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Definitional challenges in international law make regulating Wagner Group activity difficult, and transnational governance is not a ready substitute. What can be done instead?
A foreign terrorist organization designation of the Wagner Group could have severe negative impacts for Africa.
The Wagner Group has been accused of torture and murder and has repeatedly found itself on the receiving end of U.S. sanctions. Both international and domestic laws put relatively few constraints on its operations.
Editor’s Note: The war against terrorism involves fighting more than terrorists. Some groups use guerrilla war, and still others are proto-states. The post-9/11 struggle has also brought the United States into greater contact with warlords, clans, and other non-state actors. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Jacob Zenn of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Jamestown Foundation, respectively, try to bring a sense of order to these many actors, offering a spectrum of "violent non-state actors" as a way to better conceptualize them.