Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the Twenty-First Century

by Andreas Krieg and Jean-Marc Rickli

Georgetown University Press, 2019
Cloth: 978-1-62616-677-6 | Paper: 978-1-62616-678-3
Library of Congress Classification U42.5.K745 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification 355.02

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Surrogate Warfare explores the emerging phenomenon of “surrogate warfare” in twenty-first century conflict. The popular notion of war is that it is fought en masse by the people of one side versus the other. But the reality today is that both state and non-state actors are increasingly looking to shift the burdens of war to surrogates. Surrogate warfare describes a patron's outsourcing of the strategic, operational, or tactical burdens of warfare, in whole or in part, to human and/or technological substitutes in order to minimize the costs of war. This phenomenon ranges from arming rebel groups, to the use of armed drones, to cyber propaganda. Krieg and Rickli bring old, related practices such as war by mercenary or proxy under this new overarching concept. Apart from analyzing the underlying sociopolitical drivers that trigger patrons to substitute or supplement military action, this book looks at the intrinsic trade-offs between substitutions and control that shapes the relationship between patron and surrogate. Surrogate Warfare will be essential reading for anyone studying contemporary conflict.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Andreas Krieg is an assistant professor at the School of Security Studies at King's College, London and co-founder of both the Near East Centre for Security and Strategy and the Private Military and Security Research Group at King's College.

Jean-Marc Rickli is head of global risk and resilience at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and a research fellow at King's College, London.

REVIEWS

In Surrogate Warfare, Andreas Krieg and Jean-Marc Rickli offer a welcome discussion of the phenomenon of nation states farming out military and security responsibilities to ‘surrogates.'

-- Michigan War Studies Review

This work is ... a stimulating essay, offering a real debate on what war is today, especially around the ethical and legal issues linked to technological revolutions, in progress and to come.

-- Georgetown University Press

Surrogate Warfare offers fresh perspectives about contemporary warfare with analysis ontechnology, ethics, and the current geostrategic environment.

-- Terrorism and Political Violence

At a time when increasing levels of “security force assistance” and “partner capacity building” are defining Western engagement with states around the globe, this book is an important reminder of the opportunities and threats posed by outsourcing war to others.

-- Political Science Quarterly

While Surrogate Warfare offers a wealth of history, theory, and novel thought about the nature of surrogates and their evolving technological dimensions in war, it is the near- and long-term engagement with near-peer competitors in the wake of the coronavirus that serves as a catalyst to recommend this book to the joint force.

-- Joint Forces Quarterly

[Andreas Krieg and Jean-Marc Rickli] argue for an expanded concept of surrogate war that includes forms of technological surrogacy such as cyber warfare and autonomous weapons. War, they argue, has moved ‘into the cyber and media domains’.

-- London Review of Books

This task is left to research further into contemporary wars, for which Surrogate Warfare provides a highly relevant and useful conceptual lens by exploring the causes, dynamics and consequences of the outsourcing of the costs of war to human or technological substitutes as a key dynamic of wars in the twenty-first century.

-- International Affairs

This is a conceptually innovative and important account of how wars involving state and non-state actor adversaries are increasingly being waged by the outsourcing of their strategic, operational and tactical responsibilities of warfare to human and technological surrogates, as explained in the book’s back cover, “to minimize the costs of war.”

-- Perspectives on Terrorism

"In Surrogate Warfare, Andreas Krieg and Jean-Marc Rickli offer a welcome discussion of the phenomenon of nation states farming out military and security responsibilities to ‘surrogates.'"

-- Arthur I. Cyr, Carthage College Michigan War Studies Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction 1. The History of Surrogate Warfare 2. The Context of Neotrinitarian War 3. Conceptualizing Surrogate Warfare 4. Externalizing the Burden of War to the Machine 5. Patron-Surrogate Relations and the Problem of Control and Autonomy 6. Toward a Just Surrogate War 7. Iran’s Externalization of Strategic Defense through Surrogate WarfareConclusion Bibliography IndexAbout the Authors

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