Proxy War at Sea

Abstract

The idea of proxy war was so overworked during the 1950s, particularly in the United States, that the concept later fell into greater academic disrepute than it deserved. Getting other people to do the fighting is, after all, the traditional practice of the richer nations. In the eighteenth century, England and France employed soldiers from many different European countries, usually paying the ruler for the use of his subjects. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the imperial powers could recruit from their colonies, but the British also enlisted, as they and the Indians do to this day, Gurkha soldiers from independent Nepal. This is now something of an exception, for the triumph of nationalism has engendered widespread hostility, right across the political spectrum, to the ancient profession of mercenary soldiering. Governments desirous of having their fighting done by others must nowadays enlist states rather than individuals and, even if some money still passes to rulers, pay a predominantly political price.