How high-tech proxy wars threaten the global order
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Predictions about future conflicts tend to obsess over where and when a clash of nations or interests will reach a tipping point, leaving little room for critical analyses of how. After all, the means of warfare has significant influence on the outcomes.
Events in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh are shedding light on the changing nature of contemporary warfare. Unlike other major wars in the past few decades, hybrid air defense systems, disinformation, and electronic warfare are an increasingly preferred method of engagement.
Boots on the ground have given way to a hodge-podge of foreign fighters, mercenaries and private contractors. Drones dominate the air while long-range defense systems ensure control over strategic locations valuable to the war effort. At the geopolitical level, small or medium power states are now capable of wading into conflict zones, and can influence extranational affairs. For instance, with Turkey’s interventions in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, extraterritorial wars were fought in the air without involving proxies on the ground and without interference by local civilian populations.
This can be attributed to a few factors. First, both conflicts exhibit “casualty aversion;” combatants and their civilian populations simply withdraw or submit once aerial superiority is achieved over roads, bridges, ports and air strips. Without casualty aversion, a devastating war with massive loss of civilian life would attract the attention of major powers who would be forced to intervene for humanitarian reasons. Second, drones and anti-aircraft strategies allow medium powers to achieve aerial superiority, once possible only for major powers. Third, an uninterested Washington, incoherent NATO and conflict-averse EU have enabled countries to fight unconventionally and extra-territorially without superpowers intervening.
This new form of warfare could diminish the superiority of advanced military forces. Emergent powers will be more willing to transgress international norms, not just fighting but also taking and inflicting casualties aided by fast-paced technological advances.
A return to a high-tech proxy war is extremely troubling in the geopolitical hot zone that is the Middle East, where post-Arab Spring rivalries and a clash of political ideologies have only exacerbated tensions .
Hafed Al-Ghwell
For now, drones are the backbone of remote warfare. As potent as they have proved, and effective at turning the tide in active conflict situations, they still can be countered. Defending against drones is possible even without deploying sophisticated, modern defense systems. The effectiveness of remote warfare is curbed by striking against its support systems and infrastructure — landing zones, launch platforms, ground radar and ground control locations where human pilots operate the drones. It will become more difficult in the future, with swarms and even the deployment of sophisticated pilotless drones, which do not emit detectable radio signals and are controlled by artificial intelligence.
Additionally, drone counter-proliferation will always have to evolve because conventional embargos will not work, given how easy it is to swap parts between commercial use and those outfitted for combat. Porous borders in conflict zones and the lack of permanent national security forces mean there are far too many opportunities for drones to be deployed in endless wars. Worse yet, with major corporations and industries reorienting business and operational models toward the use of drones, it will only become more challenging to police drone use, deployment and proliferation in future conflict zones.
This new almost level playing field and increased globalization of advanced military technology will eventually break a monopoly long held by more modern military forces. It was only 13 years ago that the US was unparalleled in drone technology, and its effective use and successful integration with conventional military forces. Now, however, drones can be acquired and assembled easily from parts manufactured around the world. In the case of Iran, those drones end up in the hands of proxy combatants in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and even Lebanon—where they can be deployed as part of Tehran’s regional destabilization activities.
Scholars and future war theorists have warned about these developments for years, with some decrying how these “extraterritorial wars” and high-tech proxy conflicts could accelerate the destruction of the nation-state system. However, proxy wars are not exactly a new phenomenon, since they have been resorted to since antiquity. Even after the 17th century Westphalian treaties established the model for international peace, laying the foundations for our modern treaties and conventions, remote warfare has proved far more effective at achieving objectives, while also preserving conventional military strength.
In short, proxy wars are not going away and for the Middle East, where tensions and rivalries are rife, it is likely that future conflict within the region will be dominated by this type of warfare. A return to a high-tech proxy war is extremely troubling in the geopolitical hot zone that is the Middle East, where post-Arab Spring rivalries and a clash of political ideologies have only exacerbated tensions from the eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea and even the Horn of Africa.
Remote warfare makes the costs of intervention exceedingly low, and when coupled with the previous US administration’s unwillingness to utilize its convening power and angle for diplomatic settlements, the result is a far more unstable region despite the absence of a major war. At the moment, the Biden administration has very wide latitude to threaten and levy far more punitive sanctions than the symbolic ones seen previously, in order to raise the barriers to entry for projecting power overseas at the expense of regional stability.
- Hafed Al-Ghwell is a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the John Hopkins University School of Advance International Studies. He is also senior adviser at the international economic consultancy Maxwell Stamp and at the geopolitical risk advisory firm Oxford Analytica, a member of the Strategic Advisory Solutions International Group in Washington DC and a former adviser to the board of the World Bank Group. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell
