A Brief History of Proxy War Part II: The Cold War

This chapter focuses on the Cold War, which set conditions for how proxies are used today. In radically bipolar orders, like the Cold War, the need for the two great powers to avoid direct confrontation increases. Where those powers are nuclear-armed, that urgency increases. Under these conditions, proxy wars become essential for seeking advantage, forcing lesser powers to choose sides. Proxies thus allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to compete globally, often failing to learn the lessons of previous proxy conflicts. The United States, for example, began its involvement in Vietnam as a proxy war but was eventually dragged into a larger, direct conflict, which it eventually abandoned rather than win. The Soviets repeated that mistake a decade later in Afghanistan. In Africa and Latin America, the two superpowers sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally provoked or escalated wars that may not have otherwise happened. The history of the Cold War is filled with many instances where actors were aware of the moral concerns of proxy war but were pressured by the dynamics of the relationship to ignore them.