Are Proxy Wars Coming Back?

Russia's disastrous 2022 invasion of Ukraine offers an important - if unoriginal - lesson for all major powers: war is hard and unpredictable. Moscow sees NATO states' involvement in the Ukraine war as a form of proxy warfare meant to overthrow the Putin regime, and in Putin's hyperbolic words, to "destroy Russia." Great power competition itself makes proxy war more likely Great power competition itself makes proxy war more likely. Proxy wars are usually bloodier and harder to resolve than other wars but they are often effective From the past record, we can learn a lot about how proxies might be used in the future by major powers, but the dynamics of contemporary major power conflict will add its own complexities: Chinese-backed proxies must be handled differently than Iranian-backed ones. [Extracted from the article]