Proxy war, the use of foreign-backed forces to intervene in an intrastate conflict without deploying its own troops, is a common way for great powers to advance their national interests. Yet such conflicts can be immensely costly and often widen into a general war between the two sides, as demonstrated by the Cold War in Southeast Asia, which saw the United States support South Vietnam against Northern communist forces backed by China and Russia.
Several attendees pointed out that proxy war is an extremely complex policy because it requires the intervening state to balance two types of interest: vital and desirable. The first type relates to security, and the second to the desire for an outcome that supports the intervening state’s worldview or values. For example, an intervening state may be willing to sacrifice the emergence of antidemocratic governments in the name of its vital interests, but it will not be willing to tolerate such dictatorships in order to advance its moral beliefs.
Moreover, the complexity of the policy is compounded by the fact that the intervening state must continuously assess its proxy’s ability to achieve its objectives, its access to resources, and its leadership capability. The policy is also asymmetrical in that the proxies’ interests and impulses differ from their sponsors. As a result, many proxies are corrupt, brutal, and incompetent, and their behavior can damage the reputation of the sponsoring power. This can be especially true if the sponsoring power is itself a gross human-rights violator, such as Iran and Russia.