Rondeaux and David Sterman’s definition of ‘proxy war’ is useful for this article.
It also includes disagreement on how much support is needed to qualify as a ‘proxy war’ – can it be purely financial or logistical, or does there need to be some degree of covert paramilitary involvement? Is proxy warfare an act of external policy or internal warfare, namely one in which governments employ militias or auxiliaries against insurgencies, potentially with external backing (as is the case with US and allied support for the Iraqis against Daesh since 2014)? And finally, there is now a debate as to whether ‘surrogate’ war can now include the use of drones, AI and other advanced technologies in addition to human warriors, or whether non-state groups can themselves engage others as proxies. That includes any consensus on whether a proxy war relationship can only involve states (sponsors) supporting non-state proxies, or whether state actors can themselves be proxies of other states or non-state groups. One of the problems with studies of proxy warfare is that there is no agreed definition. More damning still, it denies the Ukrainians their own agency and belittles their own right to self-defence. While it does fit Putin’s role in provoking an insurgency in the Donbas and the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), it fails to properly describe the inter-state war that is currently raging. In my opinion, is the term ‘proxy war’ is applicable to what is happening in Ukraine? In short, no.
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