the states but also a whole number of ngos but also private companies and informal groups participating by providing data by hacking the russian infrastructure so this is obviously manifestation of proxy warfare that proxies don't have to be military organizations. Very often they are, but they don't have to. That could be a very informal group of hackers that enters the stage of this armed conflict by, for example, hacking or providing some information. So in this sense, proxy warfare is not something ethically neutral.
00:15:33 ASSAD RAZA
You hit a lot of good things. I like the way you framed it. Is it being neutrally ethical, depending on the reasons behind the supports of some of these proxies, and the complexity behind it with the different actors that are supporting a proxy force? I like the example of the hackers. That was really good. I wanted to ask anyb