Friends with Benefits? Power and Influence in Proxy Warfare Erica Dreyfus Borghard Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Erica Dreyfus Borghard All rights reserved ABSTRACT Friends with Benefits? Power and Influence in Proxy Warfare Erica Dreyfus Borghard This dissertation analyses patterns of power and influence in the context of proxy alliances between states and armed, non-state groups. In particular, I explore the following questions: Why do some states have leverage over their non-state proxies, while others find themselves at the behest of their far weaker allies? Put differently, why doesn’t a state’s enormous material advantage systematically translate into an ability to influence the behavior of proxy groups? Governments often find themselves stymied by belligerent proxies and drawn into unwanted conflict escalation with adversaries— precisely what states sought to avoid by relying on covert, indirect alliances in the first place. I argue that the very factors that make proxy warfare appealing to states—its clandestine, informal nature—threaten to undermine governments’ abilities to exert leverage over their proxies. Governments seek out proxy alliances when the material or political costs of directly confronting an adversary are unappealingly high, driven by the logic that proxy groups can help states achieve their foreign policy objectives “on the cheap” and in a way that allows states to plausibly deny involvement in a conflict. However, the actions states must take to ensure plausible deniability, specifically the decisions political leaders make about how they will manage and oversee a proxy ally, can undermine their leverage. The decisions political leaders make about alliance design and management, which have negative effects on their bargaining power, are fundamentally driven by two related logics: the requirements of plausible deniability, and attempts to navigate the preferences of domestic political veto players and bureaucracies. Plausible deniability requires establishing as much distance as possible between a decision maker and a proxy and/or operating with a minimal footprint on the ground. To do so, political leaders often delegate authority for managing tasks pertaining to the proxy alliance to covert organizations with the security sector (e.g., intelligence organizations). However, this clandestine and informal delegation is problematic in two respects. First, the bureaucratic actor to whom the political leader delegates authority for carrying out tasks pertaining to the proxy alliance has a general incentive to ensure its organization is abundantly resourced. Therefore, it has a vested interest in the perpetuation of the proxy alliance. Second, bureaucratic leaders (as well as all of the other individuals to whom authority is delegated) may have personal, political, or ideological preferences that differ substantially from those of the political leadership. If the effects of delegating authority in this way are so perverse, why do leaders do it? And why don’t they reign in wayward bureaucrats? At the most basic level, leaders have a high valuation for plausible deniability for international or domestic political reasons (to avoid retaliation from an adversary or keep things secret from domestic political actors), and powerful, entrenched bureaucracies are difficult to control. Digging deeper, however, there is a compelling domestic political story that existing accounts of proxy alliances have neglected to tell. Political leaders often abdicate authority to other bureaucratic actors or individuals—even when they may foresee the issues identified above—as a strategy for protecting themselves from domestic political veto players with strong policy preferences that diverge substantially from their own. To evaluate the explanatory scope of the theory, I explore patterns of influence in proxy alliance in a series of comparative case studies, in which I use process tracing and structured, focused comparison to assess whether and to what extent decisions about alliance management affect a state’s leverage over its non-state proxy. Specifically, I analyze bargaining power in six different proxy alliances: the Syria-Fatah alliance in the 1960s-70s; the alliance between the FNLA and UNITA in Angola and the United States from 1975-76; the India-Mukti Bahini alliance in East Pakistan in 1971; the United States-UNITA alliance in Angola in the 1980s; the alliance between the United States, Iran, and Israel, and the KDP in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1970s; and the alliance between India and Tamil insurgents in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. I compare the explanatory scope of my theory to the interstate alliance politics literature, and find that my theory not only accounts for the unexplained variation in the universe of cases, but also offers a more complete understanding of the dynamics of state-proxy relationships. Table of Contents List of Charts, Graphs, and Illustrations ii Chapter 1: Of Power and Proxies 1 Chapter 2: Proxy Alliances: What Are They? What Are They Good For? 17 Chapter 3: A Theory of Influence in Proxy Alliances 40 Chapter 4: Syria and the Palestinian Juggernaut 92 Chapter 5: The United States and the “Open Secret” War in Angola 133 Chapter 6: A First Step Toward Generalizability: Medium-N Qualitative Analysis 180 Chapter 7: Conclusion 300 Bibliography 309 i List of Charts, Graphs, Illustrations Tables Table 1: The Relationship Between Oversight and Policy Preferences 49 Table 2: Types of Proxy Alliances 60 Table 3: Effects of State Capacity and Regime Types 71 Table 4: Empirical Predictions of the Interstate Alliance Politics Literature 79 Table 5: Selected Empirical Predictions from the Alternative Explanation 83 Table 6: Case Selection Process 85 Table 7: Case Selection for the Medium-N Chapter 89 Table 8: Case Selection 180 Diagrams Diagram 1: Severity of Bargaining Problems by Regime Type and Capacity 71 ii Acknowledgements There are many people who played important roles, both big and small, in helping make this dissertation possible. First, I would like to thank Jack Snyder, my advisor and mentor, for shaping my development as a scholar, helping me identify the questions worth answering, and serving as the preeminent example of what it means to be a Political Scientist. I would also like to thank Tanisha Fazal for her many years of advisorship and support, and her meticulous comments on multiple rounds of the dissertation. I would also like to thank the additional members of my dissertation committee—Richard Betts, Austin Long, and Alexander Cooley—for asking tough questions and providing me with phenomenal and inspiring comments and advice. To the countless friends and colleagues who suffered through many years of stress and complaining, read too many drafts of my dissertation, listened to multiple iterations of my job talk, and all the while believed in me and gave me the confidence to complete this part of my journey—I am forever grateful. In particular, I am indebted to Kate Cronin- Furman for supporting me on the day of my dissertation defense by nourishing me with wine and brownies in its immediate aftermath. Finally, I would like to thank my family for being there from the beginning and helping me become the person and scholar I am today. To my Opa, who taught me about politics and war, I wish you could be here to read this! To my parents, thank you for nurturing and supporting my dreams. To my husband, David, thank you for unreservedly supporting my ambitions and never doubting for a moment that I would succeed. And, last but not least, to my children, Natalie and Oliver, thank you for giving me so much joy and being the constant reminders of what is important in life. iii To Natalie and Oliver iv Chapter 1 Of Power and Proxies The Puzzle When the civil war broke out in Lebanon in April 1975, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its most powerful constituent group, Fatah, was faced with a choice. Arafat could align the Palestinian resistance with the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), which was contesting the Phalange militias as well as the Lebanese national government, or he could heed the preferences of his most important external sponsor, the Hafez al-Assad regime in Syria, and prevent Fatah fighters from sowing even greater instability in Lebanon. Both Fatah and Syria had critical security interests at stake in Lebanon: the former sought to prevent instability from spilling over the border into Syria or giving Israel a pretext for intervening in the conflict, while the latter sought to protect its Lebanese bases and, therefore, the viability of its resistance movement. In the spring of 1976, Kamal Jumblatt, the LNM’s leader, refused to accept the terms proposed during a series of Syrian-led attempts to at a political settlement to the conflict and resumed military activities in earnest. Assad called Arafat to Damascus and exhorted him to break his alignment with the LNM. Despite signaling to Assad that he would do so, Arafat returned to Lebanon and threw in his lot with the LNM, brazenly defying Assad’s orders. This forced Assad to cut off all support for Fatah and intervene in Lebanon to forcibly subdue the Palestinian resistance with the Syrian Army in June 1976. Syria’s intervention in Lebanon was incredibly costly for the Assad regime, both in absolute material terms and politically. Given Fatah’s dependence