With Professor Andrew Mumford (University of Nottingham).

This session is organised as part of our project on ‘Proxy Wars in the Middle East and South Asia’, sponsored by Carnegie Corporation New York (grant no. G-18-55949).

The mantra of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ is the cornerstone of strategic planning for the proxy war against both the regime of Bashar al-Assad and ISIS.

In this webinar, Andrew will offer a conceptual explanation of proxy warfare, evaluate the rise of ISIS and the opportunities for proxy war that it created, and then assess the ways in which proxy war has manifest itself on top of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq between 2011 and 2016. Further, the webinar will observe some of the strategic problems created by the prevalence of indirect intervention.

Andrew Mumford is a Professor of War Studies at the University of Nottingham (UK) where he is Deputy Head of the School of Politics and International Relations. He has written three books on elements of modern war, including Proxy Warfare (Polity, 2013). His paper ‘Proxy Warfare and the Future of Conflict’ is the second most downloaded article in the 163-year history of the RUSI Journal. He has acted as a consultant to the UK Ministry of Defence and NATO on issues pertaining to hybrid warfare. His next book, The West’s War Against ISIS: Operation Inherent Resolve in Syria and Iraq, will be published by IB Tauris in early 2021.

Please RSVP to mesf@deakin.edu.au by Monday 1 September for Zoom details, which will be shared by email calendar invite on 2 September. Please note, registering for an event automatically subscribes you to the MESF event mailing list.