A proxy war is a war where two powers use
third parties as a supplement or a substitute for fighting each other directly.
While superpowers have sometimes used whole
governments as proxies, terrorist groups 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. For instance, during the Iran-Iraq
War, both nations armed factions in the Lebanese Civil War and pitted them against each
other.
Examples
Spanish Civil War
A famous conflict which exhibits patterns of a
proxy war was the Spanish Civil War. An internal political conflict
soon involved a battle between fascism and communism as Nazi
Germany and Italy
(on the fascist
side) and the Soviet Union (on the republican side) poured resources and
advisers into Spain. This war served as a useful proving ground for the great
powers 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 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
and the United States of America) did not wish to
fight each other directly, since that would have run the risk of escalation to
a nuclear
war. Proxies were used in conflicts in Afghanistan,
Angola, Korea, Vietnam, and many
other states.
The first proxy war in the Cold War was the Greek
Civil War, in which the Western-allied Greek government was nearly
overthrown by Communist rebels with limited direct aid from Soviet 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 Stalin and Tito. Though previously
allied to the rebels, Tito closed Yugoslavia's borders to ELAS partisans when,
despite the nonexistence of Soviet aid to the rebels, Greek Communists sided
with Stalin. Albania
followed Tito's suit shortly thereafter. With no way to get aid, the rebellion
collapsed.
An example of war by proxy was East
Germany's covert support for 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.
In the Korean War
the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China aided the
Communists in North Korea
and China against the United
Nations forces led by the United States,
but the Soviet Union did not enter the war
directly. China
however did enter the war directly and sent millions of its troops in 1950
preventing the U.N. coalition from defeating the communist government of the
north.
In the Vietnam War
the Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam and the Viet Minh
with training, logistics and materiel but unlike the United States Armed Forces they fought
the war through their proxies and did not enter the conflict directly.
During most of the Angolan
Civil War after independence in 1975 the Soviet Union and the Eastern
Bloc supported the Marxist government of the MPLA with money, logistics,
and weapons, while the Cuban Armed Forces were sent to fight alongside
the Angolan Army. The United States cooperated with the Apartheid
regime of South Africa in sending support to the largest
anti-communist rebel group, UNITA. The MPLA government in Angola was also sending aid and
support to antiApartheid groups in South Africa and the independence
movement in South West Africa (present day Namibia, which
led the South African government to support UNITA with guns and money, and
eventually with thousands of troops from the South African National Defence
Force.
During the Mozambique civil war, the communist government
of Mozambique supported the
rebellion against the racist, white minority led government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In
response the Rhodesian government organized and than funded an anti-communist
rebel group called RENAMO
(Mozambique National Resistance). After Rhodesia
collapsed and became Zimbabwe
in 1980, South Africa
took over supporting RENAMO. In 1991 the South African government began reforms
at ending Apartheid and also ending its involvement in armed conflict
elsewhere. Later that year both South African and Cuban troops withdrew from Angola and in 1992 RENAMO and the government of Mozambique
signed a peace accord. UNITA continued to fight the freely elected government
of Angola, eventually losing
its support from all of its former allies (including the United States and South Africa).
The war between the mujahadeen
and the Red
Army during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a
classic asymmetric war. The aid given by the U.S.
to the mujahadeen during the war was only covert at the tactical level.
During the Lebanese Civil War Syria supported the Maronite Christian dominated Lebanese
Front with arms and troops, while interestingly enough Syria's enemy Israel supported
the Lebanese Front by providing them with arms, tanks and money. The Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) supported the Lebanese National Movement (NLM).
Second Congo War
Since the end of the Cold War the largest war by
proxy has been the Second Congo War in which the governments of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Rwanda all used
(and are perhaps still using) third party armed irregular groups.