Australia’s current approach to national security has increasingly prioritised strategic competition between states, with ASIO suggesting that state-based threats such as espionage and foreign interference could become a greater concern than terrorism. In contrast, national security statements by the Abbott government and the Turnbull government emphasised counter-terrorism above other threats.
Recent government statements recognise the persistence of terrorism but treat it as an inherently separate concern to strategic competition. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update acknowledges that “the threat from terrorism and violent extremism will persist”, while emphasising that “the actions of nation states, especially strategic competition, will be the principal driver of our strategic environment”.
It is appropriate that counter-terrorism no longer dominates Australian national security discussions. However, it is also important to not treat counter-terrorism and strategic competition as entirely unrelated. Instead, strategic competition can itself pose counter-terrorism challenges. This post highlights one way in which this could occur, showing how strategic competition is sometimes waged through proxy warfare, which exacerbates civil wars and provides new opportunities for transnational violent extremists.
Strategic competition and proxy warfare
Strategic competition, at its simplest, refers to how inter-state rivalry has become increasingly important in international politics.[1] In the United States the preferred term (until recently) was great power competition, given that the rivalries of greatest concern are those between powerful countries such as Russia, China and the United States, but strategic competition also involves smaller powers.
In Australia’s defence debates, attention is given to the risk of strategic competition escalating into confrontation or outright conflict, as well as the risk of competition waged through forms of coercion below the level of overt military confrontation. Examples of these lower levels of coercive statecraft include what are currently called grey zone activities, a broad term that can cover hostage-taking, debt diplomacy, disinformation, cyber sabotage, economic coercion, disruption of shipping, harassment of fishing vessels, construction of artificial islands to make territorial claims, and more.[2]
One particularly prominent form of coercive statecraft, with strong implications for counter-terrorism, is proxy warfare.
Proxy warfare, sometimes called surrogate warfare or vicarious warfare, refers to states supporting participants in a civil war to undermine the interests of another state. The consequences are often harmful. Political science literature shows that proxy warfare often makes civil wars last longer. Indeed, the mere expectation of proxy warfare (when political actors in a pre-conflict situation anticipate external support) can increase the likelihood of a civil war starting.
This potential for strategic competition to exacerbate, or even create, civil wars can be seen by looking back to a more cooperative era. From the 1990s to the early 2000s, with the end of Cold War strategic competition, the great powers often proved willing to cooperate to resolve conflicts. From 1990 to 2005 there was a “six-fold increase in UN preventive diplomacy missions… [and] a four-fold increase in UN peace operations”, in contrast to the Cold War era when the great powers tended to exploit civil wars to compete against each other.
Heightened international cooperation made these United Nations peacemaking efforts possible, which partly contributed (along with the end of Cold War proxy conflicts in Southern Africa and Central America) to a rapid declinein the number of civil wars in the world up until the early 2000s.
The number of civil wars has increased dramatically since and international efforts at conflict resolution have declined. Now, many civil wars have become arenas for what has been termed 21st century proxy warfare or information age proxy warfare.
The influence of proxy warfare on transnational terrorism
Proxy wars can create space for violent extremist movements with agendas far more radical than any of the states involved. The clearest example is the Syrian civil war, which rapidly became a multidirectional proxy war involving the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, the Gulf States and other countries. This conflict provided new opportunities (but also caused problems) for al-Qaeda, and dramatically contributed to the rise of Islamic State. The Syrian civil war likely had a greater impact on transnational terrorism than any conflict since the 1980s Soviet-Afghan war, itself a Cold War proxy conflict.
Similarly, by some accounts the Yemeni civil war, in part a proxy war involving Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, served as a “big break” for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). There have also been warnings that the conflict in Libya, in part a Russia-Turkish proxy war, could create new space for Islamic State’s Libyan affiliate (though the group remains relatively weak). The Ukrainian civil war, in part a proxy war between Russia and the West, became a hotspot for far-right extremists. Sometimes the state-backed actors, such as Hezbollah (backed by Iran against Israel), themselves engage in transnational terrorism.
Future conflicts could similarly become arenas for transnational violent extremism and terrorism, not least because these conflicts often attract foreign fighters. Historically, foreign fighter mobilisations have helped to sustain al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and returned fighters have perpetrated many of these movements’ most prominent attacks such as the December 2015 Paris massacre. There are currently thousands of foreign fighters being held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) whose countries of origin are often unwilling to repatriate and where possible prosecute them. Should the SDF lose control of them, some may look for new conflicts to join. There are also estimated to be thousands of foreign fighters in Afghanistan, allied with various factions, and some may similarly seek new battlefields if opportunities arise.
The relationship between proxy warfare and transnational mobilisation, albeit of a different sort, is similarly demonstrated by state recruitment of foreign combatants. Turkey has deployed Syrian fighters against Armenian troops in Azerbaijan and against opposition forces in Libya. Iran has recruited Shia Muslim men from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere to fight against rebels in Syria. Russia has similarly employed Balkan mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. In theory, foreigners recruited by states and private military companies may be more likely to have material motives than political motives, but the lines can be blurred in practice. Participants in state-orchestrated mobilisations sometimes go on to participate in transnational violent extremism.
Implications for Australia
If strategic competition continues to exacerbate civil wars, or contribute to the outbreak of new civil wars, it could prompt further transnational mobilisations and shape future terrorist threats facing countries such as Australia.
This is clear from the transformative impact the Syrian civil war had on Australia’s jihadist threat, resulting in a wave of terrorist plots inspired (or sometimes guided) by Islamic State. This was also evident from earlier conflicts. In 2003 counter-terrorism authorities uncovered a terrorist plot in Sydney that was guided by Lashkar e-Toiba, a group long supported by Pakistan to fight against India in Kashmir. The plot’s suspected mastermind, Sajid Mir, allegedly went on to help organise the 2008 Mumbai massacre.
More recently Australian authorities have been concerned about far-right extremists joining the conflict in Ukraine, and cancelled at least one person’s passport on these grounds. There was also some speculation that the Christchurch murderer had received terrorist training in Ukraine, which turned out to be false. In this case the influence flowed more strongly in the opposite direction; his massacre inspired a group of neo-Nazi extremists in Ukraine, who spread copies of his manifesto and were arrested after stockpiling weapons and explosives.
These conflicts impact Australian security even when the violence remains overseas. 298 people including 38 Australians were killed when rebels, backed by Russia as part of a proxy war against the Ukrainian government and its international supporters, shot down the MH17 airliner in July 2014. Australians have also reportedly been involved as perpetrators; in July 2012 an Australian man allegedly helped to carry out Hezbollah’s bombing of a bus in Bulgaria, targeting Israeli tourists and killing six people.
New conflicts could create new counter-terrorism concerns, particularly if a proxy war develops in Australia’s geographic region, although it can never be confidently predicted where and when these conflicts will break out. Some analysts have warned that the current violence and repression in Myanmar could escalate to the point of becoming a “Southeast Asian Syria”, while others have pushed back against this interpretation. Some scholars have identified distinct ways that US-China competition risks resulting in new proxy wars, in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere. [3]
In short, proxy warfare can exacerbate, or even help to create, civil wars which can in turn escalate transnational violent extremism. This is one way in which strategic competition can dramatically influence counter-terrorism.
Strategic competition also has other implications for counter-terrorism, beyond proxy warfare. For example, the Australian Defence Force’s building partner capacity missions, to train, advise and assist foreign military forces for counter-terrorism, may themselves become an arena for competition (as seen by China positioning itself as an alternative counter-terrorism partner for the Philippines).
Similarly, emerging research highlights the risk that disinformation (which can be orchestrated by states as part of strategic competition) can complicate responses to terrorist attacks and perhaps even contribute to domestic terrorism by enhancing political polarisation. Strategic competition can also risk contributing to the narratives that domestic extremists use to mobilise supporters.
However, the perils of proxy warfare deserve particular attention. Strategic competition may tempt the United States and its allies (including Australia) to become increasingly involved in proxy wars, fearing that failure to so would cede ground to a rival. Such a compete-at-all-costs approach could prove greatly harmful. The Cold War record shows and the recent Syrian conflict demonstrates that proxy wars cause tremendous human suffering, have unforeseen consequences, and often do not end up serving the long-term security interests of any of the countries involved.
NOTES
[1] For more complex understandings of strategic competition, one place to start is the net assessment literature within strategic studies.
[2] The assumptions behind the strategic competition framing are of course open to critique on many different grounds. The notion of grey zone activities has been critiqued as conceptually muddled, and these activities are neither new nor something that the United States and its allies (including Australia) are innocent of. Nor can it be assumed that the United States or Australia are merely responding to externally imposed competition rather than actively contributing to these dynamics. But regardless of valuable debates over the best terms to use, over whether these developments are genuinely new, or over who should be blamed most for these competitive dynamics, there is an underlying truth behind the recent emphasis on strategic competition. International politics has indeed become more competitive, and this competition is often waged through means that fall short of inter-state warfare.
[3] The civil wars described above, in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine and elsewhere, have been battlegrounds for strategic competition between great powers (such as the US and Russia), or regional powers (such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran), but have tended not to involve China. This contrasts with the first decades of the Cold War, when China was extensively involved in the war in Korea and to a lesser extent Vietnam. However, if US-China strategic competition escalates to the point of proxy warfare similar to the early Cold War years, the potential for new conflicts in the Indo-Pacific will heighten.