You are technically right ( cold war ), but mostly wrong nonetheless.

Can you substantiate that claim for after cold war debacle? There was a period and not a short one, where relations with Russia were a lot warmer and gave some hope for less crazy future.

Let's just assume the cold war cooled down for a couple years until Putin got a firm enough hold on his power he could rewarm it.

And yes, the Age of Aquarius was remarkably short and I found it severely lacking.

Even during initial Putin's reign there was a period of relative non-interference in each other's spheres. If, and I am assuming a little bit here, you are suggesting that regular spy-vs-spy constitutes a proxy war, then we have always been at war.. with everyone.

Maybe the right question becomes: how would you define a proxy war then? I think our disagreement lies in a definition of a concept.

> then we have always been at war.. with everyone.

There is spy-vs-spy for getting information and there's spy-vs-spy with the intention of blocking the other country's interests. The first can be seen as merely defensive while the other is a bit more offensive.

For instance, stealing secrets can be seen as defensive, while covertly supporting fringe political groups is squarely on the offensive side.

Relations between the Soviet Union and America deteriorated almost immediately following Germany's surrender. Or are you talking about Détente or the 90s and early 00s? In the former case, the two sides were still overtly postured for war with each other. In the later case, the apparent "warm relations" were little more than the Russia being in such a disorganized state that the only thing they could really accomplish was the accepting of western investment/bribes. Not exactly a healthy relationship.

That's more or less when the US got involved, but the broader conflict goes back more than a century before that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game