Proxy war

In political science, a proxy war is an armed conflict where at least one of the belligerents is directed or supported by an external third-party power. In the term proxy war, a belligerent with external support is the proxy; both belligerents in a proxy war can be considered proxies if both are receiving foreign military aid from a third-party country. Acting either as a nation-state government or as a conventional force, a proxy belligerent acts on behalf of a third-party state sponsor.

A proxy war is characterised by a direct, long-term, geopolitical relationship between the third-party sponsor states and their client states or non-state clients, thus the political sponsorship becomes military sponsorship when the third-party powers fund the soldiers and their materiel to equip the belligerent proxy-army to launch and fight and sustain a war to victory, and government power. However, the relationship between sponsors and proxies can be characterized by principal-agent problems whereby the sponsor may be unable to control the actions of the proxy. A proxy war also can be a civil war, as in the Korean War and the Vietnam War during the Cold War.