US-Afghan War.

Listed:

> US/Taliban conflict

I deliberately left that out because it was to a large extent a proxy conflict once the US started delivering weapons to the Muhajirin in large numbers.

(Or at least there's a reasonable argument for that case and I didn't want it to distract from the key point).

I heard this argument the other day around the Ukraine conflict being a US - Russia proxy war and the person promoting this view was vigorously rebutted - saying that it can’t be a proxy war because even though Ukraine is being significantly supplied by western allies (and Russia itself), it is Russia that is actually fighting.

And that made sense to me definitionally.

So I’ll make the same point here about the Soviet-Afghan war. Yes the US pumped in supplies, but it wasn’t a proxy war because one of the powers was actually one of the forces.

So, I think I understand better now and maybe no historians will yell at us for mis describing proxy fights

> saying that it can’t be a proxy war because even though Ukraine is being significantly supplied by western allies (and Russia itself), it is Russia that is actually fighting.

This doesn't make much sense - I think every definition of a proxy war has included things like the Vietnam war, the Soviet/Afgan war etc:

> That encouraged the American practice of arming insurgent forces, such as the funneling of supplies to the mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. Other examples of proxy war are the Korean War, the Vietnam War[1]

To be clear, proxy wars are ones where at least one party is a proxy for another power. By this definition yes, the Ukraine conflict could be viewed as a Western/Russian proxy war (not US, since significant arms for Ukraine are also coming from other Western powers).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war