Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the Twenty-First Century, reviewed

Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the Twenty-First Century, reviewed

By @SimonCocking, review of Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the Twenty-First Century. By Andreas Krieg and Jean-Marc Rickli

1st June 2019, HB, £26.50, ISBN: 9781626166783

Everyone’s doing it… the Arab Gulf States, the Russians, the UK and the Americans.  “Surrogate warfare” is the emerging phenomenon when it comes to 21st century conflicts.  Authors Andreas Kreig and Jean-Marc Rickli from Kings College London, describe how warfare has shifted from the classical model of war where state employs citizen soldiers en-masse, to the use of human or technological substitutes in order to minimise the costs and burdens of war.

Surrogate Warfare explores how both state and non-state agents are employing tactics such as contracting out operations to rebel militias and private organisations and using armed drones and cyber propaganda.  In the fight against ISIS for example, a huge range of clashing surrogate groups, all looking to secure their own advantages, are used by different states.

Apart from analysing the underlying socio-political drivers that encourage patrons to substitute or supplement military action, this book looks at the intrinsic trade-offs between substitutions and control that shape the relationship between patron and surrogate.  By outsourcing, can they really retain control over the conflict and prevent other agendas from coming to the fore?

Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the Twenty-First Century, reviewed

Very early on in this book you become aware that surrogate warfare is nothing new and has actually been with us for many many centuries. Rich enough to not shed your own people’s blood? Then mercenaries have always been a preferred option, as long as you can keep them focussed on the matter in hand, and not tempted to implement their own agendas.

Later on in the book they also suggest that they are not in a position to comment about whether the out sourcing of war is better or worse than previous methods of waging war. While there is a lot in the book that is well articulated and explained, this comment seemed like a lapse in terms of making an ethically positive statement. In many recent wars waged by the so called super powers, such as Russia in Afghanistan or, classically the US in Vietnam, it has been the loss of life of their own citizens that has hastened the end of their ill advised overseas military adventures.

Therefore you could include that while a country waging war still has ‘skin in the game’ in terms of their own people on the ground, they are then more likely to not spend decades waging war in foreign lands. Recent incursions into Afghanistan and Irag by the British and US armies would seem to back up this concept too.

We are already moving into an era of more and more killing outsourced to technological devices, such as drones and beyond. This trend may be inevitable but it is still problematic, especially when innocent people are killed in this ‘surgical interventions’ and merely classed as collateral damage. The authors are correct that warfare has been transformed in the 21st century, and they do ask a series of interesting questions, including the impact of potentially participant free warfare.

Does a lower mortality rate actually encourage more people to wage warfare? We have already reach a time where even for war loving semi-democratically elected leaders where they know that only so many citizens can die before polls go south for them. You can see why surrogate warfare would be appealing, but it still brings its own issues with it too.

About The Authors:

Andreas Krieg is an assistant professor at the School of Security Studies at King’s College, London and co-founder of both the Near East Centre for Security and Strategy and the Private Military and Security Research Group at King’s College. 

Jean-Marc Rickli is head of global risk and resilience at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and a research fellow at King’s College, London.

“Clausewitz wrote that war is coercive in nature though throughout history coercion has taken many forms. This principle is more real today than ever thanks to the ability of states to contract out operations to partners orsurrogates both animate and inanimate. Though not a new departure this development has taken on a new reality in a globalised and technologically vulnerable world. With remarkable erudition and insight this study represents a bold and original contribution to the field of security studies.”—Christopher Coker, Professor of International Relations, Director of LSE IDEAS, London School of Economics

“This important book captures and conceptualises a phenomenon that has been increasingly pronounced in contemporary warfare. States increasingly look to others – surrogates – to carry the risks of warfare rather than put their own forces in harm’s way. These can be private companies, rebel militias, other governments, or autonomous vehicles. But can they do this and keep control of the conduct of a conflict and ensure that other agendas don’t take priority over their interests?”—Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King’s College London

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