Military Interventions in Civil Wars: The Role of Foreign Direct Investments and Arms Trade by Kamil C Klosek

Author:Kamil C Klosek [Klosek, Kamil C]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Africa, Peace, Political Science, Political Freedom, History, Security (National & International), General
ISBN: 9781000456127
Google: RpVBEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 57700416
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

4 The role of arms trade in proxy interventions

DOI: 10.4324/9781003162087-4

The United States had a vested interest in the civil war in Chad in the 1980s. The war was fought between the Chadian government against the Libyan army which aimed to topple the Chadian regime and annex the Aouzou Strip.1 According to Azevedo,2 the United States under Ronald Regan considered Libya to constitute a proxy of the Soviet Union. Further, the United States perceived the invasion of Chad by Libya as an opportunity to support pro-Western African regimes as well as an opportunity to inflict costs to the Libyans. However, the United States did not directly intervene with its own combat troops but instead pressured France to resume its military presence in Chad after France’s military withdrawal in 1980.3 After a series of successes against the Libyan offensive, the French left in 1984 in the wake of an agreement between French president Mitterrand and Libyan Colonel Gaddafi.4 Notwithstanding, the United States provided military intelligence to France indicating that the Libyan army did not abide by the terms of the agreement to withdraw its troops, but instead increased its number of troops to 3,000 in the North of Chad.5 The United States further threatened France, that if France does not resume military operations in Chad, the United States will become active in the Chadian civil war by itself, thereby challenging France’s exceptional position in Françafrique.6 In 1986, French troops returned to Chad after the Libyan army further advanced South and violated its previous pledges to abstain from an invasion.

As the brief case on the French intervention in Chad exemplifies, military interventions are not solely determined by factors shaping the relationship between the civil war country and the intervener but require an analysis of the relationship between the intervener and other states with interests in the civil war. Hence, while Chapter 3 concentrated on economic factors that influenced the dyadic relationship between the civil war country and the potential intervener, this chapter focuses on the role of arms trade in the ability of great powers to harness other states for military interventions. Sometimes great powers are too constrained to intervene in a civil war by themselves when anticipated costs outweigh potential benefits and therefore rely on agents. This chapter’s central argument is that arms trade ameliorates costs associated with agency slack and adverse selection from a principal-agent perspective which increases the likelihood of an agent to intervene in a civil war. The following section conceptualizes military interventions from a principal-agent perspective and proceeds by deriving four hypotheses related to proxy interventions. Subsequently, the research design section is introduced and followed by the quantitative analysis. Lastly, the conclusion summarizes the findings of the chapter.

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