Report: US Eyeing Return of Secret Proxy Force Programs in Ukraine

A restoration of the now-discontinued proxy programs could complicate US President Joe Biden’s promise to keep US boots from touching down in Ukraine.

The US is quietly considering resurrecting multiple 2018-era programs which would reportedly authorize the US military to send commandos in the form of ‘control teams’ overseeing Ukrainian operatives.

According to a report published Friday in the Washington Post, renewing the Defense Department’s secretive “1202 programs” would allow the American military squads to direct Ukrainian militants in their attempts to counter supposed “Russian disinformation” and “monitor troops movements on the ground.”

Congress isn’t expected to make a determination about whether to continue those efforts until at least fall of 2023, and if they decide to reinstate the 1202 programs, they reportedly wouldn’t take effect until 2024.

First introduced in 2018, the DoD’s initiative was “designed with an eye toward great-power competition” and “allow for “the creation and command of proxy forces” to carry out actions against so-called ‘rogue regimes’ and “‘near-peers’ like Russia and China,” the Brennan Center’s Katherine Yon Ebright explained in November.

As Gen. Mark Milley explained during his confirmation hearing for the post of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Section 1202 authority… is a highly useful tool for enabling irregular warfare operations” and “expanding the competitive space to deter and defeat coercion and aggression” by governments targeted by the US.

While the military programs are reportedly currently oriented towards intelligence-gathering and information warfare, Ebright notes “each of the programs, several of which targeted Russia, was based on a theory of constitutional self-defense” and therefore could be used to justify “low-level combat, just as they have in the Philippines and Somalia.”

But in contrast to programs like the Pentagon’s 127e, which authorizes military operations against terrorist groups, 1202 could now potentially draw the US closer into armed conflict against a nuclear power.

Biden has previously pledged that no US troops would participate in a direct military role in ongoing Russian-Ukrainian hostilities.

But “aside from the president’s good judgment, little stands in the way of the Department of Defense directing proxies into combat against, say, Russian separatists in Eastern Europe,” according to an article Ebright published in the pro-NATO outlet Defense One.

Since it was first used to allow the US president to use the military as “necessary and appropriate” to “defend US national security against the continuing threat posed by Iraq,” provisions contained in the expansive 2002 Authorization of the Use of Military Force have since been used to justify a wide array of attacks, including the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani at the Baghdad International Airport in 2020.

Indeed, “as long as the US government’s 2002 AUMF is on the books, no law stops the Defense Department from creating a 1202 proxy force to combat Iran-backed militias and related targets,” Elbright noted.

According to the Brennan Center lawyer, “between the 1202 authority and this expansive view of presidential power, the Defense Department has all it needs to raise a proxy force to counter, say, Russian separatists in the Donbass.”