Irregular Warfare Podcast - Dealers and Brokers in Proxy Wars: Exploring All Means Available

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Be sure to visit the Irregular Warfare Initiative website to see all of the new articles, podcast episodes, and other content the IWI team is publishing! When two adversaries confront one another militarily, they are rarely the only participants. Either side might delegate portions of its war efforts to proxies, for example. But there are a wide range of other roles that intermediaries also play. This episode explores those roles and features a discussion with Dr. Michael G. Vickers, former US under secretary of defense for intelligence, and Dr. Vladimir Rauta, an associate professor at the University of Reading. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

And so what I was able to do in one month in 1985 took us 20 months to achieve the same level of support in Syria. And so having lots of allies that all wanted the opposition to win couldn't make up for those policy decisions to constrain aid, to be late in delivering aid, etc. Again, we go back to sort of agency that it can go both ways, regardless of alignment. And of course, even more complicated if you have other countries in between or actually next to this, right? Because the state can have a brilliant relationship with the proxy, but if the proxy has other relationships with other states, things can sort of sit fairly differently. Welcome to episode 92 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm Laura Jones,

and my co-host today is Louis Taberki. Today's episode explores conflict delegation and the roles of intermediaries within proxy conflict. Our guests introduce the idea of intermediaries and pull from academic and practical experience to set the stage. Along with other historical examples, they examine the role Pakistan played as a key intermediary from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan through the American withdrawal in 2021. They offer lessons for working through intermediaries to affect ongoing conflicts and highlight pitfalls

found within these complex geopolitical relationships. Dr. Michael G. Vickers served a distinguished career as a special operator, CIA operations officer, national security policymaker, and intelligence community leader. His latest role in public service was serving as the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. Before that, Dr. Vickers was the first and only Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict, and Interdependent Capabilities. He was the Principal Strategist for the Afghanistan Covert Action Program during the 1980s. He holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and is the author of, by all means available, Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy, which helps form the foundation of this episode. Dr. Vladimir Rauta is an associate professor at the University of Reading.

Vladimir holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Nottingham, and his research explores the delegation of war to rebels. His research has been published or is forthcoming in International Security, International Studies Review, Civil Wars, International Relations, Contemporary Security Policy, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. Thank you. a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Michael Vickers and Vladimir Rauta. Secretary Mike Vickers, Professor Vladimir Rauta, thank you so much for being with the Irregular Warfare podcast today. Louis and I are very excited for this conversation, and I think our audience will be excited to hear it.

Great pleasure to join you, and I'm very pleased to see this Irregular Warfare initiative and podcast. The country needs it. Thank you very much for having me. Very excited for the chat. excited for the chat. Vlad, if you could just start us off with this conversation by setting the academic foundation for us and give us a little sense of the definitions around proxy warfare and the general of principal agent theory and how it applies. In the narrowest sense and in the easiest sense, we can think of a proxy war as an indirect military intervention whereby a state supports an armed non-state actor, usually a rebel group, right? So that's one of the mainstream sort of definitions of proxy wars in the debate. And you've asked something about sort of principal agent theory and what it does. That is essentially a lens through which we can make sense of why countries wage proxy wars,

which we can make sense of why countries wage proxy wars, how they do it, what problems they might encounter. And as such, it tells us a couple of things about the potential problems that principals might encounter when they work with proxies as the agent in this situation. And of course, it's not the only theory we can use to explain proxy conflicts, sort of alternatives to this strategic bargaining, strategic interaction theory, securitization theory, but their proponents are not here, so we can ignore them. Mike, what do you think? What do you make of this definition? Does it sort of fit with how a practitioner might think about proxy conflicts? Yes, I think so. And also, I would add broadly, you know, a key point from my perspective is what you said about, you know, indirect conflict. And so, you know, our lessons from the Cold War, for example, where one side is engaged indirectly and

the other side directly, or as we see in the Russia-Ukraine war right now, where one side invades and then the other side supports indirectly, largely because of escalation concerns or local concerns. But it has the same general characteristics, I think, as a narrower definition of proxy war supporting armed non-state groups. Yes, I totally agree. And I think if we were to just take a step backwards and sort of think a bit about the notion in more general terms, there's also obviously different ways of thinking about this. I fully appreciate, and I think it's a super important point, that one on sort of engaging and bearing in mind conventional conflict here. So there's

sort of research that's coming out that invites us to think about proxy wars essentially through the lens of foreign policy substitution, right? At the end of the day, the podcast is all about sort of bridging the dialogue and that is very important, right? So one way of thinking about proxy wars is also to think about when do states consider one foreign policy option over another, right? So when do you go indirectly versus directly? And then we have different ways of thinking about it just as a relationship or as a process, right? How and what do proxies get? Sort of weapons, types of weapons, and all of these other things. So there is a bit of sort of leeway, and we should be very open to understanding

what proxy war is and not try to sort of just very narrowly define it. Otherwise, there's very little space for sort of conversation amongst academics themselves, but then also amongst sort of policymakers and academics. Vlad, I'd like to start with you and have you introduce your article and talk about your introduction of the idea of an intermediary within the academic discourse on proxy relationships. So far, we have

been thinking of proxy wars as essentially a relationship between two actors, right, the state and the proxy, be it a state or a non-state actor. And this is where I will have to sort of plug in my recent paper in international security with Niklas Carlen from the Swedish Defence University. What we did was to sort of actually question this tendency to think in binary terms, not least because the empirical reality of proxy wars tends to be fairly messy. In that process, we wanted to sort of say that in between the principal and the agent, there are a lot of different other actors that have a say, and that actually shift quite a bit what happens in a proxy conflict. Mike, something tells me in having read your book, you might have found yourself in such situations.

How accurate is the description of the depiction of a proxy war as just between two actors? Oh, it's not accurate at all. I mean, it may be an ideal type, but I would say even if you had such a circumstance, you still have the issues that you raise in your article about strategic alignment. And so one of the things we're trained in as special forces operators and CIA paramilitary operations officers is to try to align those interests with the proxy. And it's not a trivial matter. I mean, they have their independent interests. And so, you know, that's what you get paid to do. And then I think you're right as well, although it's more of an ideal type, then, you know, things are a little more fluid in the world that there are different types of

intermediaries, you know, some where you delegate more strategic control, and that's usually a function of strategic risk that that intermediary is taking. But you still have a degree of sovereignty over their foreign policy. And you have to take that into account. And that affects counterterrorism operations to support for insurgencies and everything else. And I've seen all forms of that through my career. That's very interesting, especially if we think of intermediaries as these actors in between the principal and an agent. But I think it's also important to realize that perhaps conflict delegation and proxy wars comes in different sort of configurations. So one of the things that Niklas and I do in this paper is essentially

to zoom into one very specific type of dynamic, right? Where let's say the US was sort of cooperating, working with Pakistan on one hand, in one strategic theater, and then with Zaire in another. And to observe, essentially, what happens when these intermediaries, when these partners have divergent interests to the US, and then when they sort of have more or less aligned interests, right? But for us, it is important to locate intermediaries into a set of different configurations, right? You have situations where you have multiple principals supporting one rebel group. You have one principal supporting several rebel groups, right?

And here we come closer to more recent examples, thinking of sort of Syria, thinking of Yemen. examples, thinking of sort of Syria, thinking of Yemen. So it's important to sort of make sure that our listeners capture this idea of sort of complex conflict delegation in general, and then perhaps taking that on board, somehow try to leave behind this idea that to understand essentially what Russia did in the southeast of Ukraine, we just have to look at the two sets of actors. Actually, we might have to bring in, you know, Wagner as a sort of an intermediary there in some shape or form. Yeah. The only thing I would add is that I don't want our listeners to think that the dealer

kind of actor, because from time to time you delegate more strategic control, doesn't mean that you lose that proxy war. You might actually win it if your interests can be aligned in some way. And even if you have a very pliant partner, you know, the best broker you can imagine, it doesn't mean you're going to win. You know, there are lots of other factors that determine whether you win or lose in proxy wars. And, you know, so if you look at the history of Syria and, you know, conventional and irregular conflicts, you know, Ukraine, you mentioned, and others, there are a lot of other things that determine success or failure.

Absolutely. And this is essentially what we try to sort of capture when we sort of identify our two ideal types, one sort of being a dealer and one being a broker. But in doing so, we wanted to sort of say that that relationship in and of itself is not static. But my part of the conversation, which hinges sort of largely on the Mujahideen and sort of Afghanistan, is sort of at the start of the book. But the book covers your entire sort of experience. Could you just sort of introduce the book, talk a bit about the motivations behind it, why you thought this was something that was worth sharing with the audience at large. Sure. It's called, by all means available, Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations and Strategy.

And it covers my four-decade-plus career as a special operator, CIA officer, and then national security policymaker and intelligence community leader across very different national security eras, the Cold War, essentially, and then the post 9-11 period. And the reason I wrote it, there were really three reasons. But, you know, a big reason was I felt I had the duty to history to explain what I could, given that I had played a central role in three major events, the covert action program that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s, our campaigns against Al-Qaeda worldwide in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, principally against core Al-Qaeda, but Yemen and other theaters as well between 2007 and

2015, and then the operation that brought justice to Osama bin Laden. And so from a former operator, you know, half the book is essentially my operational career, half of the book is kind of as a policymaker and trying to explain in granular detail the choices we faced and why we made the decisions that we made during those periods. The title of the book comes from, you referenced National Security Decision Directive 166 during the National Security Council review for that. One of the strategic options, you know, it's always, you know, you stay the course, you do, you cut back, you do this. One of them was drive them by all means available. And we just had our resources quadrupled and we were looking to double them again. And I said, you know, that's the one I want to do. And so I remembered that

little phrase and I liked it and tried to apply it as a theme in the book about when did we to double them again. And I said, you know, that's the one I want to do. So I remembered that little phrase, and I liked it and tried to apply it as a theme in the book about when did we use appropriate ways and means to achieve achievable ends? And when didn't we do it in our various campaigns, you know, whether it was proxy wars, so contrasting, you know, why did we win in Afghanistan in the 80s, but lose in Syria? What made the difference operationally or how we treated the operation? And same thing with counterterrorism campaigns. Why did some take longer? And there are a lot of policy reasons for some of that, as well as operational reasons. So one of the key points from Vlad's article is the difference

between the honest broker and then that self-interested dealer and trying to differentiate between the two forms of action as an intermediary. But I think more important for practitioners nowadays is trying to recognize early on whether or not the intermediary is acting more as that honest broker or that self-interested dealer. So I'm curious, Mike, if you have any experience trying to navigate that relationship and trying to understand how the intermediary is acting, if they're acting more one way or the other. And then as Vlad just noted, that they often change throughout the course of the relationship in their ways of acting, how you kind of keep tabs on that from the outside to understand how the intermediary is likely to act with the resources you're giving

them. Yeah, so one way to look at it, as Vlad said, which I think is exactly right, is that it's not static. So if you look at the U.S.-Pakistan relationship over several decades, our interests were far more aligned in the 1980s than they have been since. Now, that doesn't mean that it was easy having them as an intermediary, and we had to do a lot of things to achieve the effects that we wanted to do. But once we disengaged from the region, our interests really diverged, and it became very deleterious to American interests. And then even after 9-11, when, you know, you would think our interests converged again, they never went back to the 1980s. And so we had cooperation on some points with Pakistan, and the worst kind of competition in other cases, much worse than the

1980s, with them in terms of their support for an insurgency in Afghanistan that was against American interests and killing American servicemen and women, while still cooperating with us to varying degrees against al-Qaeda, where we had a common interest. And so, you know, that's the more complex nature of these relations that policymakers have to wrestle with, and they can change over time pretty dramatically, as ours did with Pakistan. Mike, you said that the relationship after 9-11, even if it resumed, some sort of partnership or cooperation never went back to the depth of the relationship in the 1980s. Why do you think that is? Well, you know, 9-11 was a big shock. And so the period between the September 11 attacks and then

till about 2003, in some cases 2002, the Pakistanis were a very cooperative partner. So they let us base out of there partially, as well as in Central Asia. And, you know, we had other bases in other countries, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and others, and were supportive. Now, that came on the heels of them very much helping to put the Taliban in power and aiding the Taliban right up until the end, until we ejected them. And then when it looked to them like we were being diverted to Iraq and maybe disengaging until the end, until we ejected them. And then when it looked to them like we were being diverted to Iraq and maybe disengaging from the region, as we did after the Cold War, then they stepped up their support for the Taliban. They had some muzzle on them, particularly

what we call the Quetta Shura, the main Taliban named after Quetta Pakistan, where they were, as well as the Haqqani Network in Miram Shah, and then started that process. Now, they continued to cooperate with us against al-Qaeda, but even that had ups and downs in it, where they made peace deals with the safe haven providers for al-Qaeda, the Haqqani Network in particular, and they would only cooperate with us so much on even the threat to their own state, which again, you'd think you've got an insurgency against your state that's having some success in killing your soldiers and civilians. Why wouldn't you take more assistance from the United States? We offered it lots of times and they wouldn't take it. And so there was this independence in a varying degree. So it's the most complicated relationship I had in my life, but it had all these manifestations. I want to kind of zoom out slightly and just talk about how a principal can manage those

divergent interest problems and how they can manage relationships with a proxy or agent through an intermediary and how they can proactively, you know, either use incentives or threats or how much of that relationship becomes reactive. And they're just reacting to incidents on the ground or information that's flowing up and down that relationship dynamic. From a practitioner's point of view, you know, as I said, when our interests were aligned in the 1980s against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and not just with Pakistan, but lots of other countries, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Kingdom, and others I talk about in my book. For the first five years of the war,

where US policy was just to impose the greatest cost on the Soviet occupation, but with no thought that we could win. That was the position of our intelligence analysts and our policymakers accepted that. You know, we started supplying the Afghan resistance within 10 days of the Soviet invasion, but Pakistan won relations were tense at the beginning of that for a variety of reasons, including having our embassy attacked by a Pakistani mob after the Iranian hostage-taking incident. So a lot of strategic control was ceded to Pakistan as the frontline state, you know, in the fear that the Soviets might move from Afghanistan into Pakistan. And that continued to be U.S. policy for five years. And then for a variety of reasons,

because of an increase in resources and a National Security Council review that changed our strategic goal to driving the Soviets out, we had to change our relationship with Pakistan to make it successful. And so we were able to assert more strategic control. And to your question, Laura, about how we did that, it took a lot of senior conversations at the top of the Pakistani government with President Zia and the head of ISI, General Akhtar, overruling his subordinates, who we were just at loggerheads with. So this, my counterpart was a brigadier named Muhammad Yusuf, a terrible man, to be honest. And we could never really persuade him, but we were eventually able

to persuade his bosses. And he reluctantly had to go along. And then other things that are very important is lots of channels of information to where we knew what our partners were doing, but we knew we had lots of information about the Afghan resistance and had direct contact with them. A lot of people don't realize this, but it wasn't just all Pakistan. contact with them. A lot of people don't realize this, but it wasn't just all Pakistan. We had a number of means of reaching the insurgents and different groups and monitoring their progress, and we're able to use that information to our advantage as well. And so, you know, that was another important thing. And then ultimately, because our interests were aligned, we both wanted to not have the war escalate beyond control, but to win the war at a certain point, we were able to get this strategic alignment

until we disengaged from the region. Just to really quickly follow this up, from our analysis and whatever we sort of found empirically, this is essentially what happened. There was a sort of a mixture of attempts at compensation and inducements. And there was always a bit of a back and forth, right? So the first major aid package that was roughly $400 million was rejected by Zia. And he said, and I quote, this is peanuts. So there was a lot of negotiating over this. And of course, it all changed with the Reagan administration from Carter, but then also between the first and the second Reagan administration, and the second administration with National Security Directive 166, really sort of just things a lot. And of course, a lot of this has not yet been declassified. But I read Mike's

book, and we got all of the details that we sort of just were working around in a very interesting scenario. And then, of course, there's loads of different other things through which, let's say, a principle could sort of induce or try to get intermediaries to sort of behave or to be a bit more aligned, right? Again, for Pakistan, it was anything from arms shipments that grew considerably in sort of value to perhaps turning a blind eye to sort of nuclear program developments in some ways. but there is a bit of a back and forth. And I think, and Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, no sort of principle, no state knows from the start how it will sort of go, right? I think a lot is driven by what happens on the ground. Right, right. Yeah, exactly right. Mike, I'm going to pass this one to you. So we've

talked a lot about the high-level relationships and the divergent interests that often occur between principals, intermediaries, and agents. But I'm curious, as a practitioner at the tactical level, what can an individual operator or a small team be doing while they're either training an intermediary or delivering resources or helping plan operations? What can or should they be doing to ensure best interest alignment? or should they be doing to ensure best interest alignment? Should they just be a great censor passing back up what they see or is there anything else they can be doing to try to ensure the interest alignment and make the relationship happen as best as possible? Yeah, so I think it depends, you know, to a degree on whether, you know, as Vlad points out, the degree of cooperation you have in the relationship, but also so for a direct agent where you're engaging, say, an Afghan partner force or the Syrian Kurds in the campaigns against ISIS, you still have to

make sure your interests are aligned, but you're with them every day and it's kind of tactical and you're engaged in combat. And so you're the pointy end of the spear, but it's different than trying to persuade a sovereign state who's acting as an intermediary to take this risk on your behalf. And so that requires generally higher level attention, sometimes our cabinet officials even. So others like me engage periodically with our interlocutors, trying to convince them to move in this direction and strategy or not. So one of the things I had to do with Pakistan in the 80s was try to get them to expand their training of the Mujahideen by tenfold. And they agreed to that. Now, we funded their camps and everything else, but they had to still supply

soldiers to do it. You know, of course, we could monitor it and watch a lot of that. But that's a different sort of, you know, it takes a little more higher level engagement to make that kind of thing work. And, you know, a lot of times you just can't take no for an answer. You got to keep coming back, you know, because they're going to say no initially. And, you know, it's just a lot of persuasion skills. Well, I think that brings me to a somewhat more general, broader question because we kind of danced around a little bit. We've talked about how important interest alignment is and incentivizing interest alignment. But how do we identify the interests and define them up front? Because I think it'd be one thing to say our interests are aligned, but if in reality both

parties or different parties in the relationship have actually different definitions for a specified interest, you know, how does that manifest itself? And then how does the information flow between all parties in the relationship affect a communication of aligned interests or not? And how does having a broker or a dealer as an intermediary change the information flow to make it either harder or easier to determine the alignment of interests. Yeah, I can definitely start with this. We're talking of two different things, right? First, sort of how do we sort of know that the partner, the intermediary is on our side and sort of against us? And here, things are not clear, I would say. I think, first of all, you look at the relationship, right? So in the context of

Pakistan at the start of the 80s, there was a lot of sort of mending to be done, right? So in the context of Pakistan at the start of the 80s, there was a lot of sort of mending to be done, right? Because the US was coming out of a sort of a decade in which it had treated Pakistan with a bit of disdain, with a bit of sort of, you know, what are you doing on the nuclear front, a sort of human rights type thing. There was a sort of a general sense of not necessarily antagonistic relationship, although perhaps Pakistan might have perceived it like this, but it wasn't sort of a rosy relationship that had been fostered for decades. So I think the nature of the relationship obviously has a lot to sort of say in terms of whether we are on the same side or not. And then, of course, at the end of the day, if we're talking about proxy conflict, you have to take into consideration the common enemy, right? Sort of the enemy of my enemy type of logic here. And that's also a window

into sort of determining how and whether your intermediary or partner state will sort of be on your side. But I would say that these are sort of, you know, slightly theoretical concepts in a way, sort of big picture, strategic, grand strategic concepts that sit very nicely in a national security directive. But I think in reality, there is nuance both when you sort of, you find yourself seriously aligned and also seriously divergent. And I think Mike has a very direct window into this. Yeah. So as you mentioned, the relationship with Pakistan, you know, when the Soviets invaded was very bad. You know, Zia had come to power in a coup. He executed his predecessor against U.S. wishes.

And so the big task right after the invasion was to try to rebuild that relationship. And as you mentioned, even offering large aid didn't do the trick. Now, partly, as often happens with foreign partners, you know, as we get close to an election, they're tempted to think they'll get a better deal from the next administration. And so they hold out, you know, a little bit, even though they otherwise might have taken the deal, because they essentially got a very similar thing after that under Reagan that they had rejected earlier. But then you talk about disengagement, you know, so we built a fairly close relationship. But our interests were really aligned on driving the Soviets out and then, And that's been, you know, a core interest of theirs across decades, including through today, you know, that explains some of

their behavior. And then our disengagement from the region, you know, after the Soviets withdrew and the Berlin Wall fell, and, you know, U.S. interests turned to Europe, you know, to consolidate the gains, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany. And you mentioned about Pakistan's nuclear program. There was congressional law, the Pressler Amendment, that once a president couldn't certify that Pakistan wasn't inextricably on a path to nuclear weapons, which happened with President George H.W. Bush in 1990, we had to cut off aid. That and disengagement made the problem much, much worse in the 90s and then put us on a path to 9-11.

If we were to sort of just abandon the 80s, always a good choice, I think. And if we think about more recent experiences, right, in our thinking, what the support to various sort of Syrian rebels and working with sort of Jordan or Turkey or other sort of countries would fit this sort of partnership intermediary model. Would you assess the sort of what you were just talking about? Would these sort of replicate to a very different strategic context? Or do we have sort of new elements that might sort of play into interest alignment if we talk about sort of contemporary events? Yeah, so the challenge with Syria, you know, as I talk about in my book, is that U.S. policymakers

were more conflicted than they were over Afghanistan in the 1980s. And so as a consequence of that, it took us 20 months after the Syrian civil war began to begin providing lethal aid to the Syrian opposition. By contrast, in Afghanistan, you know, we started in 10 days. And Assad was vulnerable during that first year, and a number of policymakers advocated that we move quickly, but the administration was kind of wanting to disengage from the Middle East out of Iraq and elsewhere in 2011. We had Arab Spring going on. We had a conflict in Libya. It was kind of a surprise conflict. So there was not great appetite for that. And even after Assad used chemical weapons, where you think your strategic options

would grow, we kind of outsourced the problem to the Russians with unhappy results. And then just the amount of aid after we started supplying it was far more controlled because of concerns about ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria, you know, a problem we really didn't have in Afghanistan in the 80s. We had it later, but not in the 1980s. And so consequently, our support for the Syrian opposition was far more controlled. And so what I was able to do in one month in 1985 took us 20 months to achieve the same level of support in Syria. And so having lots of allies that all wanted the opposition to win couldn't make up for those policy decisions to constrain

aid, to be late in delivering aid, etc. And, you know, you can argue whether those were good decisions or not, but that's what determined the outcome of the conflict, in my view. I would just follow up with that a little bit also. It was further down the line when we're looking at anti-ISIS operations and counter-ISIS operations, and we're still trying to build the SDF or look for partners in the area. How does then, you know, an intermediary like Turkey affect our choices and get us kind of late to the game potentially with finding our Kurdish partners? Yeah, so, you know, that's their number one issue. And so that was a real challenge. And this came toward the end of my tenure in government. But we were lucky. One, ISIS was reborn essentially in Syria, and then, you know, had waged a covert campaign in Iraq for a while against tribes that had rebelled against them and others, but then did the full scale invasion in 2014. And in 2014. And we kind of stopped them at the gates of Baghdad. But we were able to launch first taking back northern Iraq and western Iraq,

and then into Syria. And if we didn't have that platform, it would have been far more challenging with the Syrian Kurds. And then to establish bases directly within Syria, you know, in ungoverned spaces, made that successful operationally that otherwise might not have been. And so our interests remain diverged with Turkey. As the conflict played out, you see that continue where they threatened to, you know, invade Syria from the border region from time to time because of their views about the Kurds and what they were doing in Turkey. So jump back to the 80s. In Vlad's article, he highlighted that the provision of stingers to the UNITA and Angola was an important factor in swaying the course of the war. Well, in another recent podcast, he said that stingers weren't supplied to the Mujahideen until after the tipping point of the war in Afghanistan. So do you think that difference was a function

of differing levels of trust in the relevant intermediaries or was something else at play? And is that maybe emblematic of intermediary relationships and level of trust? Well, I mean, the way an intermediate relationship plays in this is that Zia had opposed the introduction of stingers. We had talked about it with him a few times. with him a few times. Then we provided Stingers to the Pakistanis for border defense because the Soviets were making a lot of air incursions into the Pakistan border region. And it's when Zia changed his mind finally at the end of 1985 and early 1986 to allow the introduction of the Stinger that then we moved out. So President Reagan quickly approved it. And then, you know, we had to go through training programs and other things. And the weapons were delivered in September 86.

The reason that I say they were past the decisive point is that the decisive year of the war was really 1985. We had increased our support toward the end of 1985 by a factor of 10 for the Afghan resistance in almost every dimension, including supplying more sophisticated Soviet surface-to-air missiles. We increased that by a factor of 100. When we couldn't get the Stinger initially, we tried to get the British blowpipe. That was a challenging system, but eventually we got it in about the same time as the Stinger and did well. And then when Gorbachev came to power in March of 85, he did a big surge. He added 26,000 troops in Afghanistan and gave the Soviet military, you know, we're

at the five-year point of the war at this point, 18 months to win the war. And we surged at the same time, and we won the Battle of the Surges. And 1985 was the bloodiest year of the war in terms of Soviet casualties. So by the end of 85, Gorbachev is really looking for the exits. And he's starting to tell, you know, Babrak Karmal, the Afghan president, hey, we're going to get out of here. So get ready and start thinking about how your politics are going to change. And then, you know, in February 86, he makes the statement about Afghanistan as a bleeding wound. And, you know, Gorbachev had consolidated political power in the Soviet Union, and he was able to do this.

And so by the time the Stinger came in, they were on a path to, if not formally agreed withdrawal that came with the Geneva Accords, the strategic intent that we're getting out, you know, and it's just a matter of a year or two years. And so what the Stinger did and other weapons and all the weapons that went in in late 86 and 87 was to convince the Soviets that, yep, there's the door, let's get through that and not have second thoughts about this rather than turn the war around and win it. So if you look at operationally, the Stinger was remarkably effective. It shot down 80% of the aircraft we engaged until the Soviets started flying much higher, but it didn't convince them to withdraw. And maybe it just reinforced their already previously made decision to withdraw. And that's documented in Russian archives that we used to have access to that we don't anymore. I think one of the things that didn't sort of make the scope of our paper was the full extent to which the sort of the arms game changes as Mike sort of takes over. And then part and parcel with that is also a window into how many countries ended up

being involved in this from sort of Egypt and China. And again, audience, buy the book, read this particular bit because it is really exceptional. And that is something that you sort of see as super decisive for why 1985 is relevant. To me, I would add that a key point would be also the consolidation of the resistance into one, which I think has a lot to do with this. And I think this is something that, again, was pushed by the US. to do with this. And I think this is something that, again, was pushed by the US. And I think it did a lot to essentially just also wrestle control from Pakistan, but then to get everyone on board. So that was the second. And the third point was the fact that we see two attempts at

escalation, which to me is super fascinating. One succeeds and one fails. And that, I think, is essentially also what we end up seeing with Russia recently, right, or at least sort of 2014 onwards, because at the end of the day, it is about taking sort of managing risk through sort of escalation, sometimes gradually, sometimes more significantly, which is why I think that the whole problem of sort of confidelegation or proxy in civil war settings or conventional conflict is really relevant. Yeah, and to add to that excellent point from a policymaker perspective is escalation control is one of the reasons why in sort of peacetime with these proxy wars and other similar

wars, presidents choose to go through CIA rather than the military. It's not a function of capabilities. You know, the advantage that CIA has, it has a global network of partners all the time. You know, it has presence in most countries. And so that's something you can build on depending on what situation you're thrust with. But when presidents make a decision, they tend to look at it that, okay, even if this is semi-overt, I still have more protection if it's done under CIA authorities that this isn't going to get out of hand than if I make it an overt conflict. And I've seen them choose that over and over again. And not surprisingly, our most successful covert action programs are the biggest because they have scale advantages than others,

and they start to creep toward overt, but they keep this veil of deniability that policymakers find useful. Do you think that this is the same if we were to think of Iran and Russia as also pursuing and engaging in their own indirect conflicts across various different strategic settings. Yeah, and you know, in the Russians, I mean, there's a joke about it, that covert action, we've had this phrase of plausible deniability, you know, to conceal the sponsor of the action. And with the Russians from 2014 on, you know, some have called it implausible deniability, because, you know, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes, when you see them moving forces into Ukraine in 2014 and shooting down Malaysian airliner and stuff, you know, they say, what are you talking about? We didn't do that. And, you know, and they

just keep this line. So they find it useful, I think, as well in a way to manage that risk. And I think to Laura's work about, you know, other actors like Wagner, again, it provides them a bit of a cutout that, you know, otherwise serves state interest mostly, but provides them this cutout that helps them as well. I really think that proxy wars and conflict delegation, that they hide in plain sight. Right, they hide in plain sight, you know, because when things go boom, you can't hide everything, right? I mean, that's the nature. So, Mike, to jump in real quick, do you think that the benefit they see from that implausible or plausible deniability is on like the media side, the news coverage that would happen if it wasn't plausibly denied? Or is it on the democratic blowback they might receive?

Or is it on the legal front in terms of international legal norms and considerations? Yeah, I think it's the first one, really, that they think it suits their foreign policy interests. I don't think it's as much a matter of international law or democratic blowback. For us, you know, as I said, it's a matter of escalation, or our foreign partners want it that way. You know, they'll only cooperate through intelligence channels, but not through more overt channels in some cases. You know, so when you look at, well, why did we do it this way rather than that way? And then even the bin Laden raid, we did the bin Laden raid under CIA authorities. You know, we used a military force that was detailed to CIA.

So the chain of command went from the operational commander, Admiral Bill McRaven, to Leon Panetta and CIA to the president. And, you know, CIA was kind of a pass-through, to be honest. But the advantage of that is if the evidence that bin Laden was there was very powerful but circumstantial. There was no definitive evidence that he was there. And so, if we hit a dry hole, you know, if it turned out to be some drug dealer in Abbottabad or whatever it was, and the force got out, President Obama and other top policymakers thought, okay, better if it goes that way, that it's under CIA authorities where we

don't have to say anything rather than, you know, if it were a Department of Defense operation. You know, the actual operation didn't change one iota because of that decision. Mike, every account that I've read about the bin Laden raid sort of contrasts the exceptional gamble behind it with some sort of very mundane thing that happened, right, from lacking sort of a missing a tape to sort of measure bin Laden and all of these things. Do you have a similar account? Do you have a counterpart to this? Well, I do. I have a couple chapters in the book about finding bin Laden and all have escalation dominance tactically for the operation, you think you've thought of every contingency. Having a tape measure to measure them at the end wasn't one of them. So President Obama presented a plaque to Admiral McRaven at the end of the operation with a tape measure on it.

The night of the raid, he joked with him and said, Bill, so you had to blow up a $60 million helicopter on site, but you couldn't afford a tape measure. You know, that's what's going on here. So that's what happens in the real world. I want to talk about, I think this has all been great, but just talking about time scope and how time affects these relationships. You know, 20 years in Afghanistan seems so long from the American perspective. You know, it's four presidencies and constant cycles. But to the Pakistanis, the Afghan-Pakistani border is forever. You know, so 20 years there, not necessarily a different time horizon for them. How does that play into these relationships? And

how does that affect an intermediary's interest when they see potential waning of presence over the years? I think for states, these are intractable problems that shapes their sort of country's history and borders and everything else. It could be an incentive to, in a way, deviate and sort of just maximize the opportunity of sort of doing something and gaining as much as possible when having a great power by your side. And of course, that can go both ways here, right? So I think for someone living with the problem before it presenting an interest to a great power, and after it presenting a sort of an interest to a great power, I think it's really

something that I guess shapes how they think and how they commit to the problem. Insurgencies and counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, they're protracted conflicts. You know, they normally are not resolved very quickly. And so if you have expectations that this is going to be over in four years or 10 years, and if I just do this, you're probably going to be wrong. You know, so in Afghanistan, you know, if you look at it and you say, well, 20 years and it got called the forever war and all this, you know, the only reason we went in was because of 9-11. And that interest remains, even though we had beaten down Al-Qaeda and then ISIS pretty badly. And I think it's somewhat of a lack of patience, you know, and again, looking at the realities on the ground,

Pakistan's interests were well known. They were sponsoring insurgents. Al-Qaeda and Taliban's link was well known. And what might happen with the Afghan government if we did disengage that was certainly plausible that it would fall apart. And people who say, oh, I'm shocked. We watched the Iraqi army disintegrate in 2014 after putting $25 billion into that. We watched a Yemeni army disintegrate in the face of the Houthis. And so we had plenty of warning that when the U.S. leaves, you can have challenges. And you don't need a lot of glue, but you need some glue. And then if you look at Colombia, we've been engaged there against the FARC and ELN and then drug lords for 45 plus years or something with a very small footprint, you know, and sometimes quite successfully. But, you know, that's what it takes to sustain that

over time, you know, particularly given our interests, you know, this is the most we want to do. And so on the US part, I think it's somewhat of a tendency to see some of these things as just local conflicts that you can disengage in from without cost, even though they're incomplete or anything else. And so that's what I think motivated us in the last several years across two administrations to get out of Afghanistan. And they were not good decisions. Time also plays in a different way in this context, right? You can think of eras in which, you know, proxy wars, if you ask any sort

of person on the street that has a sense of history, they would say, oh, what are we talking about? This was the Cold War period, right? And then we think about them in that particular setting. And then we think of the 90s as a time of disengaging from sort of proxy conflicts. And then perhaps we think of what happens after 9-11 as using partners and sort of proxies and surrogates in a radically different context, right, of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency. And now perhaps we might think in the context of great power competition, which is clearly sort of surrounding us. So there is an element, there is another way in which sort of time sort of shapes how we

think about these particular issues. Yeah, and that's a great answer. I wouldn't expect this new competition, new Cold War, great power competition, or whatever you call it, to necessarily have as much proxy conflict as the Cold War, because you don't have this stark ideological, you know, where one side is supporting communist parties to overthrow governments, and we're trying to shore them up, and occasionally we're on offense. But you will have indirect competition of some form, you know, because if states can't get at each other in these competitions through some other way, you know, again, to do something that you can manage escalation, but still try to

gain advantage, they will do that, whether it's non-attributable economic warfare or something else consistent with this strategic environment, you know, that is very different from the previous ones, as you eloquently described. But it doesn't mean it'll be absent, it'll just take different forms, maybe less of it, etc. And I think also the data that we have, at least from a sort of a social science perspective, And I think also the data that we have, at least from a sort of a social science perspective, does tell us a bit that perhaps it's not going to sort of be the defining feature of the moment, that perhaps we should look at different manifestations of the problem. And here is where Laura's ongoing research is really important to this. But then also, again, to sort of relate it and see how it sits next to or actually is replaced by conventional conflict.

Well, I want to bring it back a little bit more to that principal-intermediary agent model and talk about it from the agent's perspective. And how much agency, to use common terminology, how much agency does the agent have in affecting the intermediary's relationship with the principal? How much can they manipulate it from the bottom up, vice how much can the principal affect top down? Yeah, so it depends on the time frame. So if you look at Afghan resistance groups, those who were less favored by Pakistan, the traditionalist groups, but even the non-Pashtun group, Jamia al-Islami under Burhanuddin Rabbani that had Ahmad Shah Massoud as one of its key commanders. They would complain about the Pakistanis. And of course, we had, you know, direct ties with a number of them. And it helped influence our policy. But then also,

you know, again, back to even the direct agent has their own interests. So how they fight, you know, you can give them advice, but you're an advisor and they're ultimately taking their own risks. And so they'll sometimes do things that we tell them is unwise. In Vlad's article, he talks about conventional assaults some Mujahideen commanders made on cities and then got slaughtered, you know, and again, with Pakistani advice, but bad judgments by insurgent commanders as well, to try to turn the war more conventionally. You know, they do that from time to time. It's just the price of doing business. And then more recently, where Afghanistan

and Pakistan were antagonistic, you know, it drove the Afghan government nuts. And they looked at it from a point of view of the U.S., the greatest power in the world, and you're allied with both of us. You can't stop this. You can't stop them from supporting an insurgency. It must be because you don't want to. You know, and it caused a lot of suspicions and frictions in our relationship with Afghanistan, particularly Harman Karzai. I had many conversations with him about this. But I mean, you know, he thought it was within our power to seal that border or make the Pakistanis stop. And we, of course, hated it. But, you know, we tried lots of aid and we tried

this. And of course, we had good intelligence to know what they were doing. We had cooperation in some areas and we were just in a dilemma that we really couldn't solve. You know, in Pakistan, over the last 20 years, you know, it's responsible for some of our success. It's responsible for a lot of our difficulties. And that's why I call them a frenemy in the book. And that's being polite. So I think that agents and proxies always have latitude of doing what they want up to a certain point, right? So I think one of the big, perhaps, problems, if we just think about this theoretical, like a principle and agent,

is that we tell the story just from the point of view of the principle. But that's the theory, right? That the theory tells us something about how the principle can manage the situation. And as such, it focuses on specific problems. But delegation in general is sort of a strategic gamble, right? It is a high sort of risk, high reward situation in some cases, and sort of high risk, high punishment in others, largely because even with sort of proxy groups that a sponsor would sort of create, right? And you would assume that those you have like total control over how right they can splinter they can sort of be defeated they can be incompetent so this assumption that proxies don't have agency is perhaps a sort of a flawed and sort of weak critique when we read at least when i read

opeds saying like oh we shouldn't be talking about this well whether we call them proxies or something else at the end of the day we're talking talking about a sort of dynamic that sort of cuts across so many different strategic challenges, right, from sort of counterterrorism to great power competition. And in all situations, much like the principle of the state has a latitude of action, so does the agent. Yeah. And I would add that, you know, this is a problem common to coalition warfare, trying to hold a coalition or alliance together. I mean, it's just politics and different interests infuse it. And, you know, you do your best to manage it. But it's just as Vlad said.

Yeah, I was thinking just about sort of the relationships around security force assistance and sort of military assistance that happen under different titles. And they sit very differently on a different shelf to sort of covert action. And they have the same sort of problems, right? So the junior partners tend to leverage as successfully as bigger partners in that situation. To paraphrase a certain 20th century leader, maybe the only thing worse than working through an intermediary or working with an agent is working without one. I was going to say that, but I left it to you. So gentlemen, as we look to close out our discussion, what are some of the main implications for policymakers, practitioners, and academics of the ideas of principal and intermediary agency or your career

in general? So one, it's a regular feature, and particularly when you have escalation management concerns, you know, that conflict tends to be more indirect and, you know, as we've discussed, it can take many forms. And you can't be an absolutist about this, you know, particularly if you have significant interests engaged. You know, and as I said, our worst case was having to deal with a Pakistan the past 20 years where, you know, on the one hand, they're supporting an insurgency against us while cooperating with us on al-Qaeda. And our primary objective is to prevent another 9-11 attack. And their cooperation is critical there in achieving that objective. We couldn't do our drone campaigns without their cooperation.

They helped us capture leaders. But they did a lot of bad things that we tried our best to control and couldn't. And so that's the real world for policymakers. they did a lot of bad things that we tried our best to control and couldn't, you know, and so that's the real world for policymakers. And if you want to just say, well, they're bad people, so I don't want to deal with them, or because they deviate from you, then you may take strategic risks, you know, in the case of, you know, the war with Al-Qaeda, or in other cases, Vlad mentioned earlier about the difficult relationship with Pakistan when we started this. If we didn't partner with them, we couldn't have defeated the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

You know, if we just said, well, you had a military coup and, you know, you're violating human rights, we couldn't have done what we did in Afghanistan. So, you know, those are the difficult choices with policymakers. difficult choices with policymakers. But, you know, it manifests itself in a lot of different forms, you know, whether it's a network of counterterrorism partners, and you want them to disrupt terrorist plots based on intelligence that you give them, they still have their own agency. And, you know, this is just the world in which we operate. And that's why I think it's central to security studies. And that's why I applaud scholars like Vlad taking this on theoretically to help inform policymakers and then operators like you two who are going to be doing this some more in your careers.

That's awfully kind of you to say, but I think there's a great community of sort of scholars that are doing a lot on this recently. And in fact, one of the reasons that we're talking about this is not just because people found an interest, but because it is such a feature of the contemporary security environment. I shy away from sort of statements that claim that it is the feature. I definitely don't think that that is the case, but it is part and parcel of so many different problems, right? I mean, what else can I add to what Mike said, other than it being sort of a feature? You know, I think decisiveness, if a state considers this sort of policy, I think one should perhaps be a bit more decisive. I think some of the recent sort of failures,

I would assess them from sort of afar and with little insight into the policy decision-making process as having failed largely because of sort of indecisiveness and sort of, we might do it, we might not do it. Let's try with this group. Let's try it with the other. Let's give them some helmets, but then also let's give them something else. So I think perhaps decisiveness over this problem and somehow going full in, if you're doing it, it might be a useful lesson for this. And then sort of acknowledging that, again, we go back to sort of agency, that it can go both ways, regardless of alignment. And of

course, even more complicated if you have other countries in between or actually next to this, right? Because the state can have a brilliant relationship with the proxy, but if the proxy has other relationships with other states, things can sort of sit fairly differently. Yeah. And just to underscore, I think that, you know, it's again, a theme I tried to emphasize in the book from Afghanistan in the 80s to our campaigns in al-Qaeda, when we had decisiveness, when we didn't. It's a critical point. This is war, you know, another form of it, but it still requires that to win in a lot of cases. And if you just do it through half measures, you may create problems for yourself that you wish you didn't, because you'll still be seen as losing, you may create problems for yourself that you wish you didn't because you'll still be seen as losing.

You may leave a bigger mess. There's all sorts of strategic complications that come out of this. So if you're going to do it, you've got to do it right. Secretary Mike Vickers, Professor Vladimir Rauta, thank you so much for being with us today on the Irregular Warfare podcast. I know Louie and I learned a lot. I think this will be of great interest to our audience. And just thank you for your time. It was a great discussion.

Pleasure to be with you all. Thank you very much. Great discussion. Hopefully everyone, the audience, finds it useful. Thank you again for joining us for episode 92 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In the next episode, Ben and Alyssa talk with retired General Joseph Fotel and Dr. Rafi Cohen about Hamas, Israel, and the ongoing conflict. After that, Laura and I are back with a special episode in partnership with Foreign Policy,

where we talk to Ravi Agrawal, the Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Policy, and retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges about the war in Ukraine and European defense. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We are a team of all volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. You can follow and engage with us on Facebook, Twitter slash X, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn.

You can also subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter for access to our content and upcoming community events. The newsletter sign-up is found at irregularwarfare.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a comment and positive rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the Irregular Warfare podcast. It really helps expose the show to new listeners. And one last note, all that you hear in this episode

are the views of the participants and do not represent those at Princeton, West Point, or any agency of the United States government. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.