Andrew Mumford. The RUSI Journal. Volume 158, Issue 2, 2013.
President Dwight D Eisenhower once called proxy wars ‘the cheapest insurance in the world’, while former Pakistani President Zia-ul- Haq deemed them necessary to ‘keep the pot boiling’ in existing conflict zones. The appeal of what can be characterised as ‘warfare on the cheap’ has proved an irresistible strategic allure for nations through the centuries. However, proxy wars—which this article defines as conflicts in which a third party intervenes indirectly in order to influence the strategic outcome in favour of its preferred faction—remain a missing link in contemporary war and security studies. They are historically ubiquitous yet chronically under-analysed. This article attempts to rectify this situation by assessing the dynamics of proxy warfare and positing it as a highly pertinent factor in the likely character of future conflict.
Proxy wars are the product of a relationship between a benefactor, who is a state or non-state actor external to the dynamic of an existing conflict, and the chosen proxies who are the conduit for the benefactor’s weapons, training and funding. In short, proxy wars are the logical replacement for states seeking to further their own strategic goals yet at the same time avoid engaging in direct, costly and bloody warfare.
Although efforts have been made in the past to explain what proxy wars entail, certain areas of definitional contention still remain. In 1964, the political scientist Karl Deutsch termed proxy wars ‘an international conflict between two foreign powers, fought out on the soil of a third country; disguised as a conflict over an internal issue of that country; and using some of that country’s manpower, resources and territory as a means for achieving preponderantly foreign goals and foreign strategies.’ Arguably, though, Deutsch’s definition is too state-centric as it ignores the role that non-state actors, such as insurgent groups, can play in proxy wars, and it unnecessarily internationalises proxy wars (an inevitability, perhaps, of the Cold War context in which this definition was coined) by overlooking the often regional power struggles that they represent. More often than not, many of the proxy wars of the Cold War (such as the US’s indirect intervention in Afghanistan during the 1980s) and after (like the recent Iranian proxy involvement against the US military in Iraq) could not have happened without existing local tensions ready to be exploited.
So perhaps in order to garner a greater understanding of what proxy wars are it would be useful to dwell first upon what they are not. Proxy wars are not merely regional wars that seemingly mirror broader ideological struggles perpetrated by influential superpowers. Arguably this was not the case during the Cold War (even if strident perceptions of bipolarity and ‘balances of power’ conflated the two phenomena), and it is not an accurate reflection of the nature of proxy wars today. Neither are they exercises in direct military intervention by third parties; nor do they necessarily constitute a form of ‘covert action’ simply because the third party’s armed forces and special forces are not deployed. Certainly, proxy wars may well be conducted covertly, but the definition here of ‘proxy warfare’ still rests on an underlying premise of indirect engagement, with State A hiring proxies in State B to conduct ‘subversive operations’ on its behalf.
The recourse to proxy war has been particularly prevalent since 1945 as the shadow of nuclear war ensured more acute selectivity in conflict engagement, given the consequences of a potential nuclear exchange. Where state or group survival is not at stake but the augmentation of national interests or ideological gains can still be achieved, states and sub-state groups have historically proven to be conspicuous users of proxy methods as a means of securing particular conflict outcomes. Consider, for example, how the Carter and then Reagan administrations responded to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by arming, funding and training the fledgling Afghan mujahedeen; or the Soviet use of Cuban proxies during the civil war in Angola, where conflict first broke out in 1974. Such responses are based on an intrinsic perception of risk, specifically that direct intervention in a conflict would be either unjustifiable, too costly (whether politically, financially or materially), avoidable, illegitimate or unfeasible. Proxies, of course, have their own agendas, which makes the management of the relationship between the benefactor and the proxy during conflict invariably tricky, especially as proxies begin to develop greater perceptions of autonomy or forge differing interpretations of strategic objective to the benefactor. Proxy wars are therefore wrought with complexities for all warring parties.
However, with proxy wars more closely associated in the popular imagination with the Cold War—deemed to be their heyday—the question must be asked whether, and why, proxy war remains an important issue in the decades since 1989. It is largely because of two major trends in warfare and its analysis. First, in the words of John Mueller, is the ‘obsolescence of major war’. Total warfare, or conventional ‘state versus state’ conflicts between developed countries, is a form of conflict that has diminished, partly as a result of the changing nature of the system of statehood and the international order in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Yet despite more and more states opting out of what Mueller calls ‘the war system’ as the twentieth century matured, this does not necessarily mean that pacifism triumphed. Instead, states—mainly superpowers—which remained observant of their interests or ideological positioning, have pursued alternative avenues for attaining strategic advantage, including proxy war. Second, history tells us that any rigorous academic, political and military focus upon counter-insurgency—such as that which has prevailed in the last decade—is momentary, in relative terms, and often lasts only as long as the deployment of troops. If the pattern of attention granted to counter-insurgency after the final withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 is repeated after combat troops have departed the front line of the War on Terror in Afghanistan, then counterinsurgency will inevitably be put once more onto the strategic back-burner.
In an era when the world is in the midst of a global financial downturn and the images of flag-laden coffins on television screens harden Western popular attitudes against sending troops abroad, the utilisation of proxy forces holds both an economic and political appeal to modern states. As the twentyfirst century unfolds, the willingness of citizens to voluntarily join ever-shrinking national armies is declining, the cost of cutting-edge military technology is rising and, particularly in the wake of the protracted and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the appetite for repeated expeditionary counter-insurgency warfare within the US military, for example, is diminished.
These symptoms, however, are present despite a deeply rooted desire amongst states not to cede strategic interest. When combined, these coexisting predilections are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Arguably, it can be foreseen that the increased use of proxy forces will circumvent the issues of low military-recruitment rates, public aversion to casualties and squeezed defence budgets without states manifestly surrendering their interests vested in a particular conflict or region. As Philip Bobbitt, a US constitutional theorist, argued in 2003: ‘In the future, the use of local proxy armies can offer… an economic alternative to more expensive standing armies… [and] could provide the indispensable element of ground control without risking American lives to the same degree as US ground forces.’
The signposts certainly point in this direction, given four recent, and major, changes in the nature of modern warfare and international relations: the emergence of a contemporary ‘Vietnam Syndrome’, which has decreased public and political appetite in the West for large-scale counter-insurgency ‘quagmires’ against a backdrop of a global recession; the rise in prominence and importance of Private Military Companies (PMCs) to contemporary war-fighting; the increasing use of cyberspace as a platform from which to wage war indirectly; and the ascent of China as a world superpower. Collectively, these four changes draw together the triumvirate of interest, ideology and risk, around which the need for proxy war has traditionally coalesced. As such, it is necessary to analyse each of these factors in turn and assess how they increase the likelihood of more proxy wars being waged in the future.
A ‘War on Terror Syndrome’?
The draining of public support for foreign wars and the political reluctance to deploy large numbers of troops abroad in the future formed the essential characteristics of the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ that impacted upon American foreign policy from the early 1970s. Yet the result was not isolationism or acquiescence to Soviet interests in the Third World. Instead, successive American administrations resorted to proxy warfare as a means of maximising national interests and promoting ideology without exacerbating the effects of the syndrome. It is little surprise that some of the most significant American proxy-war efforts of the Cold War, in Angola in the mid-1970s and Afghanistan throughout the 1980s, came in the wake of the ignominious withdrawal from Southeast Asia. This post-Vietnam resort to indirect intervention acts as an important guide for how the US might again reassess the means available for maintaining its strategic initiatives after withdrawal from the recent long and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The key signifiers that point towards ‘another bloody century’, as described by Colin S Gray, with regard to proxy wars include the aforementioned diminishing thirst on the part of Western states for asymmetric wars with a parallel commitment to large-scale nationbuilding projects, contextualised within a global recession and inevitable defence budget cuts across the Western world. Indeed, the effects of these intertwined themes can already be discerned. In January 2012, the Pentagon announced plans for a leaner US military and a reduction in the US defence budget. In his foreword to the corresponding defence-review publication, President Obama explicitly tied together the issues of financial chaos and military cutbacks: ‘We must put our fiscal house in order here at home and renew our long-term economic strength … [This] mandates reductions in federal spending, including defense spending.’ This would include Pentagon budget cuts of approximately $450 billion, whilst engendering a 10–15 per cent reduction in the size of the US Army and Marine Corps over the coming decade. Crucially, however, the review does leave the door open for the potential future instigation of proxy wars if and when reductions in the defence budget, or the rise of an aggressive Chinese military, necessitate more indirect means by which to protect American interests. Statements such as ‘we will develop innovative, low-cost and small footprint approaches to achieve our security objectives’ and ‘the US military will invest as required to ensure its ability to operate effectively in anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) environments’ indicate an awareness of the possibilities of harnessing proxy-war strategies in areas where direct military intervention is either too costly or too risky in the years ahead.
In addition to these budgetary signposts, other trends can be included whose fluctuation should remain closely monitored for an indication of the expansive appeal of proxy wars in the future. Foremost amongst these are the levels of foreign military assistance that states allocate (particularly when viewed in comparison to levels of domestic military expenditure) and, perhaps most crucially of all, the increase in the number of contracts being awarded to PMCs to fulfil security functions on behalf of states.
Private Military Companies as Proxy War-Wagers
A greater reliance by states on PMCs (or ‘coalitions of the billing’ as Christopher Coker has pithily labelled them) has become a defining hallmark of contemporary security policy in the West. Engaging in activities such as weapons procurement, police training, intelligence gathering and the close personal protection of civilian leaders, PMCs have operated in a wide range of countries since 1989.
The end of the Cold War prompted governments around the globe collectively to reduce their armies by nearly 6 million personnel during the 1990s. Significant numbers of these highly skilled individuals were therefore readily transferable into the private sector. The rise of ‘failed states’ seen in regions such as the Horn of Africa and the Balkans, caused in part by post-Cold War power vacuums, therefore ensured an increased demand for security provision to match the parallel rise in the supply of personnel. By the late 1990s, wider changes to the very nature of warfare itself (via the high-tech advances made during the post-Cold War ‘revolution in military affairs’, for example) and the broader socio-economic acceptance in the West of privatised goods and services contributed to the creation of a permissive environment that allowed PMCs to act, in security analyst David Shearer’s words, ‘as foreign policy proxies for governments unable or unwilling to play a direct and open role.’ This explanation cuts to the core of why PMCs are poised to become key proxy war-wagers in the future. Not only do they fulfil the critical function of minimising risk for states eager to protect their interests or ideology; they also provide additional economic benefits to a form of war already widely caricatured as ‘warfare on the cheap’, in as much as PMCs have lower start-up and running costs than national military deployments, and because states do not have to provide redundancy or pension funds for private contractors, unlike their soldiers.
Yet, and perhaps most significantly, they circumvent the difficulties created by a latter-day Vietnam Syndrome. There are no repatriation ceremonies for those private military contractors who have died in combat, no flag-draped coffins and little public recrimination at fatalities. Thus PMCs accept the political risk that states ordinarily run in deploying their own troops to foreign wars in their stead.
So reliant upon PMC assistance has the American military become that, in the opinion of one former PMC contractor, ‘the US Army would break down without them.’ Indeed, an analysis of the role that PMCs have played in the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals an increasing dependence by Western governments on private-sector assistance. UN figures reveal that by 2007, there were up to 20,000 Afghan and 6,000 Western PMC operatives in Afghanistan. The figures for Iraq are even higher: by 2008, nearly 200,000 PMC contractors were operating in the country, with around 30,000 of these providing an explicit security function, with the rest fulfilling other logistical or reconstruction tasks. This figure outstripped the number of coalition troops serving in Iraq at that time, with private contractors constituting around 57 per cent of all in-theatre personnel. Between 2003 and 2007, the US government spent $6–10 billion on contracts with PMCs for security related work in Iraq alone. Meanwhile, UN statistics suggest that the total figure for PMC contracts awarded by states around the world in the period after the 9/11 attacks until 2007 could be as high as $100 billion, although, admittedly, this is a vague figure, given the complicated nature of contract awards and the accounting mechanisms of some PMCs. Nevertheless, the use of PMCs as proxy war-fighters for Western governments has clearly already begun.
Furthermore, PMCs themselves have started to increase their professionalisation mechanisms and accountability protocols. American PMCs are now bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice—the foundation of military law in the US—and must also conform to the State Department’s revised ‘Worldwide Personnel Protective Services’ contract. This represents a distinct effort on behalf of PMCs to ameliorate the reputation of recklessness that they have arguably attained during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in particular, through the now-notorious actions of companies such as Blackwater. Such conformity to the same regulations that bind the regular US military also paves the way for the more ‘legitimate’ justification of their use by the US government in the future—especially in a proxy-war context where the risk is clearly deemed too high for state troops to be involved in any circumstance.
Cyber-Warfare as a Mode of Proxy War
Although the utilisation of PMCs may provide an arm’s-length mode of proxy war-fighting in the future, there are other mechanisms that disguise the proxy-war benefactors’ identity to a greater extent. Cyber-warfare is one such mechanism. Playing upon society’s contemporary reliance on computer networks for its day-to-day existence, cyber-warfare is an ideal vehicle for a proxy strategy, given the difficulties in tracing the exact origin of cyber-attacks. This relatively high degree of anonymity seemingly complements the long-established appeals of an indirect proxy-war strategy, including cost and risk reduction. Combined with the fact that computer technology is an easier and less obvious component to delegate to proxies than large quantities of weapons, cyberwarfare adds a further layer of ‘plausible deniability’ to the undertaking of (cyber-) war by proxy. Large surrogate armies are no longer integral to the proxywar strategy; indeed, developments in communications and information technology have the potential to nullify the twentieth-century belief in ‘boots on the ground’ as a proxy-war necessity. Computers can now create infrastructural damage to a foreign country of a kind that surrogate armies cannot. The twenty-first century is thus likely to see more wars fought by proxy servers than by proxy forces as they have traditionally been conceived.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated that between May 2006 and June 2011 there were at least seventyeight ‘significant cyber incidents’ that had resulted in ‘successful attacks on government agencies, defence and high tech companies, or economic crimes with losses of more than a million dollars.’ Among these cyberattacks were repeated attempts to hack into the computer networks of the US State, Commerce and Defense Departments; a massive service-denial attack on the Estonian government network, by suspected Russian hackers, in May 2007; the hacking in April 2010 of classified files relating to Indian missile systems at the Indian Defence Ministry, reportedly by Chinese-based hackers; and a cyber-attack in January 2011, again by suspected Chinese hackers, that temporarily suspended computer usage by several Canadian government departments. Another, more recent example is a purportedly Chinese-sponsored scam in 2012 that involved setting up a fake Facebook page for NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Admiral James Stavridis in order to lure his close friends and family into disclosing private information about him.
Perhaps the most significant example of a proxy-war strategy already at work in the cyber-realm was the 2012 revelation that the global Stuxnet virus was indeed a leaked computer worm, purportedly designed by US and Israeli computer scientists, to covertly halt the enrichment of uranium at Iran’s main nuclear facility in Natanz. Originally conceived of under the George W Bush administration, but expanded by President Obama, the project to cripple Iranian nuclear facilities through cyber-attacks—codenamed Olympic Games by security officials—was inadvertently made public in mid-2010after a programming error in the virus launched it onto the world wide web. Cyber-security experts, uncertain of its origins and intentions, labelled the virus Stuxnet, and watched helplessly as it spread. Despite the virus becoming public knowledge, the White House is thought to have authorised at least two further attacks on the Natanz plant in the summer of 2010 by a refined version of the computer worm, which reports indicate knocked out 1,000 of the 5,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges in operation, causing the centrifuges to, in effect, self-destruct. If such reports are correct, Stuxnet is the first example of US engagement in large-scale cyberwarfare by directing a cyber-attack against the infrastructure of another country. Obama administration officials are said to have privately thought that the Iranian attack set Tehran’s purported nuclear-weapons programme back by around two years, although it should be noted that both the veracity of reports surrounding the programme’s existence and the damage caused by Stuxnet are disputed. Nevertheless, if the virus really does exists, as seems likely, this cyber-attack on Iran can be considered a very modern indirect intervention: a benefactor in search of a proxy, turning not to a third-party military unit but to a computer virus in order to undermine an enemy.
With examples like the Stuxnet attacks in mind, it is clear that states are now adapting to the new frontier of warfare that developments in cyberspace has opened up. In May 2010, the US Department of Defense established its own Cyber Command to co-ordinate offensive and defensive cyber-network operations. Meanwhile, although often held responsible for the majority of global cyber-attacks in recent years, China has itself been on the receiving end of many such attacks. The Chinese National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center reported that China was the victim of 500,000 cyber-attacks in 2010 alone. Cyber-warfare is thus a seemingly double-edged sword for China. Its rise as a global superpower, with all of the attendant concerns about expanding its political and economic interests, has prompted a host of questions, both among its neighbours and in the West, about the use of force and the potential utility of a widespread proxy-war strategy in the future.
The Rise of China and the Appeal of Proxy War
The rise of China as a global power has provoked profuse consternation and intrigue in the West as to how this communist state will reconcile its inherent inwardness with new-found inclinations towards international economic and political influence, largely with a view to sustaining its own growth. China’s rise to superpower status has been one of stealth. New superpowers historically have emerged from the ashes of a large military conflict (such as the US after the Second World War) or periods of aggressive colonisation (notably Britain in the nineteenth century). However, China has avoided military confrontation with rival powers, thus breaking the mold of superpower establishment. As China seeks to consolidate its new power status, the world’s other superpower looks on with trepidation. There are currently huge economic and political pressures being exerted on the liberal basis of American power by a global financial crisis and the legacies of two sapping and controversial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, increased tensions over the rise of an illiberal China need not automatically lead to scenarios of conventional or nuclear war. Indeed, more likely is the use of indirect mechanisms in an attempt to alter the balance between the two countries; and this is increasingly likely to involve some form of proxy, largely because of the high levels of Sino-US economic interdependence, which can be seen as a bulwark to the undertaking of other forms of direct confrontation.
The big question, however, remains how the rise of China will interact with the other trends identified in this article (such as the prominence of cyberspace and the use of PMCs in asserting national interests) over the coming decades, and especially in relation to their effect on the proliferation of proxy wars. China’s longstanding foreign-policy ‘golden rule’ of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries will be severely tested as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks ways to maintain high levels of economic growth with limited domestic natural resources and an expanding population. Furthermore, China’s current access to African oil, cobalt, gold, copper and iron ore may well be constrained in the future by competitor states or internal disruption to supply (through civil war, for example). Two of the main catalysts to proxy wars—interests and ideology—are compounded in the case of China, given the very nature of the country’s one-party state. Moreover, the issue of risk management is all the more acute vis-à-vis China, given the huge economic stakes involved in its new power status.
An assertive naval presence in the South China Sea, ongoing tensions over Taiwan and President Obama’s Asia ‘pivot’ strategy have all increased the bellicose rhetoric both emanating from and aimed at China. Indeed, Washington’s wariness over Chinese strategic intentions was compounded in March 2012 when Beijing announced an 11 per cent increase in its defence budget, which topped $100 billion for the first time as a result. However, the interdependence of the Chinese and American economies, combined with the shadow that nuclear weapons continue to cast over international relations, arguably diminishes the chances of conventional war between the US and China. Nevertheless, talk of China’s peaceful rise to the status of global superpower needs to be heavily couched in terms that closely scrutinise China’s indirect forms of power projection and interest maximisation. Indeed, it could be argued that a form of proxy warfare has been simmering between China and the US for some time now, with the Americans using Taiwan as a regional surrogate to block any expansion of Chinese military power. Therefore, President Obama’s authorisation of an arms deal worth $6 billion with Taiwan in 2010 can be seen as an act of preventive proxy intervention designed as a bulwark against Chinese regional enlargement.
The scope for Chinese engagement in proxy wars in Africa, although seemingly antithetical to China’s longstanding foreign-policy doctrine, may soon increase as it seeks ways of preserving its new-found wealth and status. The foundations of proxy intervention in the continent are arguably already being laid. Not only has China posted fourteen defence attachés in embassies throughout Africa; it also deployed 4,500 military personnel to Nigeria, in 2007, to protect the important oil infrastructure and Chinese oil workers in the Niger Delta area from insurgent attack. This latter example is intriguing because it reveals the vast extent of the Chinese presence in Africa. Given that all business contracts drawn up by Beijing require at least 70 per cent of the industrial labour force to be Chinese, there are now more Chinese in Nigeria than there were British colonial administrators at the height of London’s imperial rule. This has caused significant resentment not just in Nigeria, but in other African countries too where a high influx of Chinese labour has squeezed out locals from the employment market and given rise to politicised accusations of neo-imperialism. A new era of Chinese indirect intervention, particularly in the global South, to secure security objectives (particularly of an economic nature) may have already begun.
The Changing Dynamics of Proxy Wars
The undertaking of proxy wars by states, especially superpowers, is inextricably linked with their wider geostrategic concerns, prompted in the main by interests, ideology and perceptions of risk. This is arguably why American military analysis of the global South (where Chinese influence is growing fastest) is essentially derivative of its primary focus on general war (a result of its scarring experiences reacquainting itself with counter-insurgency warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq); operations in the Asian theatre (a result of the rise of China as a superpower competitor); and the relationship between conventional and unconventional war (a result of intra-military debates about the location of asymmetric warfare in US military doctrine and the prominence of potential ‘hybrid wars’ that combine the two conflict types). Such analysis, focused on the waging of conventional war to the exclusion of other, more politically acceptable approaches, indeed opens the door for more, and not fewer, proxy wars in the future, given the continuing core appeal of proxy war, even in a changing strategic environment.
Modern-day proxy wars have become arm’s-length ‘effects-based operations’ whereby a specific objective is desired (such as the downfall of an authoritarian regime) without risking foreseen consequences (conflict escalation with a rival superpower, for example) and at an acceptable monetary cost (an increasingly important factor given the state of the contemporary global economy)—all of which is achieved without a state having to directly commit military forces of its own.
Since the end of the Cold War, superpower-induced proxy wars have largely been replaced by proxy wars driven by regional powers via the crossborder percolation of militia groups, witnessed especially in Africa. The result is a shift in the character of these wars from internationalised conflicts of an ideological nature to regionalised interventions motivated by inter- and intra-state competition for power and resources.
Another revealing trend is the increasingly multilateral nature of proxy war-fighting. The predominantly unilateral way in which the two Cold War superpowers provided their chosen proxies with arms, training and money has evolved in the early twenty-first century into coalition proxy warfare. That is not to say that single-state proxy strategies are obsolete—they will of course continue—but merely that there has been a trend towards collective proxy strategies. This has taken the form of either deliberate proxy coalitions, such as certain NATO countries collectively harnessing indirect (as well as direct) means of support for anti-Qadhafi forces during the 2011 Libya uprising, or of informal alliances that stem from mutual selection of the same proxy, such as that which united Syria and Iran through their support for Hizbullah in its battle against the Israeli state.
There is thus a knock-on effect on how collective security is perceived within contemporary international relations. The decision by groups of states to intervene by proxy in an existing conflict reveals not only a shared interest in the outcome of that war but also demonstrates how collective security—through the removal of a mutually despised regime, for example—is not necessarily manifest through formal treaties and alliance-making, but is something that is being more informally undertaken by the aiding and assisting of partners from a distance. Joint missile shields or collective-security clauses in alliance pacts can now be joined by coalition proxy war-fighting as a manifestation of collective security in action in the twenty-first century.
Some elements of proxy wars have remained constant throughout the decades, however. Foremost among these are the reasons for their appeal and why states engage in them. The alluring combination of ‘plausible deniability’ and lower risk has ensured that proxy wars are attractive to states seeking to defend or expand their interests or ideology. This allure, however, brings with it inherent dangers that must remain under heavy scrutiny as a new era of proxy wars inevitably beckons. Whether these proxy interventions are undertaken between the US and China in Africa, by anonymous states in cyberspace or by PMCs in the developing world, indirect interference in existing conflicts may reduce conflict escalation, but it risks conflict intensification. Although proxy wars circumvent the potential international political uproar provoked by direct intervention, especially where the legitimacy of such action is under question, they also increase the likelihood of higher casualties as a result of the influx of externally sourced weapons, money or personnel. In short, the history of proxy wars needs closer inspection if their manifestation in the foreseeable future is to be appropriately understood, adequately contextualised and sufficiently critiqued.