[MichaelMoser123]

but the scuffles were not direct confrontations between the armed forces of the superpowers (the nukes held them back, they were afraid of a possible escalation); the wars were always in far-off places between proxies (or that the other side was a proxy)

[freeflight]

I don't consider proxy wars to be "better wars", I'd consider them even worse than conventional warfare because it's people, sometimes whole nations, dying for somebodies else cause.

[throwaway2048]

they are still better than what WWIII would look like

[alexasmyths]

" dying for somebodies else cause."

False. 'Proxy wars' is a misleading title.

The Korean war was not a 'proxy war' it was a real war, that happened to also be a proxy for other powers.

Country A does not fight random country B for no reason.

They are generally real conflicts where their actions may happen to have geostragetic alignment with other powers.

[freeflight]

> Country A does not fight random country B for no reason.

No, they usually don't. But countries, nations, and people often have very long lasting disagreements. Instrumentalizing those, for another "bigger" cause isn't really that hard of a task for the far more influential and powerful countries C and D.

C and D end up supplying A and B with money, weapons, training and sometimes even direct manpower.

The result is usually a conflict that escalates much more quickly in scope and severity than it would have without the involvement of C and D.

[Spooky23]

A century of suffering in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia is the consequence of those little wars.

[nkozyra]

These predate the US-USSR cold war, though. They're rooted in good old fashioned colonial exploitation.

[Spooky23]

The Soviets distributed kalashnikovs, rpgs and other weapons with missionary zeal to attain world communism. The US did all sorts of nasty stuff.

The outcome is a tire fire that will burn for my lifetime at least.