Proxy Wars and Contested Regions

A proxy war occurs when major powers avoid direct confrontation with one another by instead arming, funding, or otherwise backing opposing local factions in a third country's conflict. The Korean War of 1950 to 1953 set an early Cold War template: after North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, a United Nations force led overwhelmingly by the United States intervened on the South's behalf, while China sent hundreds of thousands of "People's Volunteers" across the Yalu River from October 1950 onward and the Soviet Union quietly supplied air support and matériel to the North, producing a war between local Korean forces that was, at its core, also a direct military test of strength between the two emerging Cold War blocs, ending in the armistice of July 1953 without a formal peace treaty.