Description
Two conflicts have shaped the geopolitics of the Middle East significantly in the last decade: The Yemen War, with the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebels, and the Gaza War, in which an Iran-led coalition, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi paramilitaries have joined Hamas in the war against Israel. These wars have been described as proxy wars or ‘internationalised civil wars’. Nonetheless, such categorisations fail to grasp the fundamental nature of these conflicts and their sources. Rather, this paper suggests that these conflicts mark the rise of new inter-state wars. This definition relies on the spread of these conflicts across various countries and the belligerents’ nature, which do not fall neatly into traditional categories of state and non-state actors. However, these wars should be seen as new inter-state wars, as they differ significantly from previous inter-state wars in their duration and lethality: They have been longer and deadlier toward civilians than most past inter-state wars in the Middle East. After establishing the nature of these wars, the paper then seeks to explain the causes for their difference from previous inter-state wars. It argues that it is the participation of transnational paramilitary forces that have contributed to these wars’ duration and lethality: Actors such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi paramilitaries have incorporated tactics associated with domestic conflicts into the international arena, now combined with unprecedented access to weapons that in the past have been the exclusively at the hands of conventional militaries, such as ballistic missiles, drones, and maritime capabilities. This combination has contributed significantly (though not exclusively) to the eruption and evolution of the new inter-state wars in the Middle East and potentially beyond the region.
