The Nature of Proxy Relationships and Their Ethics

This chapter examines the nature of proxy relationships and establishes the methodology for analyzing their ethical challenges. In this context of international competition, determining how and to what extent the label “proxy” fits a relationship requires first understanding the alternatives: alliances and partnerships. Each of these relations has its own structure reflecting actors’ choices about managing risks associated with particular threats. This structure, consisting of actor symmetry, interest alignment, and control, partially determines the decisions actors must make and can set up tension between security and generally accepted moral and legal norms, as expressed by the Just War Tradition and International Humanitarian Law. One way to resolve the tension is to adopt the realist view that few norms apply in international competition. Another is to consider proxy relations much the way the international community considers espionage, placing few restrictions on its practice or how actors respond to it. Applying coherence as a guiding principle, one can reasonably reject these approaches.