Patron Competition in post-Cold War Secessionist Conflicts of Europe

Traditional works on inter-state patron-client relationships (PCRs) – such as that of by Shoemaker and Spanier from 1984 – established that a key motivation for patrons entering the relationship is to gain strategic advantages against geopolitical rivals. As these works were predominantly written in the Cold War era, they almost exclusively focus on the competition between the two hegemonic superpowers of that time: the US and the Soviet Union. As such, they fall short in grasping the reality of an increasingly multipolar world in which the configuration of global and regional powers have significantly altered. After a long decade following the implosion of the Soviet Union – characterized by US hegemony – strategic competition is on the rise again in Europe and worldwide. China has emerged as a new global superpower, while Russia has been attempting to restore its influence in its "near abroad" and beyond. The European Union, while lacking its own military, has become a key player in the European security nexus and states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are seeking strategic advancement in regional dominance. At the same time, the US has faced challenges and setbacks in its own strategic endeavors, including failed campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. In this multipolar configuration, both the extent of contested spheres of influence and the intensity of strategic competition increases, resulting among others in a new arms race and even in proxy wars such as those in Syria or Yemen. The proposed paper attempts to rework the PCR concept for this altered post-Cold War security order by studying a particular scene of strategic competition between patrons: secessionist conflicts. As these conflicts tend to occur in contested geopolitical spaces, they attract special attention from regional and global powers and often involve powerful rivals as patrons of the opposing sides. For example, Kosovo could be seen as a proxy conflict between the US and Russia, as the US has supported Kosovo's independence while Russia has supported Serbia. Similarly, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which involves a disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia, could be interpreted as an episode in the struggle for dominance in the South Caucasus between Russia and Turkey. These conflicts could serve as a form of "low-level" warfare between the patrons, as they seek to protect their interests and advance their agendas through proxy means. Hence, the expectation is that the presence of high intensity strategic competition is likely to have significant impact on secessionist conflict and could dramatically alter the conflict calculus. The proposed paper seeks to explore how these processes – the dynamics of strategic competition – play out over time within a case and across various cases in a qualitative comparative approach. The goal is to investigate how patron states exploit secessionist conflicts and how the presence and intensity of strategic competition among them shapes their relationships with their clients, the conflict calculus, and potential outcomes.