The impact of the choice of strategy of third-party conflict intervention on reducing conflict intensity: case of Russia’s proxy war in the East of Ukraine (2014 - 2021)

Abstract

In a modern-day world, proxy wars as a type of conflicts, where at least one side represents not a unitary actor, but a proxy-sponsor pair, becomes more and more widespread. Due to the more complicated structure of conflict in case of the proxy wars, the existing literature does not provide any evidence on how third-party conflict interventions work in a proxy war setting, and which specific strategies lead to the biggest decrease in the conflict intensity change. This study analyzes the case of Russia’s proxy war in the East of Ukraine over a period from April 2014 to October 2021 to test, how the third-party conflict intervention strategies affect the change in the conflict intensity during the observed period. The study sees Russia as the sponsor of the sponsor-proxy pair, and so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhanks People’s Republic” as Russia’s proxies, while third-party intervening in the conflict are Ukraine’s partner states, such as United States of America, United Kingdom, member states of the European Union and others. The study derives three main strategies of third-party conflict intervention from the relevant literature, and tests them in the case of the Russia’s proxy war in the East of Ukraine. The study is based on the rational choice theory, and assumes that the proxy-sponsor pair uses war as a tool for achievement of their political goals based on the cost-benefit calculation. Third-party conflict interventions are aimed to alter the cost-benefit calculations and thus decrease the conflict intensity. Economic sanctions are aimed to increase the cost of war for Russia, provision of military aid is aimed to increase the capacities of Ukraine and thus increase the cost of war for Russia’s proxies, and mediation is aimed to reduce the costs of war for all the parties involved. This study finds that in the case of Russia’s proxy war in the East of Ukraine from April 2014 to October 2021 neither implementation of the economic sanctions against Russia, nor provision of military aid to Ukraine by its partner states have increased the costs of war for Russia or its proxies significantly, and did not result in a decrease in conflict intensity. Mediation efforts allowed the proxy-sponsor pair to pursue their strategic goals with lower costs of war, and thus had strong connection to decrease in the conflict intensity.