By the end of 1945, one devastating war concluded and another type of war began, a new and different kind of warfare that would last for the next 45 years, a decidedly cold one.
Although this new era of warfare wouldn’t claim the estimated 75 to 80 million lives lost on the streets, battlefields and seas of the world fighting its second all encompassing direct conflict, instead this battle would not see the two main antagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union actually meet on an open field, swords drawn.
It would still cost millions of lives and billions of dollars but this time it wouldn’t be swords at dawn but daggers in the darkness.
Despite clear and obvious tension between the reigning super powers, it would be their respective vassal states whose blood would be shed in the name of either capitalism or communism.
America and its allies would wrestle with the great bear of the communist, totalitarian Soviet Union to stop it from expanding into Europe, Asia, and Africa. The struggle between these two ideologies wouldn’t play out on the doorstep of Washington or Moscow but in theaters of war in places as far flung as Korea and Vietnam, Cuba and Grenada, Afghanistan and Angola.
The age of the proxy war had begun.
Here we are going to have a look at six devastating proxy wars fought between the Soviet Union and the United States as both tried to expand their sphere of influence on the world stage. This ideological tug of war would have lasting repercussions for the countries involved, some of which are still being felt to this very day.
