Indirect Interventions in Civil Wars

Abstract

Current research on motivational sources of military interventions in civilwars frequently assumes that states intervene due to direct interests in thecivil war country. However, this study argues that there exists a subset ofinterventions in which weaker powers intervene on behalf of interestswhich great powers hold vis-à-vis the civil war country. Using the logic ofprincipal-agent theory in combination with arms trade data allows one toidentify 14 civil wars which experienced the phenomenon of indirectmilitary interventions. This type of intervention features a weaker powerproviding troops for combat missions, whereas its major arms supplier isonly involved with indirect military support. The analysis is complementedwith two brief case studies on the Moroccan intervention in Zaire (1977) andthe Ugandan intervention in the Central African Republic (2009). Both casestudies corroborate expectations as deduced from the proxy interventionframework.