Foreign Intervention, Warfare and Civil Wars

External Assistance and Belligerents' Choice of Strategy

Adam Lockyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351619912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the impact of foreign intervention in the course and nature of warfare in civil wars.

Throughout history, foreign intervention in civil wars has been the rule rather than the exception. The involvement of outside powers can have a dramatic impact on the course and nature of internal conflicts. Despite this, there has been little research which has sought to explain how foreign intervention influences the course of civil wars. This book seeks to rectify this gap. It examines the impact of foreign intervention on the warfare that characterises civil wars through by studying the cases of the Angolan and Afghan civil wars. It investigates how foreign resources affect the military power of the recipient belligerent, and examines how changes in the balance of capabilities influence the form of warfare that characterises a civil war. Warfare in civil wars is often highly fluid, with belligerents adapting their respective strategies in response to shifts in the balance of military capabilities. This book shows how the intervention of foreign powers can manipulate the balance of capabilities between the civil war belligerents and change the dominant form of warfare. The findings presented in this book offer key insights for policy-makers to navigate the increasing internationalization of civil wars around the globe.

This book will be of much interest to students of civil wars, intra-state conflict, war and conflict studies, and security studies.

Part I

Introduction

1 Introduction

When the first small bands of tribesmen began ambushing government troops in the Afghan mountains in 1978, they typically did so using slingshots, axes and ancient British firearms. Less than a decade later, some of these same groups were raining state-of-the-art, rocket-propelled artillery down on Kabul. How did the warfare in Afghanistan change so dramatically over such a short space of time? Any answer to this question must include foreign powers. In Afghanistan, the rebels had been supplied with advanced weaponry by the United States, while the regime’s forces had been reequipped with some of the Soviet Union’s most sophisticated weapons.¹ In turn, this had a dramatic impact on the nature of the warfare between the contending sides.

The influence of foreign powers on the Afghan Civil War is far from unique. Even a cursory survey of civil wars from antiquity through to the Syrian and Libyan conflicts suggests that foreign intervention is both common and can potentially have a major impact on the course of civil wars.

Indeed, foreign intervention in civil war is the rule rather than the exception, with 71 percent of civil wars recording at least one intervention.² Furthermore, foreign intervention can be influential in changing the trajectory of civil wars.³ In part, the significant impact of foreign intervention on the course of civil wars is explained by the majority of interventions having taken the form of providing assistance to one side in the conflict. Between 1945 and 1994, over 95 percent of foreign interventions in civil wars consisted of the transfer of money, arms or foreign troops to a belligerent in the civil war.⁴

In Syria, for example, the involvement of the United States, Russia, Turkey, Iran and the Gulf States has introduced some of the world’s most deadly warplanes, artillery and unmanned aerial vehicles into a conflict previously fought primarily by militiamen armed with light weapons. Cutting-edge Russian technology allowed the Assad regime to turn the tide of the conflict and win battlefield and political victories.⁵

In spite of the popular rhetoric around humanitarian intentions, neutral interventions aimed at protecting civilians have been rare. The U.S.-led NATO intervention into Libya is a recent example. The aerial bombing campaign conducted by NATO and its allies tipped the balance of the conflict in the rebels’ favour, and the supply of advanced weaponry and training enabled the insurgent forces to overthrow the Qaddafi regime.⁶ Viewed together, these observations suggest that states that are experiencing civil war are “more likely to be intervened in than those without conflict,” and the impact of that intervention will be more severe than in stable and peaceful states.⁷

Dylan Balch-Lindsay and Andrew Enterline have observed, “To date, the literature on intrastate conflicts underscores the idea that the influence of third parties is often instrumental in shaping the dynamics of these conflicts.”⁸ The principal question of this book builds on this observation by asking how foreign intervention affects the course and nature of civil wars. I divide this question into two secondary questions. The first asks what impact foreign intervention has on the military capabilities of the recipient, and the second asks how the provision of external resources to a belligerent influences the character of the warfare between it and its opponent(s) in the civil war. This book develops theoretical explanations in response to these questions that are tested against case material from the Angolan and Afghan civil wars.

Warfare, the balance of capabilities and foreign intervention

My argument contains three moving parts: warfare in civil wars, the balance of capabilities and foreign intervention. Warfare refers to the confluence of the belligerents’ respective strategies. For instance, if the insurgent actor adopts a guerrilla strategy, and the incumbent adopts a counterinsurgency strategy, then the warfare will be a form of asymmetric guerrilla warfare. Put simply, the combination of Strategy 1 plus Strategy 2 produces the overall warfare.⁹ The balance of capabilities refers to the distribution of the belligerents’ collective military capabilities. I argue that the balance of capabilities influences the belligerents’ choice of strategy. Finally, foreign intervention refers to the transfer of resources from an external power to either the incumbent or an insurgent actor engaged in a civil war.

The warfare in civil wars

Interstate and civil wars can be characterised by a variety of different types of warfare. In interstate wars, the warfare might assume the form of a range of different types, including conventional land warfare, naval warfare or nuclear warfare. In civil wars, the warfare may also take the form of a wide variety of different types; however, there are three principal categories of warfare in civil wars, which we will call conventional warfare, guerrilla warfare and militia warfare.

Conventional warfare

The concept of conventional warfare derives from the traditional image of warfare between states. Its guiding principle is to deploy the maximum amount of force at a decisive point and thereby destroy an opponent’s ability to resist in a “set-piece battle.” A remarkable distinction about civil wars is that, unlike interstate wars, civil wars are rarely fought by conventional means.¹⁰ Yet, the similarities between conventional warfare in interstate and civil wars are many. As Enzensberger observed, during the Russian, American and Spanish civil wars,

there were regular armies and fronts; the central command structures attempted to carry out their strategic objectives in a planned way through strict control of their troops. As a rule there was political as well as military leadership, following clearly defined goals, and ready and able to negotiate when necessary.¹¹

Indeed, scholars have tended to analyse conventional warfare in civil and interstate wars as if they were one and the same – for instance, by drawing analogies between the American Civil War and the First World War.¹² The implication of this for civil wars is that conventional warfare is normally associated with instances that involve movements with some form of pre-existing state structure (as in the Confederate States in the American Civil War), large army units which choose to fight for the insurgent (as in the Spanish Civil War) or direct external state intervention (as in the Angolan Civil War).

Operationally, conventional warfare is characterised by a clear distinction between offensive and defensive actions. In offence, conventional strategy generally involves massive coordinated “pushes” or “thrusts” into enemy-held territory. The key aim is to decisively engage and destroy the opposition’s forces through attrition, blitzkrieg or “normal progress.”¹³ It requires a belligerent to increase the force-to-space ratio by concentrating its forces at the most advantageous location before advancing into enemy-held territory.¹⁴ In defence, conventional warfare assumes front lines as the defining feature. The principal aim of fortified positions is “to repel attack, to protect people and property, to hold territory, and to minimize damage by the attacker.”¹⁵ Although not every inch of territory may be protected, strategically important locations are prepared to be held against the enemy’s assaults for as long as possible. This emphasis on territory, in both defence and offence, is alluded to in the common reference to conventional warfare as “positional warfare.”¹⁶

Guerrilla warfare

Guerrilla warfare is a form of asymmetric warfare where the incumbent and insurgent parties apply two different types of strategies. This makes it unique among the types of warfare in civil war. The insurgent adopts a guerrilla strategy that involves it waging a protracted war of attrition while avoiding open engagements with the adversary. Offence in guerrilla strategy attempts to hold the initiative by engaging in surprise attacks, raids, sabotage and ambushes, thereby avoiding a pitched battle.¹⁷ An insurgent applying a guerrilla strategy endeavours to create the impression that its forces may strike anywhere and anytime, which compels the incumbent to spread its forces thinly in order to protect all important infrastructure. As a consequence, the incumbent has fewer available forces with which to aggressively pursue the guerrilla force. In defence, guerrilla forces do not attempt to defend territory or population. Instead, and in contrast to conventional strategy, guerrillas attempt to decrease the force-to-space ratio.¹⁸ As Che Guevara emphasised, “The essential task of the guerrilla fighter is to keep himself from being destroyed.”¹⁹ In defence, guerrilla strategy thus requires the insurgent to withdraw from territory when challenged by the enemy forces, even if this means leaving highly valued assets such as family homes and sites of symbolic value unprotected.²⁰ For this reason, Clausewitz appropriately likened the strategy to a cloud that parts as solid pressure moves towards it.²¹

In order to avoid an incumbent’s military forces, an insurgent who has adopted a guerrilla strategy will frequently attempt to blend into particularly rugged territory or a section of society. However, as a French colonel in Algeria identified, “this total dependence upon terrain and population is … [also] the guerrilla’s weak point.”²² Thus offensive counterinsurgency strategies adopted by incumbents may attempt to isolate the guerrillas from their social support base and deny them readmission, tempt or force them out of cover and into a direct confrontation, or annihilate the social base from which the insurgency originates.²³ Although the methods used in counterinsurgency strategy are unusual within a conventional context, their primary strategic objective is similar: to locate the enemy and destroy it through superior manoeuvre and firepower.

In defence, counterinsurgency strategy requires the protection of important political, economic and military positions. This task can be problematic, however, as the insurgent, by striking at unpredictable places and at unpredictable times, can create an “air defence” dilemma for the incumbent.²⁴ When constructing an air defence strategy, the required number of air defence units is more a function of the targets that must be defended than the number of enemy bombers. Similarly, in counterinsurgency strategy, an incumbent with many potential targets will have to invest heavily in defending these installations regardless of the actual number of enemy guerrilla units. Hence, an incumbent may be forced to construct elaborate conventional defences (such as trenches, bunkers and observation posts) at all important installations in the area that the guerrilla forces can presumably reach. Furthermore, much of the incumbent’s numerical advantage can be absorbed by defensive duties. This final defensive characteristic of counterinsurgency strategy was noted by...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures, tables and maps
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Introduction
• Part II A theory of foreign intervention, warfare and civil wars
• Part III Case studies and empirical observations
• Part IV Findings and conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index