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)

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.

they are still better than what WWIII would look like

" 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.

> 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.

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

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

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.