Give Up on Proxy Wars in the Middle East

Alex Stark wrote for Foreign Policy  on replacing proxy wars with diplomacy and development in the Middle East.

While it has worn various titles over the years, such as “by, with, and through,” the approach is more or less the same: Empower local actors—via support from U.S. special operations forces, training, arms transfers, intelligence sharing, and so forth—to fight the wars that Americans cannot or don’t want to fight themselves. In the Middle East, it has meant arming proxy actors in some places, such as Syria, and empowering security partners to do so or intervene directly in others, such as Yemen and Libya.

But these proxy wars have not accomplished U.S. strategic goals—in some cases, they have even done the opposite. Advocates who criticize U.S. policy in the broader Middle East region have tended to focus on “ending endless wars.” This is a critical step, but U.S. policy must go beyond ending these wars. The proxy approach to Middle East conflicts has failed. It’s time to focus on a new strategy centered on major investments in development and diplomacy.

My research has found that U.S. security partners in the region, particularly the Persian Gulf monarchies, already understand the shortcomings of their own proxy-war approaches. As the Arab Spring toppled governments across the region in 2011, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia saw the instability as an opportunity to gain regional influence by replacing opponents with friendlier regimes. However, rather than achieving quick victories in Libya and Syria as they had hoped, these states found themselves sucked into complex quagmires without hope for outright victory. Instead, regional proxy sponsors have transformed localized conflicts into destabilizing regional wars that spill across borders. They have contributed to massive levels of human displacement, with significant impacts on the domestic politics of countries where refugees arrive.