UC Irvine

Using and sponsoring militant groups as proxies to meet geostrategic interests is an old political phenomenon. IR research indicates that state’s sponsor militant groups to increase their regional influence, destabilize regional rivals, export political ideology, maintain economic stability, preserve plausible deniability, and deter a more powerful rival. Yet, none of these motivations adequately explain the institutional foundations and the role of a state’s national identity in sponsorship. In this dissertation I present a theory for continued state-sponsorship, arguing that sponsorship of militant groups is linked to its ontological security, which refers to the security acquired by having a stable, consistent identity. I argue that sponsorship of militancy satisfies the state’s need of having a stable and consistent identity, and ultimately increases ontological security. How a state obtains and maintains its ontological security is deeply tied to its ability to achieve its geostrategic interests. To better understand how sponsorship of militant groups functions as a means to increase the state’s ontological security, I specify the institutional foundations and requirements for maintaining a state’s ontological security, and ask: Does a state’s sponsorship of militancy have the same or different effects on its territorial security versus its ontological security? What are the processes of ontological security? What is the role of civil institutions in the processes of ontological security? And how do civil institutions facilitate state-sponsorship of militant groups? I use Pakistan to illustrate the value of this approach and investigate how its civil institutions help legitimize the state’s policy of sponsorship as a means to enhance the state’s ontological security.

Employing a reflexive approach and an ontological security framework to the study of state-sponsorship yields several important findings for IR theory, mainstream and critical security studies, and interdisciplinary approaches to studying militancy. First, my research emphasizes that while its external environment influences a state’s identity, it is nonetheless created internally by the interaction of its civil and military institutions. Second, disaggregating the state allows us to better understand how “security” is created and how closely “security” is intertwined with “identity” and “national interests.” Unpacking the state, therefore, adds more theoretical and empirical value to IR theory. Finally, by revealing the contributions of the Pakistani state’s civil institutions in the state’s policy of sponsoring militant groups, this dissertation disrupts the conventional understanding of Pakistan’s institutions, which has mainly considered the military as the primary institution involved in the sponsorship of militant groups. My dissertation highlights how this conventional view is incomplete and needs to be reexamined.