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Proxy war

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A proxy war or proxy warfare is a war that results when opposing powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly. While powers have sometimes used governments as proxies, violent non-state actors, mercenaries, or other third parties are more often employed. It is hoped that these groups can strike an opponent without leading to full-scale war.

Proxy wars have also been fought alongside full-scale conflicts. It is almost impossible to have a pure proxy war, as the groups fighting for a certain nation usually have their own interests, which can diverge from those of their patron.

Typically proxy wars function best during cold wars, as they become a necessity in conducting armed conflict between at least two belligerents while continuing cold warfare.

Contents 1 Examples 1.1 Spanish Civil War 1.2 Cold War 1.3 Second Congo War 1.4 Kargil War 2 Footnotes 3 References

Examples

(Also see List of proxy wars)

Spanish Civil War

A famous conflict which exhibits patterns of a proxy war was the Spanish Civil War. The conflict that started between the Second Spanish Republic and Francisco Franco's Nationalists soon involved Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on the Nationalist side and the Soviet Union on the Spanish Republic's side. This war served as a useful proving ground for both the Axis and the Soviets to test equipment and tactics that would later be employed in the Second World War.

Cold War

Proxy wars were common in the Cold War, because the two nuclear-armed superpowers (the Soviet Union and the United States) did not wish to fight each other directly, since that would have run the risk of escalation to a nuclear war (see mutual assured destruction). Proxies were used in conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, and Latin America.

The first proxy war in the Cold War was the Greek Civil War, which started almost as soon as World War II ended. The Western-allied Greek government was nearly overthrown by Communist rebels with limited direct aid from Soviet ally or client states in Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria. The Greek Communists managed to seize most of Greece, but a strong government counterattack forced them back. The Western Allies eventually won, due largely to an ideological split between Joseph Stalin and Josip Broz Tito. Though previously allied to the rebels, Tito closed Yugoslavia's borders to ELAS partisans when Greek Communists sided with Stalin, despite the lack of direct material support from the USSR. Albania followed Tito's lead shortly thereafter. With no way to receive aid, the rebellion collapsed.

In the Korean War, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China aided the Communists in North Korea against the US-led United Nations forces. The Soviet Union did not enter the war directly, though it was alleged that the Soviets had sent pilots to fly MiG 15s for the Communists. China, however, did enter the war directly and sent thousands of 'volunteers' in 1950 preventing the U.N. coalition from defeating the Communist government of the north.

Another example of a proxy war was East Germany's covert support of the Red Army Faction (RAF) which was active from 1968 and carried out a succession of terrorist attacks in West Germany during the 1970s and to a lesser extent, in the 1980s. After German reunification in 1990, it was discovered that the RAF had received financial and logistic support from the Stasi, the security and intelligence organization of East Germany. It had also given several RAF terrorists shelter and new identities. It had not been in the interests of either the RAF or the East Germans to be seen as co-operating. The apologists for the RAF argued that they were striving for a true socialist society not the sort that existed in Eastern Europe. The East German government was involved in Ostpolitik, and it was not in its interest to be caught overtly aiding a terrorist organization operating in West Germany. For more details see the History of Germany since 1945.

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