What is a proxy war and give two examples of them during the cold war?

1 Answer
Apr 27, 2018

It is a war where one or more nations (usually superpowers) utilize other nations as a substitute to fight in their stead.

Explanation:

During the Cold War period it was very risky for the two superpowers, the US and USSR, to fight openly one against the other because of the risk of mutual annihilation from Nuclear Warfare.
Instead of fighting face to face and risk extinction the two superpowers tended to use other nations as pawns in a very complicated chess game to fight and try to undermine as much as possible the other.
Two examples of this type of conflict are the Vietnam War and the War in Afghanistan.

During the Vietnam War the US was fighting alongside the South Vietnamese Forces against the North. The USSR was supporting the North that without this support would have been beaten almost certainly. With the withdrawal of the US from the South and the fall of Saigon to the communist forces of the north the USSR indirectly won a big victory against the US undermining their confidence and prestige.

In Afghanistan we have a reversal of the previous scenario; the US was supporting the "rebels" while the USSR was supporting and fighting alongside the governmental forces. The USSR spent a lot of money and lost a lot of lives to no avail and the situation was so bad that some authors take the fiasco in Afghanistan as one of the reasons of the fall of the Soviet regime.

In both cases there was no direct confrontation between US and Soviet forces but nevertheless the two nations were fighting each other through the support they were giving to other armies/nations.