For centuries, force was the key instrument of statecraft and the primary means through which states pursued their interests. That policymakers have largely overlooked the use of subversion is not surprising, given the decline of interstate war over the last 75 years. Above all, they must raise the costs for those who attempt subversion in the future. Policymakers must adapt and forge strategies for a reality in which threats emerge from the gray zone between war and peace. With the exception of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, which Russia annexed directly, Moscow, Islamabad, and Tehran outsourced their dirty work to local proxies that proved to be highly effective extensions of their external sponsors.įor the United States, it is not enough merely to recognize that great-power conflict-indeed, most conflict-is unlikely to take the form of traditional warfare. And Iranian subversion against the Yemeni government and against Saudi Arabia destabilizes the Persian Gulf region. Pakistani subversion has prevented the Afghan state from consolidating any authority beyond Kabul. Russian subversion deprived Ukraine and Georgia of control over significant swaths of territory. This oversight has been costly to Western interests. Their attacks distract the target state and deny it resources, creating bargaining leverage for the sponsor.Īlthough subversion featured prominently in the Cold War, policymakers have only recently begun to pay attention to the problem of subversion in its updated form. These proxies inflict damage on target states with the aim of deconsolidating them and creating ungoverned space. It involves empowering illicit and armed nonstate groups that act as extensions of a sponsor state. Instead, conflict plays out indirectly, through a kind of proxy warfare called “foreign subversion.”įoreign subversion is a covert, indirect form of modern statecraft. Those wars rarely occur anymore, and that is a good thing for humanity. Should great-power conflict come, however, it will bear little resemblance to the traditional interstate wars that analysts study, that academics teach, and for which militaries train.
And in Washington and other Western capitals, policymakers and pundits fret that Chinese and Russian competition with the West could, before long, give way to conflict. Russia’s intervention in the Middle East and in eastern Europe has restored its geopolitical relevance. China is remaking the map of Southeast Asia, rolling out infrastructure projects across the developing world, and creating new regional and global institutions.
Beijing and Moscow increasingly vie for influence on the global stage. security and intelligence communities are buzzing with talk of the return of great-power competition.
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